The NCAA Football Champions League

College football has a championship problem.  Fans are unhappy with the subjectivity of the poll system, but they still love the bowl games.  Rather than simply choosing a champion as it does in other sports, the NCAA has allowed the conferences to enter into a four-team playoff to be contested this fall for the first time.  This can only lead to an expanded playoff in future years, as there will definitely be several teams with a legitimate claim to the fourth spot (if not to the top spot).  And the selection committee approach promises to be both controversial and entertaining, which probably wasn't what the association was going for.

Most sports, including all levels of football outside the bowl subdivision, use a large playoff pool system to determine its champion.  A playoff isn't a perfect way to choose the best team, because even the best team can lose a single game.  The 1979 Indiana State and 1991 UNLV basketball teams went undefeated until losing a single game in the tournament to end their seasons (both lost to the eventual champions, but there are still plenty of fans today who will argue they were the best teams of their respective seasons, and they were both seeded higher than the teams that beat them). Still, for most Americans the single-elimination tournament is the most satisfying way to determine a champion at the end of the season.

However, college football has a unique legacy in the bowl system, a holdover from a simpler time when it was thought appropriate to reward all successful seasons with an extra game, and then let people debate endlessly over who the "true" champion was. With multiple polls declaring multiple champions, most factions could find some poll to support their favorite. The bowl systems also created traditions and rivalries that don't tend to die easily.  Oh, plus bowls make tons of money.  So, how could these two systems be reconciled?

Recognizing that no system is perfect, here's a solution that I think would solve many of college football's issues while minimizing new problems: a playoff of champions.  Here's how it would work:

With the WAC having decided not to play football in 2014, there are currently ten football bowl subdivision (FBS) conferences: the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Pac-12, Big 12, American, MAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, and Sun Belt.  If we allow each conference champion to make the playoff, we need to have six first round byes (or, put another way, two play-in games) to hold a tournament of champions.
 
This plan requires nine games, so we'll let eight of them be called bowl games, with the championship game being its own separate thing, as it is now.  Luckily, we almost have eight big traditional bowl games already.  The Sugar, Cotton, Rose, Peach, Orange, and Fiesta bowls are the ones that will host playoff games in the current system. The Capital One (nee Citrus) bowl has a long history and a high profile, so let's use that one too.  The TaxSlayer (nee Gator) bowl would seem the obvious choice for the last spot due to its history and prestige, but it loses points for having dropped all connection to its original name and logo (we're trying to preserve historical traditions here, after all).  So we'll sub in the also historical Sun Bowl instead.

Now we just need to figure out which bowls go where.  The traditional bowl tie-ins are/were:

Rose: Big 10 vs. Pac-12
Sugar: SEC vs. Big 12
Orange: ACC vs. SEC/Big 10
Cotton: SEC vs. Big 12
Peach: SEC vs. ACC
Fiesta: WAC, Big 12 (sometimes)
Citrus: Big 10 vs. SEC
Sun: Pac-12 vs. ACC

Obviously, not all of these can be preserved in any playoff system, and the new system in place this year doesn't attempt to preserve any of them (when the bowl is part of the playoff).  But it should be possible to at least preserve a few traditional matchups without affecting the seeding of the tournament too much.  If we let the Rose and Sugar bowls be the semifinal games, we can seed the teams so that the Big 10 and Pac-12 will meet in the Rose if they both make it that far, and do the same for the SEC and Big 12 in the Sugar.  We can also place the Peach or Orange bowl in the ACC's path to preserve that history.  There may be years when traditional tie-ins trump true rank-based seeding, but the impact should usually be minimal unless one of the teams with a tie-in is seeded lower than a team without one.  If one of the major conference champions is playing a play-in game, they have bigger things to worry about than their traditional bowl allocation.

