A New Idea

It is possible to create a championship system for college football's premier league that:

• Builds the bowls and their purpose into its core philosophy
• Restores the excitement of New Year's Day as a celebration of elite college football
• Restores the bowl timing to represent each bowls level of prestige

• Allows all teams a chance to earn the national title by going undefeated
• Increases consensus at the eligibility cutoff

• Remains within the current post season bounds established by the NCAA
• Keeps the total number of games possible consistent with other NCAA football championships
• Does not require a shortening of the regular season

• Keeps the field limited enough to preserve the proven marketing value of the ranking systems to add to the excitement of the regular season
• Builds on the existing structures, using the same governing bodies that the current system uses

What constituency of college football would be against a championship system that met all these goals?

According to the Tennessean.com:

A meeting of the group during the American Football Coaches Association convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, executive director Grant Teaff said there is no consensus for a viable alternative to the BCS system.

“There’s just no plan out there,’’ he said. “Our coaches would vote on one if there was one out there. I ask our coaches all the time, ‘Okay, give me a good plan and we’ll present it to (the NCAA),’ and we scratch our heads.”

In 2008 the NCAA refused to approve the modest change of a plus one format, citing a desire not to expanding the college football post season further into January. This is used to argue that no room is available to discuss a playoff without shortening the regular season.

The real problem with a plus one is that it does not address the main problems with the current system. It does not guarantee access for all undefeated teams. It does not resolve the issue of potential controversy at the cutoff, merely pushing that dispute down a level. Why would the NCAA approve adding a game that promises to fix the system but does nothing to address any of the core issues?

With a growing number of public officials raising an eyebrow to the current system, and congress' proven track record of making things worse, it would be best to fix the system internally.

A new idea is needed.

Instead of being an agreement to pair the top 2 teams in a national championship bowl the BCS needs to be charged with the task of increasing the consensus of the national champion and become the governing body for assigning prestige to the bowls and conferences.

That is unless the BCS is achieving its real purpose of undermining the tradition of the bowls while raising a public outcry for a playoff. In that case the BCS is doing an exceptional job as it is.

Contrast with the MWC Proposal and a plus one

The MWC has launched a BCS proposal. A plus one has been discussed in the past. This post shows how a championship system is superior to these plans at addressing the core issues.

Structure
In essence the current system is a two team tournament. Both the plus one and the MWC proposal are expansions of this to two or three round tournaments. Some plus one formats allow the selection to be made after the existing BCS bowls making these systems not be a true tournament but allowing more flexibility to the bowls.

By not setting a specific structure even more flexibility can be reached in a championship system than the most general plus one formats.

Length of season and timing
Observing that the NCAA tournaments currently used for lower divisions allow for schedules of up to 16 games total, these formats push the limit allowed by a regular season of up to 13 games. A three round playoff is possible and is the upper limit of the championship system.

One issue is the resistance by NCAA presidents to allow games beyond the current limit of the second Monday in January. A plus one can accommodate this if the BCS bowls are restored to New Year's Day but the MWC proposal tramples this underfoot.

By restoring the BCS bowls to New Year's Day the championship system is able to stay within the same bounds as a plus one. Quarter finals would be at the start of the bowl season.

Undefeated Teams
Any championship that allows teams to go undefeated and not have a chance at the title is fundamentally flawed. I have yet to see a plus one that can handle the 2004 scenario. The MWC proposal forms a selection committee to pick the teams. While such a committee could be charged with ensuring all undefeated teams garner a spot no such assurances are made in the plan.

Other 3 round proposals have been suggested that specifically call for replacing the lowest teams in the standings with any undefeated teams that would be left out. The championship system specifically includes all undefeated teams.

Consensus
The current system raises questions when #2 and #3 are closely ranked.

Consensus is a function of both the gap between the teams and the deviation of the teams rankings (including all 120 teams in this discussion). The gaps in ranking are distributed at a similar rate throughout the rankings with a slight narrowing of the gaps in the middle. The deviation is parabolic with a maximum at the middle of the rankings and nearing 0 at the top and bottom. These combine to significantly confound the issue of finding consensus at a cut off the more teams are included.

With the current system one maybe two teams have a legitimate claim to have been left out. The NCAA tournament has a bubble with up to 12 teams that can make a legitimate claim that they should have had a spot in the tournament.

A plus one does not alter the consensus much relative to the current system but a 3 round playoff begins to significantly increase the risk of cutoff controversy. If establishing a true championship justifies increasing cutoff controversy why stop at 8 teams?

Rather than specify a specific tournament format the championship system specifies the criteria. This allows consensus to be used to assign a cutoff directly increasing the agreement of the cutoff values better than any fixed format. This method is significantly enhanced by keeping the field small.

A plus one is near a good system but some years appear to require a broader system. The championship system is able to adjust to each years needs, even the ones where the current two team tournament works.

The Concept

The basic idea is to increase the BCS's mandate to become the governing body for the college bowl system and run a championship system. It would have three primary tasks.

1) Oversee the college football championship system.
2) Assign prestige levels of the bowls.
3) Assign prestige levels of the conferences.

