Part I: Bronco BCS-Busters

Let the record show that I am not a newcomer to the Boise State bandwagon. Nay, I have been pulling for their success literally for years (except for the time they played BYU in 2004). The evidence is here, especially here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

So while it's true that I recall jumping up and down for the final play of this year's BYU-Utah game, Boise State had me literally jumping up and down on a couple of occasions in that spectacular finish in last night's Fiesta Bowl.

The thing that shocked me the most about the coverage of the game, both during it and what I've read afterwards, is how shocked and surprised people are that Boise State is a good team. Their record over the last five years is 58-6. Not too shabby.

The fact that people kept calling them "the little dog" or "David" to Oklahoma's Goliath is evidence of the pervasive discrimination that goes on in college football against non-BCS-conference programs, and programs without a decades-old winning tradition. The fact that I've read a lot of comments rationalizing that this year's Oklahoma team wasn't really that good anyway, and that the game doesn't really mean anything because this is the first ranked team BSU has beaten, confirm that the game didn't do as much as I would like to erase the discrimination.

Also, while the last two minutes of regulation and overtime were heart-stopping, it's important to realize that Oklahoma needed a miracle comeback itself to even tie this thing up and get ahead so that Boise had a need to mount a miracle comeback. For most of the game (I watched it from start to finish), Boise State had Oklahoma's number. If it weren't for an errant punt bouncing off a BSU blocker's calf, nobody would be asking in disbelief, "Who pulls out a Statue of Liberty play on a two-point converstion try in overtime?"*

Too bad we'll never know exactly how good this Boise State team is. The pure guts they played with might give them a shot against Ohio State. Who knows?

Part II: Matt's Plan For a Playoff

This is an opportune time, then, for me to present my new plan for a playoff. I've gone through different versions of what I'd like to see happen, and this is the one that I currently endorse.

It's simple, really. Eight teams, seeded according to some crazy BCS-like ranking system or even a committee like basketball. Here's the catch: there are no automatic bids, but every playoff team must be a conference champion. That means we'll take the top eight conference champions regardless of which conference they're from.

We shorten the regular season back to 11 games. Thus, the conferences that have a championship game will do that the last week of November, not the first week of December as they did this year. Then, the first week of December, we have the first round of the playoffs, hosted at the higher-seeded team's stadium.** The remaining four teams will then be invited to one of the big-time bowl games (Sugar, Orange, Fiesta--they can rotate which one of the three is the national title game like they do now, and the Rose Bowl can drop out, since they don't like the idea of not having a Pac-10/Big Ten matchup anyway) on January 1. A week later, the two surviving teams play for the national championship.

Everyone other than those four teams goes through with the bowl season as it has always been known, including the four first-round losers. That way good teams can still be rewarded with a fun bowl game, and the lucrative bowl system can stay in place.

Now to respond to your counterarguments.

"That will take all the meaning out of the other (i.e., non-playoff) bowl games," you say. Not so. The Capital One Bowl and the Poinsettia Bowl are still fun games for the teams involved, even though they have no national title implications. That will continue to be the case under my system.

"How can you only invite conference champions to the playoff? The second-place team in the SEC is bound to be better than the MAC Champion!" First of all, that ain't necessarily so. Second of all, if we're trying to determine the best team in the whole country, how could it possibly be a team that is not the best in its conference? This way, what you have is really a 119-team playoff, where the initial round is the regular season,*** determining a conference champion. If you get through your conference, you can keep playing for more. If not, sorry. This ain't basketball, and we don't have room for 64 teams.

What's more, I think leaving non-conference champs out of the playoff will increase the quality of the regular season. When a non-conference loss or two doesn't necessarily take you out of national championship contention, you'll be more willing to schedule quality non-conference opponents. You won't get Florida beating up 62-0 on Div. I-AA Western Carolina. Instead, teams will want to play the best during the regular season in order to gear up for a run against the best in the playoffs, and you'll see Florida/Ohio State in September. You think any big-time program is rushing to the phone right now to schedule Boise State? I don't think so. But in my world, they would.

Finally, requiring playoff participants to be a conference champion eliminates nearly all the controversy. Each conference has a bright-line rule of how the champion is determined. If my system had been in place this year, you wouldn't spend your time arguing about whether Michigan was more deserving than Florida of getting into the playoffs; Florida won their conference, and Michigan didn't. It's as simple as that. The only controversy would be about whether the ninth-best conference champion is really better than the eighth-best. I can handle that.

"What about Notre Dame?" Notre Dame should join a conference.**** But if they don't, they and any other independent team can make the playoffs if and only if the ranking/committee that seeds the conference champions ranks them #8 in the country or better.

"This allows not-so-good teams into the playoff." If my system had been in place this year, in the first round, Ohio State would host BYU, Florida would host Wake Forest, USC would host Oklahoma, and Louisville would host Boise State. As a BYU fan, of course I won't admit that BYU is a bad team (they're on a 10-game win streak, and did you see the way they manhandled Oregon in the Las Vegas bowl?), but even I don't think they could beat Ohio State, so it's not like an inferior team is actually going to win it all. At any rate, all of those teams are in the Top 20 in the BCS standings, and they're 6 of the Top 10 teams. They're not not-so-good teams.

"But academics are important." This argument makes no sense. Stop saying that.

"But the season would be too long." Under my plan, a team from a conference with a championship game would play a maximum of 15 games. Not a far cry from the 14 games some teams currently play.****

Thank you, and if we can't have a playoff, I look forward to BYU in a BCS game next year.


* And what's up with all the post-game whining that Boise State had to empty its trick-play playbook, and arguments that trick plays are how outmanned teams try to compete? First of all, Boise didn't use a trick play till there were like 20 seconds left in the game (and even then, it wasn't really a trick--it was just an unconventional hook-and-lateral). Most of the game, Boise State was just beating Oklahoma with straight-up football. And second of all, what's wrong with using trick plays anyway? Oklahoma people say they knew about the hook-and-lateral that tied the game at the end of regulation, the pass from the wide receiver that got them the touchdown in overtime, and the Statue of Liberty that won it. They were just smart, gutsy play calls that didn't violate the rules, and that Oklahoma had actually prepared for.

** One of the more compelling anti-playoff arguments I recently came across was the fact that fans wouldn't travel all over the country to various bowl sites to see their team progress through the playoffs. Solve that problem by having the first round at home.

*** Ever hear the anti-playoff argument "But the regular season IS a playoff"? Well, in my system, the regular season (at least the conference season) literally would be a playoff.

**** Even though the natural fit would be the Big Ten, I don't know if they can add a twelfth team without changing their name, and ther'es already a Big 12. If I were Notre Dame, I'd call up the commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference. They'll be the champions every year, and what better way to raise awareness and the overall level of play for a conference that even I sometimes look down on?

***** Under current rules, if you play at Hawaii, you're allowed a 13-game regular season, plus a bowl game.