Tim Cowlishaw with the Dallas Morning News is not only one of my favorite sports writers, he’s also my favorite on ESPN’s show “Around The Horn.” So how awesome was it when I picked up this morning’s Sunday sports section of the paper and saw Tim’s column on page 1, top dead center. The topic was the same as a good friend’s recent blog that dealt with the poor TV ratings of all the NCAA football bowl games, and the beginnings of the dreaded "playoff" discussion.
Just like my friend Chip, Cowlishaw was happy enough that the NCAA and conference commissioners were at least “discussing possible changes to the postseason model.” Tim said the immediate probable changes would be “baby steps”, which really means the NCAA and commissioners are looking at every conceivable angle of this to make sure they squeeze the absolute last drop of blood out of this and any future deals on playoffs.
I love being the “Ron Paul” on this deal, meaning my message and plan for a Division I playoff haven’t changed since before the old bowl coalition days, before the first day the plan for the BCS was ever announced. The plan insures that we never again end up with one (or more) deserving teams on the outside looking in.
In a nutshell, here it is...
At the end of the regular football season, including any conference championships, use all three major polls – AP, USA Today, BCS – to establish the consensus top 8 Division I football teams in the country regardless of conference. Let the players take final exams and spend some time with family, prohibiting practice and other team-related activities until after December 15th.
Use the seven bowl games below to go from eight teams to a champion in three rounds of play. Scheduling the three rounds can be set up so that the final game is played between Jan 2-5 every year. The seven games would rotate through the three levels of the playoffs so that each bowl game would spend four years at round 1, two years at round 2, and one year as the championship game.
Sugar Bowl, Superdome,
Cotton Bowl, Cowboy Stadium,
Chick-fil-A Bowl,
Orange Bowl, Sun Life Stadium,
Meineke Bowl, Reliant Stadium, Houston, TX
Fiesta Bowl, U. of
Rose Bowl, Rose Bowl,
If these seven games don’t suit your sensibilities, build something like it around the big 4 (Rose, Sugar, Fiesta,
Of course, under this system there will be years when people will clamor about who should be 8 versus 9. An argument of who is 8 versus 9 interests me much less than an undefeated number 3 being left out of the mix.
To those who say bowls generate money for schools, that money won’t be there if TV advertisers start pulling ads due to poor ratings. And revenue sharing between all the schools in represented conferences is a must.
To summarize: four are too few, sixteen are too many. Let the discussion begin.
P.S. – To Roger Goodell and the NFL owners...we DO NOT want an 18-game NFL season with a Super Bowl in March. It gets in the way of the last few weeks of the regular NCAA basketball season, which is the second best part. If the NFL also wants a television ratings problem, just get in the way of March Madness.
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