You don’t need an on-air rant by ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit to know that Sunday night’s BCS Selection Show was a complete joke.
Seven of the top 15 teams in the BCS standings did not earn bids to play in BCS bowls.
Perhaps the most egregious crime in the whole process was the snubbing of the four Southeastern Conference teams ranked between seventh and 10th: Georgia, LSU, Texas A&M and South Carolina. UGA has 11 wins, and the other three have 10 victories each.
Instead, five-loss Wisconsin, Louisville and Northern Illinois — NORTHERN ILLINOIS! — will play in three of the most prestigious bowl games.
You could even argue that Florida State is less deserving of a BCS appearance than the SEC’s two-loss foursome. The Seminoles have defeated only two teams with seven or more victories this season. Talk about a weak resume.
Aside from only choosing two teams to play for the national championship, the main issue here is that conference championships have made a mockery of college football.
Granted, winning your league is hard. But when teams like 6-6 Georgia Tech and 7-5 Wisconsin are on the cusp of winning a conference championship, something is wrong.
Alabama won the national title last season without even participating in the SEC Championship Game. Do league titles mean anything nowadays?
The Fighting Irish are playing for the crystal football, and they don’t even play in a conference. Meanwhile, 16 teams that were not the champion of a big six conference this year rank ahead of Louisville in the BCS.
Wisconsin is unranked.
The powers that be think a plus-one system — set to begin in 2014 — is going to fix everything. That’s laughable.
Then again, my proposed plan may also seem silly. In fact, it’s probably just one of thousands that will be swept under the rug and forgotten. But here goes nothing.
First, regardless of my opinion of conferences other than the SEC, simply discounting the leagues’ championships will never fly. The conference commissioners are the decision makers here, and sticking a giant middle finger in the face of the Big East and the ACC is just not plausible.
That’s why I propose a 12-team postseason tournament featuring the six BCS conference champions and six at-large schools. At-large bids will be determined by BCS ranking.
Conferences other than the SEC, the Pac-12, the Big 12, the Big Ten, the ACC and the Big East don’t matter. The Boise States of the world can fight for at-large spots.
Independents can either join a conference or fight for at-large spots. Notre Dame isn’t special.
The four highest-ranked conference champions would earn first-round byes.
The two worst conference champions — Louisville and Wisconsin this year — would enter an eight-team pool with the six at-large squads. Those teams would then be seeded based on BCS rank. Conference champions would automatically host, while the higher ranked at-large team would host the other two games. As in any other tournament, No. 1 plays No. 8, No. 2 plays No. 7, No. 3 plays No. 6, and No. 4 plays No. 5.
Once the field is narrowed to eight, the traditional bowl games come into play. The quarterfinal and semifinal games would be rotated among the Cotton Bowl, the Capital One Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl, with one of the six also playing host to the BCS National Championship Game.
My proposed playoff system strengthens and legitimizes conference championships (the format would likely spur Notre Dame to adopt full ACC membership), creates an exciting postseason resembling that of the NFL and, most importantly, gives multiple national championship contenders a fair shot at claiming the ultimate prize.
No teams would play more than 17 games in a single season. The NFL maximum is 20.
After years of snubs and rip-offs, my proposed playoff format offers a solution. Whether you love or hate my idea, it is far preferable to what we have now.
Contact Joe Morgan at joemorgan@alligator.org.
