The 2011 College Football Playoffs

Who doesn’t love this time of the year? People are generally happy in their anticipation of Christmas and because I am a teacher I get two weeks off to celebrate this festive season. Really the only thing that could make the holiday season even better is a college football playoff. One of my favorite sporting events of the year is March Madness and I don’t even really like basketball, but filling out a bracket and and gambling? That is right up my ally.  Now if I could some how combine this “bracket” passion along with my love for football and Christmas I would be pretty happy. I know, I know, I am just beating a dead horse here. Everyone wants a playoff in college football and I think that at some point we as fans will be granted our wish in the coming years.  I am not going to get into the pros and cons of developing a playoff,  but just for fun I thought I would take a look at what a playoff might look like if such a system was in place this year.

I know there are a number of ideas for how to conduct a playoff to determine the National Champion (especially now with the creation of super conferences), but for my “mock playoff” I have decided to use a very simple formula that was discussed by Dan Wetzel from Yahoo Sports a few years ago as guideline, and include some of my own ideas.

For this playoff sixteen teams will be included.  The eleven Conference champions along with the five best teams left as ranked by the BCS.  Therefore the final BCS rankings will be used to seed each team regardless of if they won their Conference.  The eleven Conference champions are only guaranteed a spot in the playoff and are not necessarily seeded higher than the five at large bids just because they won their Conference.  This would be a bracket system and there would not be any reseeding after the first round.  Using this system, this is how the first round of the 2011 BCS National Championship Playoff’s would look.  Below there is also a poll on if you like the current system or would prefer some type of playoff format to determine the National Champion.  Also, leave a comment with your idea’s for conducting a playoff.

1. LSU vs. 16. LOUISIANA TECH

8.KANSAS STATE vs. 9. WISCONSIN

5.OREGON vs. 12. SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI

4.STANFORD vs. 13. WEST VIRGINIA

3.OKLAHOMA STATE vs. 14. NORTHERN ILLINOIS

6.ARKANSAS vs. 11. TCU

7.BOISE STATE vs. 10. CLEMSON

2.ALABAMA vs. 15. ARKANSAS STATE