The Bowl Championship Series has done a great job of putting the top two teams into a championship game, but even with that, there were always complaints. If three teams went undefeated during the regular season, or four teams had a single loss, the outcry from the denied teams was always swift and obnoxious. Well, that ends now, at least for four teams. Starting in 2014, college football will have a four-team playoff system selected by a committee. The BCS is dead; long live our new playoff overlords!
“It will be much like the Super Bowl,”’ said Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany. “You’ll be dealing with civic communities and I think it’ll be a national process and people have to be very energetic about it. I think it’s going to be great for the sport.”
Here are the details: the semi-finals games will rotate between six different bowl games, depending on the year. The new championship game will be held at a unique location not currently one of the bowl cities, and the potential host cities will be able to bid on their chance to host the Super Bowl of college football. The game will be held on the first Monday in January (or the second Monday if the first Monday is New Year’s Day). The aim is to have a championship committee between 10 and 20 people, with the hope being 12 voters will select teams based on criteria like conference championship status, overall record, strength of schedule, and head-to-head results.
So long as it doesn’t cheapen the regular season and keeps all the crazy bowl games intact, I’m completely fine with this. Right now, the college regular season is the only regular season in sports that really means something, and conference championships (usually) matter. This needs to stay, because college football is already a 16-week playoff and only the best teams survive. This seems like a good mix of playoff and the current system, even if the idea of a selection committee makes me a little nervous.
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