Every September the holidays come a little bit early for college football fans. The first games of the year began last Thursday, and Saturday marked the full-scale immersion into arguably the most exciting sport in the country.
Since the start of the season is like a holiday in itself, I am going to play Christmas in September and give you my wish list for college football.
The regular season in college football is a thing of beauty, so most of my gripes are directed toward the postseason. I am fully aware that changes to some of these issues are about as realistic as getting a Tickle-Me-Elmo back in 1996, but I'd like to see them nonetheless.
My first wish is for a playoff system, which I don't believe would be too difficult to set up. You could take the current Bowl Championship Series makeup (six BCS conference champions plus two at-large teams) and play an eight team, three week tournament. There would be a total of seven games, which could be played at the seven best bowl sites, with the National Championship rotating as it does now in the BCS. The major arguments against such a setup are the fact that football players will miss too much class and that the tradition of the bowls will be lost.
However, all of the lower divisions of NCAA football make a playoff system work. Additionally, the timeframe for the games would be after exams, when the bulk of bowl games are played anyway. I agree that the bowls have a great history to preserve, but you can't tell me that BCS protects such tradition when the Rose Bowl no longer features a Big 10-Pac 10 matchup every year. Without preserving the "Grandaddy of Them All," how do BCS officials expect us to buy such an argument?
A playoff system would not realistically be proposed until 2010, when the current BCS contract expires, but something that could be amended much sooner is the number of bowl games. This year there will be 32 bowl games, four more than last year's 28. That means more than half of the 119 Division 1-A teams will make it to a bowl. Believe me, I love Capital One Bowl Week, but a bowl game should be an accomplishment and a reward, not a foregone conclusion.
The fact that almost every school that is eligible for a bowl game receives a bid (only eight teams did not go bowling despite winning records last year), takes much of the luster off of the postseason. I wish half of the bowls were discontinued. That would leave sixteen games with 32 teams, consisting of roughly three teams each from the six BCS conferences, two teams from the other five conferences, and four independents or at-large teams. The fight for the limited number of bowl slots would boost an already competitive regular season, as only the top few teams from each conference are guaranteed a bid.
Here is a wish that can actually come true this year. With each new season, I find myself hoping that three or more teams finish the season tied for the best record so that there will be major controversy when one or more teams are left out of the BCS Championship. Such is the ideal situation for BCS-haters, but I'm afraid even ten straight years of BCS controversy will not be enough. It's unfortunate that the time taken to write about this subject probably would have been better spent coming up with funny things that "BCS" could stand for and have as much of an impact on changing the system.
Now my Christmas wish for Virginia football. Obviously, I would love for U.Va. to win the national championship, but that is probably not going to happen since the Hoos lost Saturday. (Note: I will gladly eat these words and even one of those Papa John's jalapenos if U.Va gets to the BCS championship) Such is the current state of college football in that every week is a playoff game, and with one loss, you are on the outside looking in for the national championship.
On Monday, my colleague Barney Breen-Portnoy stated that a six-win season and a lower tier bowl would be a solid feat for this team. I agree and hope this happens at the very least, but it's not necessarily my wish. All I really want are six good CavMan animations and a win over Virginia Tech. First-years, if you haven't experienced CavMan on HooVision before home games, get ready. The feeling you get as you watch the animation is like your first kiss, your favorite team winning a championship and hearing the words "snow day" all rolled into one.
As far as Tech, we need to win this game. Tech has won six of the last seven games and put a whooping on the Hoos last year in front of the sea of maroon (Why did everyone buy guest tickets and give them to Tech fans, honestly?). A win this year is the most coveted on my list.
I feel like this list is not too much to ask, but for anyone who does, I guess there's always gift cards.
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