The Sports Fix: College Football, Part 2 of 2

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 1^st 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 2^nd).  After that, the Citrus bowl is the bowl with the highest payout, therefore they have the 5^th 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 1^st 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!

Bowl Season Extreme Makeover Edition

It has been 303 days since the last time I ranted. Since that time, I got engaged. Kim Kardashian also got engaged. Lebron James showed the world that his kryptonite is the 4th quarter of big games. The Pirates were in 1st place after the all-star break. Kim Kardashian got married. The Eagles became the most recent “dream team” to fail to deliver. Tim Tebow saved Denver and all of us. Kim Kardashian got divorced. Jerry Sandusky gave a whole new meaning to "horsed around".

So what it is that could get me out of my slumber and writing again? No, not the Jersey Shore premiere tonight, however that could be a good future topic. Combined with finally having time, after being incredibly understaffed at work for the last 4 months and sitting through meaningless bowl game after bowl game, I figured the terrible bowl system would be a great topic.

I know that I will not be breaking ground here by saying that the college football post-season is the worst in all of sports. And since we are only in year 2 of the 4 year deal between the BCS and ESPN, which spent $500M for the rights, the current BCS system is not going anywhere anytime soon. Rather than complain about the system, I’ve come up with a better, more entertaining system for the college post-season.

A bowl draft.

Hear me out now. I think we all realize that despite being entertaining, the post-season in college football consists of 1 important game, the national championship game, and 34 absolutely meaningless games. In my system, you will still have 34 meaningless games to go along with the national title game, but you will have better match-ups pairing off evenly matched teams with no pre-arranged conference affiliations. (By the way, ideally, I would only have between 20-25 bowl games, but we know that neither the bowls nor ESPN are going to throw away the money that these bowls bring in.)

All of that being said, I actually like the idea of the BCS. I think there are many good ideas in how they come up with their rankings. Where they fall short is the limiting the rankings to affecting just the top 2 teams. So let’s use the BCS standings in the draft format. This is how I would do it if I had a chance to revamp the college bowl system.

THE BASICS:
1) Using the BCS rankings, list all the bowl eligible teams, starting at the top with #1.

2) Using bowl payouts, we create our draft order. The 4 BCS bowl games would always draft in spots 2-5 followed by the highest payout game all the way down to the lowest payout game drafting 35. This year the draft order would have looked like this:

1. National Championship Game
2. Rose Bowl
3. Fiesta Bowl
4. Sugar Bowl
5. Orange Bowl
6. Capital One Bowl ($9.1M)
7. Cotton Bowl ($7.25M)
8. Outback Bowl ($7M)
9. Chick-fil-A Bowl ($6.9M)
10. Insight Bowl ($6.65M)
11. Alamo Bowl ($6.35M)
12. Gator Bowl ($5.45M)
13. Champs Sports Bowl ($4.55M)
14. Holiday Bowl ($4.15M)
15. Sun Bowl ($4M)
16. Music City Bowl ($3.675M)
17. Pinstripe Bowl ($3.6M)
18. Meineke Car Care Bowl ($3.4M)
19. Belk Bowl ($3.4M)
20. Liberty Bowl ($2.875M)
21. Independence Bowl ($2.3M)
22. Las Vegas Bowl ($2.2M)
23. TicketCity Bowl ($2.2M)
24. Military Bowl ($2M)
25. BBVA Compass Bowl ($1.925M)
26. Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl ($1.675M)
27. GoDaddy.com Bowl ($1.5M)
28. Little Caesars Bowl ($1.5M)
29. Hawaii Bowl ($1.3M)
30. Armed Forces Bowl ($1.2M)
31. Beef O’Brady’s ($1.075M)
32. Poinsettia Bowl ($1M)
33. New Orleans Bowl ($1M)
34. New Mexico Bowl ($912,500)
35. Idaho Potato Bowl ($650,000)

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. Obviously, the top 2 teams would automatically be placed in the national championship game. 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 2nd pick, the Rose Bowl would be able to pick any 2 teams that finished 3-12 in the final BCS standings. (Remember the #1 and #2 teams would be off the board already in the national title game.) Next pick would be the Fiesta Bowl and 2 more teams would open up for their selection, teams #13-14. 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. For instance, this season Boise State would had to have been invited to one of the top 8 bowls, instead of going to the Las Vegas Bowl, which ranked #22. It would also prevent teams with great history and huge fan bases being selected to bowls they don’t deserve (This year it would be Ohio State and Florida, both 6-6 and unranked, playing in the Gator Bowl.)

Think about what this would do for the college football post-season. First, the TV networks could/would sell the hell out of the live draft. Imagine having every AD or head coach at the draft along with the bowl committee members. They make the pick, the coach or AD’s from both schools go up onto stage and shake hands. Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit talk about that bowl for the next 5 minutes or so, maybe interview the coach or AD from the schools. Everybody wins. The schools gets some press, the bowls gets their individual time in the national spotlight and the coaches get a little face time.

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 bowl a few years ago. Sure lots of fans will go and support their team wherever they go, but they want to go to new places and see new things. In the last 3 years, 9 different teams played in the same bowl game at least 2 of those 3 years.

This format also helps other conferences get a chance to play each other. For instance, the Big East has the best record of any automatic qualifying conference in bowl play over the past 6 seasons. Does that mean that the Big East is the best conference in football? Of course not, but they don’t get a chance to prove themselves against the bigger conferences either. The Big East currently has 6 bowl affiliations. Of those six, they play the ACC in 2, the Big 12 in one, the SEC in one, C-USA in one and their BCS bowl game, which is usually against an ACC team in the Orange Bowl. The Big 12 game is against the 7th place team from the Big 12 and the SEC game is against their 9th place team. So even when they play the elite conferences they are playing the worst bowl eligible teams that the conference has to offer. While in turn the SEC and the Big Ten both set up their top teams to play each other in 2 different bowls.

THE MONEY:
Now, many 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. If anything, conferences have a chance to make even more money. This year the SEC had 3 teams in the top 6 and 4 in the top 9, yet both Arkansas (#6) and South Carolina (#9) were both blocked from partaking in any BCS bowl because current rules state only 2 BCS bids per conference.

The bowl payouts would probably also go up, creating more money in the total pot for teams. The reason the bowl payouts would go up is because that directly affects your draft order. If you want to get better teams to your bold 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 Las Vegas 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 better match-up between top 15-20 teams.

One last detail I would tinker with would be 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.

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 Pitt fan, that I would love to be able to see Pitt play Penn State in a bowl game or maybe Arizona State, now that Todd Graham left Pitt for that job. Before, that was impossible. The chances of playing in the Cotton Bowl or Rose Bowl are currently non-existent if you are an ACC or Big East team, which should not be the case. Change is good. Change is needed.