Here are the reasons why this is the best way to merge the two systems currently in place:

1) At the end of the year, there will be an unbroken chain of victories leading from the national champion to every conference and division champion in the country. The champion will have beat a team who beat a team who beat a team... who was the best team in their conference and division, no matter which division or conference you pick.  This should help minimize the number of teams who can claim they were unfairly denied a chance at the championship.  The only exceptions to this rule could be in the American Athletic Conference and the Sun Belt, which can have co-champions in some years.

2) The importance of the regular season is preserved.  You must win your conference to be the champion, so every conference game counts. 

3) The importance of the regular season is preserved, part two.  And you want to win your non-conference games too, to get the highest possible seed in the playoff.  Avoiding a play-in game, or earning a game against a team who had to play one the previous week, is a big advantage. So even though it's a playoff, there is always an incentive to improve your ranking.

4) The traditional bowl tie-ins are preserved, if the conference champions earn them.  The Rose Bowl will still feature the Big 10 and Pac-12 champions, as long as they both win their elite eight games.

5) The structure is resilient to future conference realignment.  If the WAC fields football again in the future, another play-in game can be added.  If a conference merges or folds, a game can be removed.

6) Weaker conferences could become stronger, leading to more competitive balance across the sport.  Weaker teams from large conferences could possibly choose to move to a smaller conference for a chance to win the conference and get into the playoff.  Possibly.

Predictable arguments against this system:

1) Come on, those little schools can't beat the big guys.  Why bother?  Oh, really?  Is that so?

2) The #3 team in the SEC is better than the #1 team in the Sun Belt, so they should get into the playoff instead.  Maybe, even probably.  But the #3 team in the SEC cannot be the #1 team in the country, because they aren't even #1 in their own conference.  The #1 team in the Sun Belt could be the #1 team in the country, but we won't know unless we let them play the other champions.  You can't be #1 in the country and #3 in your conference.  It defies logic so it can't be allowed.  If you don't like it, win your conference.

3) But what about conference independents?  Once upon a time, some schools declined to join conferences or play postseason games, because academics were too important to overshadow with sports.  They can do that again if they like.  Or join the 21st century and find a conference, and win it.  It's not 1985 anymore, when Miami, Florida State, Penn State, Syracuse, Pitt, South Carolina, Virginia Tech and many more were all independent.  Being the best team without a conference doesn't mean as much as it used to.

4) Speaking of academics, having a ten team playoff will add too much time to the season - it's finals week, think of the children!  Anyone making this argument is either totally joking or totally not paying attention to the state of college sports.  In any case, the champion and the runner up will play 3 games (4, in the unlikely event that a play-in team makes the championship game).  The other teams will play 1-3 games (again, 3 being unlikely).  That's not much more burden than the new playoff system, and certainly less than the NCAA basketball tournament. 

5) Making the bowls into playoff games will make them less valuable.  I think the interest in the new system already shows this is the opposite of true.

6) The bowls that host earlier playoff games won't be on their traditional dates.  But they will have their traditional teams, which is arguably more important and is not preserved in the new system actually being used.

7) But I can't plan to go to a bowl game if I don't know who will be playing weeks in advance!  Oh, like with every other playoff game ever?  Even though this argument is ridiculous, there is a solution: you can pre-purchase your game tickets, plane flights, and hotel for as many games as you want, as early as you want, on the condition that you automatically cancel your reservation (with refund) if your team is not playing.  The NCAA, and the Marriott, and Delta Airlines and everyone else will be happy to hold your money for you (and earn interest on it) while you wait to see if your team wins its conference.  This is basically what the NCAA does now with its basketball final four lottery deposit.

8) The Capital One Bowl will never agree to be a play-in game between two small-conference schools.  That's fine.  They can have their choice of non-playoff teams, and another bowl will happily be part of the championship process.

So, how does this play out?  After four weeks of football, here are the teams in the driver's seat for each playoff spot:
 

 

 *The PAC-12 and Big 12 had to be switched to preserve the Rose and Sugar Bowl tie-ins.  Sagarin rankings were used.  In conferences with divisions, the higher ranked division leader was used for tournament seeding.