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.