This is an article from the Atlanta paper today. It suggests a 8 team BCS playoff system that is right in line with what I have been saying all along about who should qualify for BCS bowls. Take a minute to read it. Of course, it is not complimentary to FSU, but facts are facts....It makes sense!
Inside Ball's eight-team BCS playoff
Inside Ball finally has found a good use for the BCS rankings. Use 'em to put together a Division I-A college football playoff.
Put the BCS's top eight teams in the field. Seed them based on their BCS ranking. And let them go at it -- seven games, total, in three weeks -- to determine the national champion.
Hey, what's so hard about that?
You can't argue that it adds too many games for the student-athletes, considering that only four of the 117 Division I-A teams would play even one more game under this system than under the current bowl system. (Besides, the NCAA has shown zero reluctance to add games in recent years.) You can't argue that it would diminish or destroy the existing bowls, because seven of the 28 bowls could be incorporated into an eight-team playoff, which would enhance them. (As for the other 21 bowls: They could continue as they are, largely irrelevant.)
You can argue that an eight-team playoff would ever-so-slightly dilute college football's regular season, but it would remain the most decisive regular season in big-time sports with just 6.8 percent of the teams getting into the playoffs, compared with 37.5 percent in the NFL, 55 percent in the NBA and 20 percent in Division I college basketball.
OK, we're sold on the idea.
On with it.
Inside Ball's 2002 college football playoff would include two teams from the Big Ten (Ohio State and Iowa), two from the Pac-10 (Washington State and Southern Cal), two from the Big 12 (Oklahoma and Kansas State), one from the SEC (Georgia) and one from the Big East (top seed Miami). If this year's example is typical, an eight-team playoff is the right size. Any larger, and the field would include Notre Dame, the BCS's No. 9 team and a 44-13 loser to Southern Cal in its regular-season finale.
(The ACC is not represented in the field. ACC champ Florida State does not qualify because its four losses led to a BCS ranking of 14. If there really were an eight-team playoff, the money-grabbing major conferences presumably wouldn't stand for a setup in which one of their champs could be excluded. Whatever. In our playoff, there's no room for a team with four losses.)
Seeding the eight teams by their BCS rankings, our bracket produces four compelling first-round matchups: Miami's high-powered offense vs. Kansas State's top-ranked defense; Southern Cal vs. Iowa in a higher-stakes version of a game that really will be played in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 2; peaking-at-the-right-time Georgia vs. Washington State and star quarterback Jason Gesser; unbeaten Ohio State vs. Oklahoma in a battle of great defenses.
Too bad this is just fantasy football.
Tim Tucker-Atlanta Journal/Constitution
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