Restore College Football Bowl tradition

The current championship structure has undermined much of the college football bowl tradition, beyond just altering traditional conference pairings.

New Year's Day was once a haven for the best of the best bowl games, making this day a national celebration of college football. This tradition has been greatly tarnished by spreading the premier bowls further into the new year, culminating with the national championship game.

The timing of the bowls once correlated strongly the prestige of the bowls. The recent burst of additional bowls has done little to honor or preserve this tradition.

Timing of the bowls
The core philosophy sets out three tiers of games and defines their purpose:

A winning season warrants a berth in a regional bowl game.
A conference championship warrants a berth in a premier bowl game.

Only the two criteria above warrant consideration for the national championship.

While not critical to the championship system proposed, using this as an outline for when bowl games are played would greatly restore much of the college football bowl tradition.

The top tier games, referred to as championship system games, are those involved in the championship structure and the remaining BCS bowls. Only these games should be in the next year.

The second tier, referred to as premier bowl games, are those bowl games that have first pick of any conference once these selections have been made. Only these bowls should be between December 26th and December 31st.

All other bowls are in the third tier, referred to as regional bowls games. These bowls should be between December 19th and December 25th.

The order of the bowls in the core philosophy would then match the timing of the bowls and the increase in prestige they represent. The bowl season would then naturally build in intensity, culminating in the championship system.

Determining a bowl's tier
A bowl's tier is completely determined by its conference tie-ins. The BCS has good criteria for measuring the whether a conference warrants BCS consideration or not. If a conference warrants BCS consideration its top bowl tie-in should be a BCS bowl, and that bowl's host city should be a part of the national championship rotation.

If a conference warrants BCS consideration its second bowl becomes a premier bowl, otherwise a conference's first bowl is a premier bowl game. Allowing conferences with a BCS value above 0.75 to have two premier bowls further rewards the top conference above and beyond inclusion in the BCS bowls.

All other bowls are regional bowl games.

This allows bowls to maintain their traditional conference tie-ins and fairly determine which bowls deserve what tier as the balance of power naturally shifts from one conference to another through the evolution of the game.

The Cotton Bowl
The Cotton Bowl is one of the oldest bowl games. It's image has been greatly reduced since the Southwestern Conference, its historical major tie-in, folded in the 1980's. Rumors have been circulating that the Big 12 would like to make this bowl their BCS bowl tie-in, diminishing the Fiesta Bowl's current status.

The Fiesta Bowl was started in 1971 to guarantee the WAC a bowl berth for its top team. With the split between old WAC members forming the current WAC and MWC, this bowl would be an excellent venue for the champions of these rival conferences to face off each year. The 2008 Poinsettia Bowl demonstrated the value of such a game.

As the MWC and WAC are the two leading conferences outside the BCS, this would also put the Fiesta Bowl as the lead candidate among bowls to earn BCS status, depending only on either of these conferences crossing the BCS threshold.

The other premier bowl games would then be the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, the Capital One Bowl, the Gator Bowl, the Sun Bowl, the Liberty Bowl, the Motor City Bowl, the Holiday Bowl, and the New Orleans Bowl. If the top conferences are allowed to have two premier bowls the Outback Bowl could warrant consideration here as well.

The other 20 bowls would be regional bowls.

With the current alignment the Cotton Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl and Humanitarian Bowls would be premier bowl games.

Evaluation of BCS Conferences
Each year the conferences associated with the national championship host city for that year are examined to see if they still warrant BCS inclusion. If the Bowl has a tie-in to a conference warranting BCS inclusion they maintain a spot in the cycle.

After the national championship host is examined all conferences without a tie-in to a BCS bowl are examined. If a conference earns BCS status it's premier bowl is appended to the end of the current cycle of national championship host cities.

If the top conferences are allowed to have two premier bowl games this should be reevaluated after every year for the next year.

The result of this is that once a conference earns BCS status it will have it for one full national championship cycle, at which time they will be reevaluated every year their bowl tie-in hosts the national championship game.