New Year's Bowling.....

Five undefeated teams after the regular season and conference championships have all been played out. Not what the head honchos who run the Bowl Championship System (BCS) wanted to see when they checked the boxscores Sunday morning. Neither was it the scenario that college football fans wanted to see, because we knew what was coming next. Computer generated standings that would place the top two teams (meaning top two conferences) into the championship.

College football fans have seen this story before and no matter how many times it plays out, it is never well received, and this year is no different. While Alabama against Texas is a nice match-up, there are questions about whether any of the other three undefeated teams, TCU, Boise St., and Cincinnati should or could match-up with the two “big boys”. Unfortunately, we will not know the answer to the question in the championship game, and in only one of the other bowl games when Cincinnati takes on Florida in the Sugar Bowl, because TCU and Boise St. were matched up in the Fiesta Bowl.

The BCS Bowl games spread out over seven days look like this:

January 1st - Rose Bowl: Ohio St. vs. Oregon
                    Sugar Bowl: Florida vs. Cincinnati
January 4th - Fiesta Bowl: TCU vs. Boise St.
January 5th - Orange Bowl: Georgia Tech vs. Iowa
January 7th – BCS Championship: Alabama vs. Texas

The BCS was set up to help avoid the arguments that used to take place when we were dealt “split championships” and no true champion for the college football season. It has not done what it set out to accomplish, as we now have annual arguments over who ends up and how they ended up in the BCS Championship and more cries for a playoff format. While we have gotten the best team as the winner of the championship game in most cases, it has not always been matched up against the best opponent, so that does not make for a clear cut champion.

With no playoff and none anywhere in sight, arguments about the championship game participants, and bowl games spread out over seven days, it is not an appealing set-up for many college football fans. I think it is time to scrap the BCS and do something drastic, and that is to go back in time, but with a little tweak. Why not go back to New Years Eve and Day bowl games to wrap up the college season?

Here is my proposal for these “elite” bowl games to be played on those two days / nights. First, there would be six bowl games in this group. They would include the four we already showcase with the Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta, with the two additional games being the Cotton and Chick-Fil-A, which I would rename The Peach Bowl, brought to you by Chick-Fil-A.

I would bring back conference affiliations with each of the bowls, except for the Fiesta, which I would keep independent from a conference tie-in. The Rose would keep the Pac 10 and Big 10, while the Sugar would keep the SEC, and the Cotton would get the Big 12. For the Orange and Peach, they would get the ACC and Big East as their associations, but I would put the Peach Bowl as a New Year’s Eve game, and they would get the lower of the two ranked champions as the host team.

Then just like the old system, the bowls would recruit schools to get the best match-up or full stadium.

So under my bowl system, here is what New Years Eve and Day would look like in three weeks.

New Year’s Eve:
Peach Bowl – Iowa vs. Georgia Tech
Fiesta Bowl – Penn St. vs. LSU

New Year’s Day:
Cotton Bowl – Boise St. vs. Texas
Rose Bowl – Oregon vs. Ohio St.
Orange Bowl – Florida vs. Cincinnati
Sugar Bowl – TCU vs. Alabama

How is that for a New Year’s Day line-up of games? There probably is still no clear cut #1 team, but when you have five undefeated teams going into the bowl games, you are never going to get a consensus top team.

We are not going to have five undefeated teams each year, so we also need a way to have the top two teams play each other if the scenario warrants it. Actually, that is my tweak or adjustment to make this different then the old system. Once every four years a conference champion can “challenge” another team, which could and should allow more top team match-ups. Yes, this leaves their bowl game with no affiliation for that year, but in that case, the affected bowl game would get first pick of all other available teams in trying to put together its bowl match-up. Not perfect, but nothing is at this point, and there are smarter people then me that might find a little better way to get this to happen.

With going back to this system, the big bowl games are back to where they belong on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (If the holiday falls on a NFL Sunday, then they just play those games on January 2nd.) just like they started, when we used to celebrate the college game on the holidays. It also gives more of a chance, albeit slim, for the smaller conferences to face off against the larger conferences for the National Championship.

College football fans deserve better then what we have, so while not perfect, going back in time might be the best solution we have available to us. Also, getting back New Year's Day with wall to wall college bowl games involving the top college teams sounds like a great way to recover from the night before and the ringing in the of that New Year.