The much awaited first ever 12 team playoff bracket is set. Now this doesn’t come without its fair share of controversy, but I think we all kinda saw this coming. In sports, decisions like this never go without someone being upset. Even look at the March Madness tournament. There are now 68 teams that make up the field and there are analysts arguing over what teams didn’t get in and which ones did so trying to decide on the best 12 teams is almost impossible. But I don’t really want to focus on if the committee got the right teams in, but I want to focus on what the field would look like with playoff situations we have had in the past.
The one major part I absolutely love in the 12-team bracket is the playoff home games. How cool would it be the to play in front of your home fans in your stadium on your way to a National Title! The possibility of warm weather teams playing in cold weather instead of neutral sites. On the flip side, I think they should just seed the teams in order instead of the conference champions getting automatic byes. That aside, let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at how we crowned National Champions in the past. The last rendition we had was the 4-team playoff. We saw some awesome games and we saw blow outs. The main objective in this format was to just get in. There wasn’t a whole lot of discussion as to how the teams were seeded. Just making it in was the goal. In this format I think the four teams that get in would be Oregon, Georgia, Texas and Notre Dame. We would see Oregon play Notre Dame and Texas play Georgia. Even with four teams this would cause way more arguments than the 12-team format. After Oregon and Georgia there is a laundry list of teams that can make cases that they should be in either the 3 or 4 seed. But after living with this format for years I think this is what we would see.
So, let’s talk about everyone’s favorite format, the BCS. For those that don’t remember this was a format that a computer would decide the two teams that would play for the National Title. It is so hard to speculate how this would play out, but my best guess would be Oregon and Georgia. This leaves a ton of speculation as to who would be the second team joining Oregon in the final game. I keep hammering Oregon in all of these formats because they are the only major team that is undefeated. The rest of each field is purely a guess.
Is the 12 team format the best? As compared to the past formats I would say yes, it is the best we have had. Is it perfect? Nope. I do have a feeling that they will fix the seeding system going into next year’s playoff and I think that would help in a major way. I think the folks that were saying this format would devalue the regular season would admit they were wrong. We saw every game matter. If they get the little wrinkles ironed out, I think this is the best option we have seen.
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