All language in the contracts referring to specific conferences or bowls would be replaced with language referring to prestige levels and clear procedures to establish these values would be included.

Once this infrastructure is built the championship system can be improved.


Core Philosophy
Championship teams either:
1) Win all their games.
2) Build enough national consensus to overcome a loss.

A winning team deserves a regional bowl berth.
A conference champion deserves a premier bowl berth.

Only those teams with one of the criteria above deserve national championship consideration.

Bowl Prestige
The core philosophy clearly delineates three levels of post season games. To restore college football bowl tradition these will carry significant weight. All bowls will be free to establish contractual tie ins as they see fit. These tie ins and the performance of the conferences will determine the prestige levels of the bowls.


BCS games
This level includes the championship system games and BCS bowls. This involves the top 10 or 11 teams in the nation, 2 or 3 more than twice the number of BCS bowls. BCS bowls would be filled before any spots in any other bowls are taken. Only these games would be played after New Years and would pay 10+ million dollars for each team plus 4.5 million for teams advancing in the championship system.

The championship system would have a variable structure, typically between 2-5 teams. This would usually require an additional wild card game and occasionally require a play-in game.

For 4+ teams a BCS bowl would be used as semi finals and be a part of the championship system based on who has the tie in with the #1 team.

The requirements to be a BCS bowl are to have the #1 tie in for one of the BCS automatic qualifying conferences. Once a bowl becomes a BCS bowl its host city is appended to the end of the queue to host the National Championship game. A BCS bowl would retain their BCS status until they next host the National Championship game, regardless of conference strengths.


Premier bowl games
Premier bowl games would be played the last week of the year and would pay out between 2-5 million. They would be filled before any spots in regional bowls are filled.

All conference champions not in the BCS games would be in a BCS bowl.

The requirements for a premier bowl are any of:
1) #1 tie in with an at large conference
2) #2 bid for an automatic qualifying conference in good standing
3) #3 bid for a premier conference


Regional bowl games
Regional bowl games would be played between December 19th and December 24th. The focus would be to draw teams within reasonable travel distance who do not see each other often. They would pay 1-3 million each.

All bowls that don't have a tie in warranting premier bowl consideration would be a regional bowl.

Conference Prestige
Four levels of prestige are implied in the determination of bowl prestige levels. Some need of conference measure is needed. Numbers here are based on the BCS standings values. These are between 1.0 and 0.0, with 0.5 representing the boarder of BCS consideration. Teams above 0.75 almost always earn BCS bids. By taking the three criteria listed by the BCS, putting them on this scale and averaging them a good estimate can be made.

A four year average would be used and conference alignments for a given year would be based on the prior year's membership.

Conferences with a tie in to a BCS bowl are automatic qualifying conferences and are broken down into three categories. The remaining conferences are at large conference.


Premier conference
Conferences with an average over 0.75 would be premier conferences. In addition to an expectation that they would participate in the Championship system and field BCS at large spots they would have 2 premier bowls. Premier status is evaluated every year.

Automatic Qualifier
Technically, this would be automatic qualifier in good standing but when automatic qualifier is used alone it would refer to this category.

Conferences with an average between 0.5 and 0.75 would earn this category and BCS status for its premier bowl. An additional premier bowl would be theirs for their #2 team.


At Large
Conferences below 0.5 without a BCS bowl tie in fit this category.


Provisional
Technically this would be provisional automatic qualifier. Conferences below 0.5 with a BCS bowl tie-in fit this category. This is possible because bowls can have tie-ins to more than one conference and hold their BCS status until they host the National Championship Game.

Conferences with this status may have their BCS payout reduced and not have a premier bowl. If a BCS bowl's conferences are provisional they would be a provisional BCS bowl until their conferences improve or they lose their BCS status after hosting the National Championship Game. The term provisional is intentionally chosen to carry a negative connotation.


Championship System
With this infrastructure stabilizing the base of the bowl system it is possible to significantly improve the championship system.

The core philosophy outlines the criteria used for the championship system and the BCS bowls act as buffers stabilizing the pool of teams for the remaining bowls. This allows a variable structure to be created able to handle the unique situations of each year.

For reasons explained elsewhere "enough consensus" would be defined to be the equivalent of 1.5 ranking spots across the board in the BCS formula. A gap between #1 and #2 would never be used. If an undefeated team ranked below #4 would not play in a semi final or below #12 would not play in a play-in game the field would be expanded.

Historically this would be 2-5 teams, usually 3. This guarantees 2+ teams and up to 7 can be handled with 10 or 11 teams in the BCS games.

All scenarios: A national championship game is played a week after the BCS bowls
3-5 teams: A wild card game is added as a semi final
4+ teams: The BCS bowl with a tie in to the conference of the #1 team is a semi final
5+ teams: Play in games on December 19th hosted by the favored teams determine the final semi final spots.
6+ teams: The BCS bowl with a tie in to the #2 team is a semi final and no wild card game is played.
8 teams: A December 19th regional bowl would be made a neutral site #4 vs #5 game to account for the 12 teams participating in the BCS.

9+ teams: A gap has formed in every weekly BCS standings above this spot even if three at large teams qualify by being undefeated. It is a highly unlikely that more than 6 will ever qualify.