1. Each conference will send its champion automatically to the NCAA football playoffs. Conferences that have championship games will send the winner of the championship game, while conferences that do not will send their regular season champion (with all traditional tie-breakers included). This automatically includes 11 teams, one each from the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Conference USA , MAC, Mountain West, Pac 10, SEC, Sun Belt, and the WAC conferences.
2. The five remaining slots will be awarded based on highest BCS ranking after the 11 automatic bids are awarded.
3. Once the 16 team field is identified, they are seeded according to BCS standings, with teams not ranked in BCS poll seeded by committee selection. No conference matchups can occur in the first round of the playoffs, and any lower seeded team that would be involved in a conference playoff matchup will switch places with the team seeded directly below them.
4. Higher seeded team will host each of the first two rounds of the playoffs, with 1st round games being played December 11 & 12, 2009 and second round games being played December 18 & 19, 2008.
5. Semifinal games will be played at the site of two of the BCS Bowl locations (awarded on a rotating basis) on January 1, 2009. This year’s semi-finals would take place at the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl, in Miami, Florida and New Orleans, Louisiana, respectively.
6. National Championship game will be played at a BCS Bowl location (awarded on a rotating basis) on January 9, 2010. This year’s event would take place as the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
7. Teams losing their first round playoff game are eligible to play in a bowl game to be played December 31 or later, with non semifinal or final hosting BCS bowl getting first two choices of teams (this year the Fiesta Bowl).
8. All other bowl games will be played as usual.
Playoff Teams: (as of December 1, 2009)
ACC Champion – Georgia Tech
Big 12 Champion – Texas
Big 10 Champion – Ohio State
Big East Champion – Cincinnati
Conference USA Champion – Houston
MAC Champion – Central Michigan
Mountain West Champion – TCU
PAC 10 Champion – Oregon
SEC Champion – Florida
Sun Belt Champion – Troy
WAC Champion – Boise State
At Large Team #1 – Alabama
At Large Team #2 – Iowa
At Large Team #3 – Penn State
At Large Team #4 – Virginia Tech
At Large Team #5 – LSU
That is a good point, and I was thinking about that one a bit this year. May be something to consider for sure.
Thanks for the comment!
-Joe
Nick said,
December 16, 2009 @ 2:57 pmI appreciate your idea and from and purely from a football fan's perspective, I think it would be a ton of fun. I think it's the best solution.
One possible thing to think about for next year would be to take your "No conference teams playing in the first round and take it one step further". In March Madness, the selection committee won't put teams from the same conference in the same region until they have to (due to the number of teams).
So, in this years exam[ple, you could have avoided the 2nd round rematch between Florida and LSU by moving the lower seeded LSU team to the Cincinnati region and switch them with Va Tech. If we were going to move LSU 1 seed anyway, might as well move them out of the region all together.
Just a thought.