Really briefly, I’ll lay out what I believe would be the best conference format for the SEC (and other conferences), and how you could make it an undeniable, inarguable playoff system that fits within the current schedule.
There have been several suggestions to get rid of divisions so that all the teams in the SEC get to play one another much more often and only have three permanent rivals. This is a great plan.
Every conference should have 16 teams with no divisions. Have permanent rivals if you want to, or don’t. And consolidate the five power conferences into four of them – which means the Big 12 will have to find homes for it’s members:
- West Virginia: ACC
- Texas Tech: Pac 12
- Texas: SEC
- TCU: Pac 12
- Oklahoma: SEC
- Oklahoma State: Pac 12
- Baylor: Pac 12
- Kansas: Big Ten
- Kansas State: Big Ten or left in the cold
- Iowa State: Big Ten or left in the cold
Notre Dame will join the ACC. 64 total teams in four mega conferences.
Play an 11 game schedule: first game is against the lower division (current group of five), second game is against a team from another mega conference. Then 9 conference games.
Stack up the conference rankings 1-16. The top 4 teams get to go to the conference championship semi-finals. This happens in each conference, thus creating a 16-team playoff by only taking conference champions into the “College Football Playoff”. It’s a 16-team playoff within the confines of the current 4-team playoff.
In the current playoff format, the problem with taking only conference champions is that if you have a year like 2017 where Alabama is clearly deserving but didn’t win their division they wouldn’t have made it. By eliminating divisions you include the two best teams. By allowing the top 4 teams to play for each conference championship you make sure there are no holes or some silly tie-break between 2nd & 3rd best teams is the reason one got to go but the other didn’t. The 4th best team probably won’t be deserving of a shot at the national title, but it’s okay because we are making sure to include everyone that should get a shot (and it keeps the season really exciting for more schools).
Play the conference championship semi-finals at the home field of the higher seed the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Can you imagine the scene on those campuses? Can you imagine the TV ratings.
Play the conference championships like they are now. So for the SEC it would be in Atlanta.
Play out the rest of the final four just as they are right now.
Easy. No committee. No arguments. The top 4 from each conference get to play for it, so no real beef about scheduling imbalance even if there is some. If you lose in the conference semi-finals or finals you still go to a bowl game just like it is now.
It would be a lot of fun to watch this play out.
Maroon and White Blog 