If There Was A Playoff ...
2000
What If There Was A Playoff ...
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It's that time of year ... the second guessing season.
What might happen if Oklahoma State got its shot?
How would TCU have done if it got its shot at Auburn at the end of the 2010 season? How about if Boise State got a chance at Alabama in 2009 or if several other BCS fiascos were decided on the field?.
Forget basketball's gimmicky
post-season, where a seventh best team in
a conference gets a shot to play for the
national title, rendering the regular
season relatively meaningless. CFN has
created the best of all possible worlds
for a playoff to make sure the regular
season still holds the weight it does
now, if not more, while providing the
solution everyone wants (outside of Bill
Hancock, the
college presidents, the yellow-jacket
bowl kids, and 99% of the
coaches). Here’s the plan …
Take
the six BCS conference champions and
give them automatic bids. Take the
highest ranked non-BCS league champion (Notre Dame
included), and give it an automatic bid.
The eighth and final slot would be a
Wild Card, which would go to the top ranked team
in the BCS that isn’t already in.
We’d have to keep this in the land of the real with
the geographic and economic concerns in mind by
rewarding the top four teams with a first round home
game - fan bases aren't going to travel to three
neutral field sites if their team goes to the
national championship.
The seeds wouldn’t
necessarily go according to BCS ranking,
again, with the idea to put teams close
to the right region to make sure the
opposing fans can get there as easily as
possible.
The Final Four games
would be held in Pasadena and New
Orleans, and the national title would
rotate sites like it does now. Meanwhile
the rest of the bowl system would be
kept in place. If you watched the
Liberty Bowl before, you’d still watch
it if there's an eight team playoff.
So
what would’ve likely happened had the
CFN system been in place since the BCS
was in place in 2000? Here’s the best
guess with the seedings and the results.
Final BCS Ranking In Parentheses
ACC – Florida State (2)
Big East – Miami (3)
Big Ten – Purdue (NR)
Big 12 – Oklahoma (1)
Pac 10 – Washington (4)
SEC – Florida (7)
Non-BCS – Notre Dame (11)
Wild Card – Virginia Tech (5)
Bubble Busted: Northwestern (NR), Michigan (16), Oregon
State (6), Oregon (10), Nebraska (8),
Kansas State (9)
There would’ve been a really, really wild and fun debate. Virginia Tech, the hot team coming into the year led by Michael Vick, would’ve been a wee bit of a no-brainer for the Wild Card having gone 10-1 with the lone defeat coming to a phenomenal Miami team. However, the Pac 10 would’ve been screaming. Oregon State, led by Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmanzadeh, went 10-1 (and eventually destroyed Notre Dame 41-9 in the Fiesta Bowl) with the lone loss a 33-30 war at Washington. However, before the win over the Irish, they only beat one team, Oregon, that finished with a winning record.
The Huskies’ lone loss came at Oregon and they were the only team to beat Miami, but they got the overall tie-breaker to get to the Rose Bowl and would’ve gotten the automatic bid into the playoff. The Big Ten would’ve had even more issues. Michigan finished higher than Purdue in the BCS rankings, but the Boilermakers won the head-to-head battle and didn’t play Northwestern, the third team to earn a share of the Big Ten title. The Wolverines lost to Northwestern in a classic 54-51.
First Round Matchups
No. 3 Miami vs. No. 6
Purdue
No. 2 Florida State
vs. No. 7 Notre Dame
No. 1
Oklahoma vs. No. 8 Florida
No. 4 Washington vs. No. 5 Virginia Tech
Matchup Analysis: Remembering the
economics of the playoff and the
necessity to fill stadiums, Purdue
would’ve been bumped up to a No. 6 seed
to play a killer Hurricane team. Drew
Brees and the Boilermakers were good,
but Miami was growing into a juggernaut
and would’ve had way too much talent.
Florida should be a No. 7 seed, if not a
6, but Florida State beat the Gators
30-7 in the final game of the regular
season and no one would want to see a
rematch, even if it was played in Miami.
Getting Notre Dame would appease the
Miami game’s officials who would’ve
wanted the Gators. It wouldn’t have
mattered; FSU would’ve won in a blowout.
Florida won the SEC title by easily
beating Auburn, but this wasn’t a
dominant Gator team and would’ve
struggled against the rock-solid
Oklahoma defense playing a home game in
Dallas. Washington vs. Virginia Tech
would’ve been a classic with the
Washington defense having to keep
Michael Vick under wraps. It wouldn’t
have been able to do it. This wasn’t a
special Washington defense, while the Hokie D that stopped Woody Dantzler and
Clemson in a 41-20 Gator Bowl win
would’ve gotten the job done against
Marques Tuisasosopo.
Projected Final Four
Rose Bowl –
No. 2 Florida State vs. No. 3 Miami
Sugar Bowl – No. 1 Oklahoma vs. No. 5
Virginia Tech
Matchup Analysis: Oklahoma’s
defensive front wasn’t athletic and it
wasn’t full of future NFL stars, but it
didn’t give up much of anything. Rocky
Calmus and the linebacking corps
would’ve gotten the job done against
Vick, while the offense would’ve powered
its way to the national title game. The
Seminole-Hurricane matchup would’ve been
the one everyone was waiting for after
the Canes won a 27-24 classic the first
time around. Miami wouldn’t have lost
the rematch even though the Noles were
rolling over the second half of the year
with destructions of fantastic NC State,
Clemson, and Florida teams. After
beating Vick and Virginia Tech 41-21,
the Canes beat Pitt, Syracuse and Boston
College, all good teams that finished
with winning records, by a combined
score of 113 to 13 to close out the
regular season.
Projected National Championship:
No.
1 Oklahoma vs. No. 3 Miami
Projected National Champion:
No. 3 Miami
Matchup Analysis: Oklahoma’s defense
came up with an all-time of a stunner to
beat Florida State 13-2 in the Orange
Bowl for the national title, but Miami
was loaded.
LOADED. That team had 19 players drafted over the next two seasons
and had 13 players drafted in the first
round over the next three years. By
comparison, the Sooners had four players
taken in the draft over the following
two seasons (Roy Williams, Rocky Calmus,
Torrance Marshall and Josh Heupel).
Oklahoma was special and was a true team
in every measure of the word, but there
wouldn’t have been enough firepower to
keep up with a Cane team that, unlike
Florida State, played with a serious
attitude.
What If There Was A Playoff ...
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2004
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1998