PART 2: THE BOWL SYSTEM
You have already seen my idea for
re-alignment for Division 1 college sports, now it is time for me to fix the
broken post-season that we have in College Football. Let me first say that I didn’t mind the BCS. I didn’t like some of the factors that went
into the computers that spit out the match-ups, but most years, they did get it
right. To me it doesn’t matter if you
have the BCS with 2 teams, or a playoff with 4, 8, 12 or 16 teams, those games
will always be exciting have people watching.
It is the bowl system that needs fixed. So how do we fix it you ask?
A Bowl Draft.
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t like a
draft? Well it can work for college
football and the bowl system too.
Hear me out now. I think we all
realize that despite being entertaining, the post-season in college football right
now consists of 3 important games, the two semifinals and the national
championship game. Then they also give
us 37 absolutely meaningless games. With
my 12-team playoff (See Sports Fix College Football Part 1) that becomes 11 meaningful
games. However, you still have the meaningless
bowl games. The 1st thing
that I would do is cut down the number of bowl games. If we cut that number down to 30 (still too
many in my mind) it still gives the networks and fans just about the same
amount of games we currently have in the post-season, but gets rid of the
low-level bowls that nobody watches or cares about.
With 12 teams going to the playoff
and 30 bowls, we need to have 72 teams eligible for post-season play out of the
130 FBS teams. Right now, 78 of 128 get
into the post-season. As you can see it really only eliminates 6 teams from the
postseason every year, and to be honest, they probably didn’t deserve a spot
anyway if they were in that bottom 6.
I would then have the College
Football Playoff Committee rank all bowl eligible teams, not just the Top 25. After that we would use those rankings to
pair up the teams for each bowl. The
catch is, we allow each bowl to draft their ideal match-ups. So here is how it would work.
THE BASICS:
1) The College Football Playoff
Sites are obviously protected games and will select their teams before the
draft starts.
2) Using bowl payouts, we create
our draft order. 2 of the current “New Year’s 6 Bowls” would be used as
semifinal sites for the playoff, so only 4 of them would be in the draft each
year. Those remaining 4 bowls would
always have the top 4 draft spots, on a rotating cycle. Those games would also always be played on
New Year’s Day (unless it fell on a Sunday, then they would be played either
New Year’s Eve or January 2nd).
After that, the Citrus bowl is the bowl with the highest payout,
therefore they have the 5th selection. We continue this order through all the bowl
games. Based on the 2016 bowl season and
payouts, this year the draft order would look like this:
1. Rose Bowl
2. Sugar Bowl
3. Orange Bowl
4. Cotton Bowl
5. Citrus Bowl ($8.5M)
6. Alamo Bowl ($7.65M)
7. Outback Bowl ($7M)
8. Cactus Bowl ($6.65M)
9. Texas Bowl ($6M)
10. Holiday Bowl ($5.65M)
11. Music City Bowl ($5.5M)
12. Tax Slayer Bowl ($5. 5M)
13. Russell Athletic Bowl ($4.55M)
14. Foster Farms Bowl ($4.425M)
15. Sun Bowl ($4.3M)
16. Pinstripe Bowl ($4M)
17. Belk Bowl ($3.4M)
18. Liberty Bowl ($2.875M)
19. Las Vegas Bowl ($2.7M)
20. Cure Bowl ($2.7M)
21. Independence Bowl ($2.4M)
22. Quick Lane Bowl ($2.4M)
23. Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl
($2.2M)
24. Miami Beach Bowl ($2M)
25. Military Bowl ($2M)
26. Birmingham Bowl ($2M)
27. Dollar General Bowl ($1.5M)
28. Armed Forces Bowl ($1.35M)
29. Hawaii Bowl ($1.3M)
30. Poinsettia Bowl ($1.225M)
31. St. Petersburg ($1.075M)
32. New Orleans Bowl ($1M)
33. New Mexico Bowl ($912,500)
34. Bahamas Bowl ($900,000)
35. Boca Raton Bowl ($800,000)
36. Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
($650,000)
37. Arizona Bowl (TBA)
REMINDER, we would only be using 30
bowls, so 7 of these bowls would be eliminated. This is what the bowl payouts
are for this year, just to give you an idea of what each bowl is working with
right now.
THE DRAFT:
The way the draft would work is
simple. There would be absolutely no conference affiliations with any bowls.
