If There Was A Playoff ...
2007
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 2007? Here’s the best
guess with the seedings and the results.
Final BCS Ranking In Parentheses
ACC – Virginia Tech (3)
Big East – West Virginia (9)
Big Ten – Ohio State (1)
Big 12 – Oklahoma (4)
Pac 10 – USC (7)
SEC – LSU (2)
Non-BCS – Hawaii (10)
Wild Card – Georgia (5)
Bubble Busted: Missouri
(6), Kansas (8)
Big 12 was the story of the 2007 season with the rise of Missouri and
Kansas, but the two teams would’ve been left out in the cold thanks to a
Georgia team that was on a roll with six straight wins. There wouldn’t
have been a lot of complaining about the automatic bids, including an
unbeaten Hawaii team that finished 10th in the BCS rankings.
First Round Matchups
No. 1 Ohio State vs. No.
8 Hawaii
No. 2 LSU vs. No. 7 West Virginia
No. 4
Oklahoma vs. No. 5 Georgia
No. 3 Virginia Tech vs. No. 6
USC
Matchup Analysis: West Virginia might have been able to shock Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl,
but then-interim head coach Bill Stewart and his team wouldn’t have had
the same success against an LSU squad that was getting healthier by the
week. Call it a bad break for the Mountaineers; they likely would’ve
beaten Ohio State, Virginia Tech, or Oklahoma.
Ohio State might have
been a soft No. 1, but it wouldn’t have had too many problems with Colt
Brennan and a Hawaii team that wasn’t the same away from home. A red-hot
Georgia wasn’t quite as good as the hype, but it was good enough to have
beaten Oklahoma in the best game of the first round. Virginia Tech, on
paper, deserved to be in the discussion for the national title with
several fantastic wins, but USC was humming at just the right time with
four straight wins including tremendous performances against Oregon
State, Cal, Arizona State, and UCLA teams that would all be off to
bowls.
Projected Final Four
Rose Bowl – No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 6 USC
Sugar Bowl –
No. 2 LSU vs. No. 5 Georgia
Matchup Analysis: USC would’ve
rolled past Ohio State. The athletes on defense would’ve been too much
for Todd Boeckman and the Buckeye attack, while the USC offense would’ve
been just good enough to not screw up and provide any easy points. LSU
vs. Georgia would’ve been the SEC title game everyone wanted to see
(Tennessee ended up getting the nod in the East), and Glenn Dorsey and
the Tiger defense likely would’ve been able to do just enough to keep
Knowshon Moreno in check on the way to the national title.
Projected National Championship:
No. 2 LSU vs. No. 6 USC
Projected National Champion:
No. 2 LSU
Matchup Analysis: Flip a coin.
Remember, Ohio State was actually in the national title game until the
fourth quarter. No one does big games like USC, but the defense wasn’t
quite the killer the 2008 group would become and the offense was
inconsistent. Again, health would be everything to a beaten and bruised
LSU team that was excellent against the Buckeyes with several weeks to
heal up.
What If There Was A Playoff ...
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2004
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2002 |
2001 |
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1998