The 2008-2009 BCS-FBS National Championship Tournament

It's back again playoff fans...The concoction i've been working on for several years. Last year we had a lil quagmire with people not wanting the non-Super Six conference champions (Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt, and WAC) to participate. Folks, its only fair for those teams to participate because they won their conference. While it might not be game-worthy to some, those participants would love to try to win a national title.

Once again....We have an individual on this forum that has an opinion that a playoff should not happen. That's fine. However, if you (or anyone) cant post without insults or other degrading comments....THEN DONT POST. This is for the people who want the tournament and to have some fun.


Seedings
The seedings for this tournament come from the Final BCS Top 25. Should a team not be ranked in the Final BCS Top 25, for the sake of time they will be seeded by best schedule for the regular season minus the conference championship game (if applicable). For this year, East Carolina and Troy tied at 8-4 (excluding their conference championship game wins). I gave the Troy the nod with the higher seed since they lost only one conference game while ECU lost two.

When it comes to Notre Dame, since they are not apart of a conference (who should be apart of the Big East), they could only qualify by an at-large bid. They would have to get into the top ten just to get a shot.


Venues

Locations for games are as follows:

Round of 16: Nearest bowl site of the higher seed

Quarterfinals (In Order): Sugar, Cotton, Gator, Peach

Semifinals (In Order): Rose, Fiesta

National Championship Final: Orange

In the quarters, the BCS bowl comes first. Since the Sugar Bowl was last year's national championship game, it goes back to the back and and works its way back up. So with this format that it goes back to the quarterfinals. The highest seed goes to the Sugar Bowl, second highest to the Cotton Bowl and down the line. Semifinals the same way with the Rose Bowl (next year's title game) to the highest seed, then Rose. Semifinal winners play for the national championship in the Orange Bowl.



Payouts

Ive tried to come up with some sort of payout formula, but each participant should only make the minimum of $300,000, which is the smallest payout (PapaJohns.com Bowl) of a regular bowl game and to the maximum of $17 million, which is the max payout for a current BCS bowl game.

The best I've come up is this:

Round of 16: Loser - $300,000 / Winner - $500,000

Quarterfinals: Loser - $750,000 / Winner - $1,500,000

Semifinals: Loser - $2,500,000 / Winner -$5,000,000

National Championship Final: Loser - $5,000,000 / Champion - $10,000,000

Maxiumum Total: $17,000,000



Brackets


(#): Seeds

Conference Champions (Automatic Bids)
Atlantic Coast: Virginia Tech (13)
Big East: Cincinatti (12)
Big Ten: Penn State (8)
Big XII: Oklahoma (1)
Conference USA: East Carolina (15)
Mid-American: Buffalo (16)
Mountain West: Utah (6)
Pac-10: Southern California (5)
Southeastern: Florida (2)
Sun Belt: Troy (14)
Western Athletic: Boise State (9)


At-Large Bids
Texas (3)
Alabama (4)
Texas Tech (7)
Ohio State (10)
TCU (11)


***Games simulated with winners in BOLD***


Round of 16

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
Fort Worth, Texas
(16) Buffalo
(1) Oklahoma

GM/Ford Motor City Bowl
Detroit, Michigan
(9) Boise State
(8) Penn State

Pacific Life Holiday Bowl
San Diego, California
(12) Cincinatti
(5) Southern California

PapaJohns.com Bowl
Birmingham, Alabama
(13) Virginia Tech
(4) Alabama

Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl
Las Vegas, Nevada
(11) TCU
(6) Utah

Valero Alamo Bowl
San Antonio, Texas
(14) Troy
(3) Texas

Texas Bowl
Houston, Texas
(10) Ohio State
(7) Texas Tech

Capital One Bowl
Orlando, Florida
(15) East Carolina
(2) Florida


Quarterfinals

Allstate Sugar Bowl
New Orleans, Louisiana
(8) Penn State
(1) Oklahoma

Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl
Atlanta, Georgia
(5) Southern California
(4) Alabama

Konica Minolta Gator Bowl
Jacksonville, Florida
(11) TCU
(3) Texas

AT&T Cotton Bowl
Dallas, Texas
(7) Texas Tech
(2) Florida


Semifinals

The Rose Bowl presented by Citi
Pasadena, California
(4) Alabama
(1) Oklahoma

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl
Glendale, Arizona
(7) Texas Tech
(3) Texas


National Championship Final

FedEx BCS National Championship Game
Miami, Florida
(3) Texas
(1) Oklahoma


Playing Dates

The tournament could start play following the conference championship games and finishing up on first weekend in January. Four weeks of play either way you slice it. Or give the teams a week off in between the conference championship games and the first round games. It would just put the finals on the second weekend in January.

There's alot of arguments for and against it....But gosh I'd love to see it. While I didnt vote for Obama, I agree with him that a playoff needs to happen. I hope it happens soon.

 

It would certainly be entertaining. I do find it odd, though, that you decry the BCS but then use their rankings to seed the teams.

 

Oh, come on...you know if we played UF we would have Tebow crying by halftime....

I like it.

I think the Pac-10, BigEast, Big 10 should be forced into 12 team conferences, with conference championship games, though.

Once again...the "non auto-qualifier" conferences get screwed in the BCS.

 

Well, it does have some use....Just not to determine 1 vs 2 for a single game.

 

Probably better, for this purpose at least, to use that instead of coaches poll anyways(they cant watch most of the games, have their SID's vote for them, etc)


Harris maybe? AP? I dunno...all of them have some sort of bias.



BTW....looking forward to our little matchup next year.

 

It's fulfilling the same purpose. If you don't think the BCS rankings accurately determine who the #1 and #2 teams are, then how can you be using it to choose the #1 and #2 seeds? You're undermining your own system with that obvious contradiction.

 

Well, if you dont like it....Dont post.

But to answer your question, the tournament has to be seeded somehow. You cant let just the AP, ESPN, Harris do that because they'll contradict each other. There has to be some sort of formula in place to seed somewhat accurately. But the tournament is in place to allow those who have a valid argument to compete for a national championship.

The BCS got it right with Oklahoma and Florida in the title game. But then again, champions are determined on the field, not by a computer.

 

Another option is to use Sagarin (or some other source) to find out the best conference and seed them that way.

Overal...I like it...just not ECU's matchup

There are obviously a whole list of details that need to be worked out...but you cant work them out if you dont start somewhere.

 

there are 120 schools in the BCS subdivision and 124 in the FCS subdivision.

the BCS should be cut back to 96 schools in 8 conferences (12 teams each)
with two divisions (6 teams each) in each conference. The remaining teams form a new 80 team FCS subdivision with the better FCS conferences, the rest of the conferences and independents form another subdivision. Each subdivision has it's own playoffs.

get rid of the MAC and Sunbelt for starters along with a couple of other noncompetitive schools to get there.

Start them all playing the closest Saturday to Sept 1 and run a 12 game schedule over 13 weeks.

Bye weeks scheduled for the weeks 5, 6, and 7 (two teams from each division) based upon the previous years conference standings. The better your previous year's finish the earlier your bye week

Each team plays all division opponents, 3 from the other division of their conference (rotated yearly), and 4 nonconference opponents. This gives teams the ability to preserve nonconference rivalries (SC vs Clemson, Georgia vs Georgia Tech for example) and schedule other opponents (to beef up strength of schedule) as well.

All conferences have a championship game, the winner gets an automatic bid to a 16 team playoff. The other 8 slots are at large bids.

 

Love it.