Presenting... the BCS Tournament

[ZekeRoberts]

Alright folks, here's the deal... NCAA Football needs a playoff, you know it, I know it, Boise State knew it a couple years ago, and Utah and Ball State know it this year. Now let's use this wonderful simulation tool to figure out who would win it all if it were settled the RIGHT way!

I have created a spreadsheet containing a bracket that will help you set up these epic tournament battles as precursors to the system that we will hopefully see realized within the next few years.

The consensus among the believers seems to be: "we can still keep all the exisiting bowls by placing them into a tournament structure." Financial ramifications of this notwithstanding, this would help us create various neutral sites for each matchup, and so that system is the one that I am going with. There are 33 bowls, and 31 games played in a 32-team tournament. So, dividing the bowls into "tiers" for each round, and using the BCS rankings as an RPI-type tool, I have created a tournament that I am simply cannot contain my excitement about. I will wait for this weekend's games and MAYBE the conference championships next weekend before finalizing the brackets and playing them out, but feel free to take a look at what I've done and use it for your own enjoyment. You (yes, you, you know who you are) will undoubtedly disagree with my alignment of the bowls and the seedings in each region... I don't really care if you do, change them however you like, just don't post your complaints in my thread (this must be how roster editors feel)!

A couple things FYI:

-The Nat'l Championship is the Rose Bowl because I'm a Big 10 guy living in SoCal.

-The bowls I removed were the Humanitarian Bowl (I don't hate blue turf, I just didn't want it in my tournament), and the St. Petersburg Bowl (no real reason I guess)

-I tried to follow these basic rules:

1.) All conference champions get an automatic bid
2.) No team should play a previous opponent from this season in their first round matchup, or second round matchup if possible.


Happy bowling everyone

[BGPurple]

Love the idea, but this how i would rank them, and my predicted winners:

[bostonsportsrule]

Any way you guys could screenshot your work and show it? Not all of us are able to open your files due to not having Open Office, etc.

[ZekeRoberts]

I am currently working on a revised bracket... I'm trying to use the BCS standings as a guide, but of course the reason we need a tournament is that the BCS is crap (evidenced by OU vaulting over Texas, despite the Horns beating them at a neutral site)... makes me really appreciate everything that goes into the basketball selection committee's decisions in March...

so anyways the new bracket will have seeds #1-4 matched more closely to their geographical region, and #5-8 placed more by their rankings (if they have to travel to a different region, so be it)

i will post this as text in my next post if you can't access the bracket

[tarheelguy4736]

Im confused in both those because in the second guys post of the brackets how does Florida State get an automatic bid when they aren't even playing for the conference championship and in the 1st brakcets where is Virginia Tech, they are the ones playing for the conference championship. I was just wondering, other than that those brackets look awesome and wish the NCAA could implement something like this. it would be very nice and very exciting for college football.

[ZekeRoberts]

SEEDINGS
WEST REGION
#1-USC(10-1)
#2-UTAH(12-0)
#3-BOISE STATE(12-0)
#4-OKLAHOMA STATE(9-3)
#5-BRIGHAM YOUNG(10-2)
#6-OREGON(9-3)
#7-OREGON STATE(8-4)
#8-WEST VIRGINIA(7-4)

SOUTH REGION
#1-TEXAS(11-1)
#2-TEXAS TECH(11-1)
#3-TEXAS CHRISTIAN(10-2)
#4-GEORGIA(9-3)
#5-MICHIGAN STATE(9-3)
#6-MISSOURI(9-3)
#7-IOWA(8-4)
#8-NORTH CAROLINA(8-4)

CENTRAL REGION
#1-OKLAHOMA(11-1)
#2-PENN STATE(11-1)
#3-BALL STATE(12-0)
#4-CINCINNATI(10-2)
#5-GEORGIA TECH(9-3)
#6-FLORIDA STATE(8-4)
#7-OLE MISS(8-4)
#8-*TULSA(10-2)

EAST REGION
#1-ALABAMA(12-0)
#2-FLORIDA(11-1)
#3-OHIO STATE(10-2)
#4-BOSTON COLLEGE(9-3)
#5-NORTHWESTERN(9-3)
#6-PITTSBURGH(8-3)
#7-VIRGINIA TECH(8-3)
#8-*TROY(7-4)/ARKANSAS STATE(6-5)

*-CUSA and SunBelt are the only "automatic bids" that really matter...my system would scrap conference championship games, if you gave an automatic bid to a team for winning its half of the conference you would have to put ECU in here for winning the CUSA East... you could also take a page from the basketball playbook and add a play-in game or two (St. Petersburg Bowl/Humanitarian Bowl)

Bowl Games
WEST REGION
1 vs. 8 - Poinsettia Bowl
4 vs. 5 - Hawaii Bowl
2 vs. 7 - Las Vegas Bowl
3 vs. 6 - Emerald Bowl
1/8 v 4/5 - Holiday Bowl
2/7 v 3/6 - Insight Bowl
Regional Final - Fiesta Bowl