There would be no automatic bids for any conference. As mentioned before, 12
teams would automatically be placed in the playoff. After that, it is a free for all, minus a few
simple rules.
* Bowls will select in order, with
a pool of 10 teams to pick. For instance, this year with the 1st
pick, the Rose Bowl would be able to pick any 2 teams that finished 13-22 in
the final committee rankings. (Remember the #1-12 are off the board and in the
playoff.) Next pick would be the Sugar
Bowl and 2 more teams would open up for their selection, teams #23-24. And so
on and so forth, until all the bowls are filled.
* No team can drop more than 5 bowl
games. Meaning every team must be selected within five games of becoming
available. This rewards teams for successful seasons despite how unattractive
they might be as a bowl team. It would also prevent teams with great history
and huge fan bases being selected to bowls they don’t deserve.
Think about what this type of
format would do for the college football post-season.
First, ESPN could/would sell the
hell out of the live draft. They did a 4-hour show on the unveiling of the 4
Playoff teams on Sunday, can you imagine what they would able to do if they
also had a Bowl Draft immediately after their playoff unveil? Imagine a greenroom with 72 different head
coaches and AD’s, to go along with a “war room” for the bowls and the committee
members. Each bowl representative comes
on stage to make their pick, followed by the coaches and AD’s from each school
come on stage, shake hands, have a quick photo-op. Rece Davis, David Pollack, Desmond Howard and
Kirk Herbstreit then talk about that bowl, give some story lines and talk about
each team in the game for a few minutes, maybe even interview the coach or AD
from the schools. Then while all that is happening, 2 more bowl teams are
unveiled, which means 2 more fan bases are not pulled in to the intrigue of the
broadcast. Everybody wins. The schools get
some press, the bowls gets their individual time in the national spotlight, the
coaches get a little face time and the network gets millions of eyeballs on
their broadcast.
Another benefit to this system is
you don’t have repetition. Bowl attendances have been way down the past few
years and a big reason is fans don’t want to go back to the same bowls every few
years. With the current conference
tie-ins teams are limited to a very small group of potential bowl sites. So
even if you go to a different bowl every year within your conference
affiliation, after about 8 years you are repeating your bowl site. This way you have the potential of 30
different sites, not 8 or 9.
This format also helps other
conferences get a chance to play each other. For instance, the Big Ten has nine
bowl affiliations this year, none of which includes the Big XII. The same goes for the PAC 12 and SEC. With all of their bowls, they never have it
set that those 2 prestigious conferences play each other in bowl games. It could also give teams from the AAC, C-USA,
MAC and MWC a chance to play a Power 5 conference team. Most of those conferences have affiliations
with each other and don’t get a chance to face a Power 5 team in bowl season.
THE MONEY:
First things first, a 12-team
playoff will bring in more television revenue than the current 37 meaningless
bowls do COMBINED! People might complain
that this is taking money away from teams/conferences since the bowl contracts
with conferences all but guarantee a certain amount of money that every
conference knows that they will receive come bowl season. I disagree. In this
system, the bowl payouts would go up, which would create a larger pot for the
teams and conference. The reason the
payouts would go up is because the more a bowl is willing to pay the better
draft pick that bowl has to pick the best match-up possible. If you want to get better teams to your bowl
game, you up your payout.
Payouts would have to be submitted
before the season starts in a blind bid, the draft order would then be
announced closer to the end of the season. If the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
wanted to make a splash next year to celebrate the 20th year of the bowl, they
could make a larger bid than they might normally, and get a match-up between
top 15-20 teams instead of teams between 50-60.
One last detail I would change is the
bowl payouts. Instead of each team splitting the pot and putting on an
exhibition for the fans, I would have the result of the game determine the
payout. Winning team takes two-thirds and the losing team gets one-third. Make the games matter.
I know that this does not fix all
the problems in the college football post-season, but I think it does make bowl
season better. I know as a fan of college football I get sick of the same
match-ups in all the big games. The
chances of playing in the Cotton Bowl or Rose Bowl are currently non-existent
if you are an ACC team. The only bowl a
PAC12 team can get on or around New Year’s Day is now the Rose Bowl. The Outback Bowl, Citrus Bowl and Tax Slayer
Bowl are games for only the Big Ten, ACC and SEC, sorry PAC12 and Big XII. This should not be the case and it wouldn’t
be under this new system.
Change is good.
Change is needed.
If you missed The Sports Fix:
College Football Part 1, check it out HERE!
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