Death to the BCS: Hinkle's Take

Today Hinkle gives his two cents on the Dan Wetzel's playoff proposal detailed in the book Death to the BCS.

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I think that Dan Wetzel is on to something with his proposed playoff system. I love the idea of all conferences being represented, but I feel there needs to be certain rules in place to make it fair to the big conferences. The first thing that would need to happen is the following.

In order to have your conference represented automatically, the conference champion must meet either of the following criteria.

A. They have had a 10 win season

OR

B. They have 2 losses or less

One of those need to be met in order to qualify. This way, no conference can feel they were shafted such as the MAC, WAC, C-USA, or Sun Belt. If your conference feels it has a shot top play with the "Big Boys", then they need to show something to get into this elite field of 16. In the proposed format, there is now way UConn, Florida International, or Miami (OH) deserve to be in this field. Here is my problem with automatic bids for all conference. Suppose Nebraska, South Carolina, and Florida State all won in their respective conference championships. That would have left the following teams for 5 spots.

BCS RANK

1. Auburn

4. Stanford

6. Ohio State

7. Oklahoma

8.Arkansas

9. Michigan State

10. Boise State

11. LSU

13. Virginia Tech

Now I understand that it is simple, win your conference and you are in, but look at these teams we would have to choose from! This would be a worst case scenario for the proposed playoff format. So instead, I would say you have an automatic bid for all conference champions with 10+ wins or 2- losses. I would then use the current BCS formula to determine the remaining at-large bids for the remaining 5 teams. Seedings would be given in order of BCS rankings to Conference champions first. After all conference champions meeting the criteria are seeded, the remaining teams would be seeded according to their BCS rankings. Indy teams ranked in the top 15 would get the same love as a conference champion. Outside if the top 15 they would have to go through the same process as the rest. With that being said, here would be the seeds for this years playoff according to what I would do.

1. Auburn

2. Oregon

3. TCU

4. Wisconsin (Higher BCS Ranking than OSU and MSU)

5. Oklahoma

6. Boise State (Higher BCS ranking than Nevada and Hawaii)

7. Virginia Tech

8. Central Florida

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Big East, Sunbelt, MAC forfeit automatic seeds so now the following 8 slots are filled with the next 8 highest BCS teams

9. Stanford

10. Ohio State

11. Arkansas

12. Michigan State

13. LSU

14. Missouri

15. Oklahoma State

16. Nevada

With this formula, Alabama would be the 1st team out and Texas A&M would be the 2nd team. There could be no complaining from these two schools because they simply failed to get it done. Alabama had 3 losses. One was blowing a 24 point lead vs Auburn and 1 was not being able to stop LSU on 4th down. Throw in South Carolina loss and they failed to win one more game. Look yourself in the mirror and head to a different bowl game.

Texas A&M has 3 losses. All 3 of those losses came to teams in their conference that will make the field of 16 this year. Again, look yourself in the mirror because you do not belong.

All games would be played at the higher seeds field except for the "Final Four" and National Championship. The BCS Bowls could rotate the "Final Four" games to keep their name and profit in it. Therefore, say on odd number years there would be the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl and even years the Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl.

I think this system is fair to all deserving automatic bids because it gives the top 8 a home game. Teams that play weaker schedule such as a Boise or maybe an LSU one year by scheduling four cupcakes to be certain of wins would then face the risk of winning a conference but not getting an automatic home game for the first round. This is the risk you would take with who you schedule and give the "power" conferences an upper hand a they should have because of who they play week in and week out.

As far as the other bowl eligible teams, they can play in the other bowls that still exist now. Some of the lesser or newer bowls can go by the wasteland for all anyone cares. Who would cry if the Humanitarian Bowl left...or the Papa Johns Bowl. All people would care about it the 16 team field. Money could be made for all schools involved, TV ratings would soar because of the importance of all games, people would sellout stadiums. I won't go into the economics and BCS Presidents and all that because this is getting long enough and people only care about the format proposed. Pick it apart....what do you guys think? Lord of the Shots, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.