SOUTH REGION
1 vs. 8 - Texas Bowl
4 vs. 5 - New Orleans Bowl
2 vs. 7 - Armed Forces Bowl
3 vs. 6 - New Mexico Bowl
1/8 v 4/5 - Alamo Bowl
2/7 v 3/6 - Sun Bowl
Regional Final - Cotton Bowl

CENTRAL REGION
1 vs. 8 - Liberty Bowl
4 vs. 5 - Meineke Car Care Bowl
2 vs. 7 - International Bowl
3 vs. 6 - Motor City Bowl
1/8 v 4/5 - Independence Bowl
2/7 v 3/6 - Music City Bowl
Regional Final - Capital One Bowl

EAST REGION
1 vs. 8 - Papajohns.com Bowl
4 vs. 5 - EagleBank Bowl
2 vs. 7 - Champs Sports Bowl
3 vs. 6 - GMAC Bowl
1/8 v 4/5 - Chick-fil-a Bowl
2/7 v 3/6 - Outback Bowl
Regional Final - Gator Bowl

FINAL FOUR
WEST vs. SOUTH - Sugar Bowl
CENTRAL vs. EAST - Orange Bowl
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME - Rose Bowl

CONFERENCE BREAKDOWN: ACC(5), Big East(3), Big Ten(5), Big 12(5), CUSA(1), MAC(1), MWC(3), Pac-10(3), SEC(4), Sun Belt(1), WAC(1)

"BUBBLE"
Last Four In: Oregon State, Iowa, West Virginia, North Carolina
Top Four Teams Left Out:
California(7-4, 4th place Pac-10, playing Washington on Saturday)
Connecticut(7-4, 5th place Big East, playing Pitt on Saturday)
Nebraska(8-4, 2nd place Big 12 North)
Rice(9-3, 2nd place C-USA West)

Other teams that "qualify" (no more than 4 losses): Air Force, Central Michigan, East Carolina, South Florida, Western Michigan

Another thing I tried hard to do this time around was go into teams' schedules and try to ensure that in the first two rounds, no team would play anyone they already played this year, which is why you might see some of the lower seeds farther away from their region, but there are one or two exceptions here (#6 Oregon could meet #7 Oregon St. if they both knock off an undefeated team in the first round)...

My plan is to first let the CPU play out these games in "Play Now", most likely using the Super Sim feature unless it is close at the end. If there is enough interest I was thinking about posting a blog with recaps and box scores. If you have any solid reasoning for changing the matchups I would be interested to hear it... i will probably make one or two more changes before starting, expecially with the uconn/pitt game still to come this weekend

[DonkeyJote]

Personally, I'm more in favor of a plus-one because I think it maintains the importance of every regular season game. However, if you were going to do a playoff, I don't think you can go 32-teams. That's just too many, imo. I don't believe 4 or 5 loss teams should be playing for a NC. Also, I'm all for giving non-bcs schools a chance, but a 6-5 Sun Belt team definetly does not deserve to be in. I'd make it 16, and have some sort of minimum win requirement from a non-bcs team. Or have the Conf. USA champ play a play-in game against the sun belt champ since the MAC, WAC, and MWC are all typically stronger conferences.

I also disagree about scrapping conf. championship games. I think those would be more important for the big conferences. I think if you get rid of those and there isn't, for example, a true SEC champion, it further neuters the importance of the regular season. The problem with a huge playoff system is that it makes the regular season unimportant. Look at the NBA. Everyone and there brother makes the playoffs. Their regular season isn't very important. Same thing with college basketball - everyone loves march madness, but for most the year, what you do doesn't really matter, since almost everyone plays in at least a conf. championship tourney. But in the NFL, only 12 teams go. The reg. season maintains importance. In MLB, only 8 go. The regular season is extremely important.

Overall, if you do have a playoff, you have to do in a way that maintains the importance of a regular season. And I think that having a team such as West Virginia, which has had a very disappointing, lackluster season, even in the tournament devalues that reg season too much.

[TrevJo]

Quote: Originally Posted by EsaQue

Personally, I'm more in favor of a plus-one because I think it maintains the importance of every regular season game.

I disagree with this general argument. I don't think a plus-one makes more regular season games important. You'd still have all but half a dozen teams out of national title contention with a few weeks left in the regular season. That means still an awful lot of games that aren't important in terms of the national title picture. The other thing I don't like about that argument is that it fails to recognize the importance of the games for their own sake. Games are important for lots of reasons besides national title implications... conference titles, rivalry games, bragging rights, senior days... anyone who thinks you need a small number of teams in the playoffs in order to have important regular season games, to me that person isn't thinking straight.

I think an 8-team playoff is the way to go. IMO, the important thing is to make sure the best team in the country gets a shot to play for the title in the postseason. The BCS obviously doesn't do that, the best team could easily finish #3 in the BCS rankings. I don't think a plus-one would do it either. Take this year for example, let's say Florida beats Alabama in the SEC championship game. You've got 4 seemingly equal teams--Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, USC, plus undefeated Utah and Boise State. A plus-one system wouldn't do jack to solve that problem. 8-team playoff is the way to go.