My Latest Brilliant Plan for Fixing College Football’s National Championship Mess

This will never, never, ever actually happen, not ever. But if I were the King of College Football, as powerful as I am benevolent and unfettered in my righteous autonomy, this is exactly what would happen.

So now we have a playoff, and that’s a good thing. Teams can now realistically say that they played their way into the national championship game. But the playoff are still chosen somewhat arbitrarily. This year’s playoff features--you guessed it--Alabama, who not only didn’t win the SEC, but didn’t even win the SEC West. They got waxed by Auburn, who then got waxed by Georgia in the SEC Championship game. Nevertheless, the committee decided that Alabama, arguably the third best team in the SEC, was one of the four best teams in the nation and gave them a place in the semifinals. Meanwhile, B1G champion Ohio State and PAC-12 champion USC played each other in a Cotton Bowl that made it pretty clear that neither team wanted to be there.

The idea of having five major conferences represented in a four team playoff is inherently problematic, of course. One conference is always going to get left out. Except for this year, when two conferences got left out.

My bold solution? It’s twofold: expand the tournament, and rearrange the conferences.

At present, the Power Five (P5) conference membership numbers look like this:

ACC: 14 (plus Notre Dame)
B1G: 14
Big XII: 10
PAC-12: 12
SEC: 14

That’s a total of 65 teams currently participating in P5 football. In practical terms, these 65 teams are the only with with a shot at the playoffs. No team in the so-called Group of Five (G5: American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt conferences, plus three or four independents) has any chance whatsoever at playing for a national title. More on that in a bit.

Anyway, here’s my idea: Take these sixty-five teams and add five historically high-achieving G5 teams, making a total of 70. Divide these 70 teams into seven Regions based on history and geography. The Power Five conferences become the Power Seven (P7) Regions. Each team plays all nine other teams in its Region each year--seven true round robins to determine seven Region champions. These seven champions, along with the highest ranked conference champion from G5, are the eight playoff participants. The committee’s job will be to seed the teams as they see fit, but will have no voice whatsoever in determining who gets into the playoff. Playoff qualification will be determined strictly on the field.

This will necessitate a few logistical changes, of course. First, there will be no conference championship games for the P7. Region champions will be determined during the regular season via the round-robin schedule. The regular season will conclude Thanksgiving weekend, with the playoffs beginning two weeks later. This still leaves time for a twelve game schedule for the P7: nine Region games, at least one game against another P7 school each year (Sorry, K-State) and two games against old rivals, G5 teams, FCS teams, etc.

The first round of playoff games will be held at campus sites; with the #1 - #4 seeds hosting the #8 - #5 seeds, respectively.  Semifinal and final games will be held at neutral sites, with semifinal games perhaps being played as part of the bowl season.  Semifinal games will be played just before Christmas, with the national championship on New Year’s Day.

What about bowl games? Well, for the 122 FBS teams not participating in the playoffs, nothing changes. The conference realignment will undoubtedly lead to some changes in bowl affiliations, but that can’t be helped.*

Okay, so what are the seven Regions? So glad you asked.  Take a look:**

• Region 1: Boston College, Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland, Navy, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse.
• Region 2: Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, NC state, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Virginia, VA Tech, Wake Forest, West Virginia.
• Region 3: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, GA Tech, Miami, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina
• Region 4: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northern Illinois, Northwestern, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin
• Region 5: Boise State, BYU, Colorado, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Utah
• Region 6: Arkansas, Baylor, Houston, LSU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, TCU, Texas Tech
• Region 7: Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State

Yeah, I know, I know, these Regions aren’t balanced. Yet. Give it time. If every school in this arrangement knows that it can play its way into the national championship picture in any given year, recruiting should be equalized in short order.

So, let’s look at hypotheticals. For this season, our champions would have been something like this:

• Region 1: Penn State
• Region 2: Clemson
• Region 3: Georgia
• Region 4: Ohio State
• Region 5: Boise State
• Region 6: Oklahoma
• Region 7: USC
• G5 participant: Central Florida

The committee would be responsible for seeding these eight teams, leading to a bracket looking something like this:

• #8 Boise State at #1 Clemson
• #7 Central Florida at #2 Oklahoma
• #6 USC at #3 Georgia
• #5 Penn State at #4 Ohio State

From there’s it’s a single elimination tournament. Win, or go home.

Eight teams. Seven games. One national champion determined entirely on the field.

That’s how it would be, were I the King of College Football.


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*Also, under my reign, bowl games can no longer be named solely after their sponsors. “TaxSlayer.com Bowl”? Give me a break.)

**For the curious, the five teams I elevated were Boise State, BYU, Houston, Navy, and Northern Illinois. In a similar exercise, someone else might have chosen different teams. That’s fine. Different schools might lead to slightly different conference arrangements. (For example, you could replace Navy with Central Florida by shifting West Virginia to Region 1 and South Carolina to Region 2. Cincinnati could be swapped directly for NIU. And so forth.) Otherwise, it works exactly the same.