My 8-team CFP proposal

[Big Z Man 1990]

There have been numerous proposals to expand the College Football Playoff to 8 teams.

I have one that is probably the most creative.

My proposal takes the 4 best teams from outside the South, and seeds them in the "Osborne" bracket, named for former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne.

The four best teams in the South would be seeded in the "Bowden" bracket, named after former West Virginia and Florida State coach Bobby Bowden (who beat Osborne's Cornhuskers in the Orange Bowl to secure the national championship for the 1993 season).

All regional semifinal games would be held on campus if the stadium meets capacity requirements, or if not, the closest stadium that does.

Each of the NY6 bowls would take turns being the "Osborne" final and the "Bowden" final

Under my proposed format, the Osborne semifinals would have been Penn State at Ohio State, and Wisconsin VS. Oregon at CenturyLink Field. The Bowden semifinals would be Georgia at LSU (their second consecutive meeting in 2019) and Oklahoma at Clemson.

This format not only guarantees a non-Southern team in the CFP title game, it also ends the possibility of an atrocity like the 2017 season, in which all the CFP participants came from the South. It doesn't guarantee the top 8 teams would be in (for instance #7 Baylor would have been excluded in favor of #10 Penn State due to the limit of four Southern teams in the playoff) but it would be an interesting idea to implement beginning in 2026.

Thus, I feel if the CFP committee really wants an ACC/SEC title game, it should require Boston College, Pittsburgh, or Syracuse from the ACC and/or Missouri from the SEC qualifying for the playoff in the Osborne bracket, and other ACC/SEC teams playing in the Bowden bracket - not deliberately demoting a team like Ohio State to the #2 seed knowing they have never beat Clemson. I feel OSU was the top team of the 2019 regular season, but the CFP committee didn't want a Clemson/LSU semifinal, they wanted them to meet in the title game. So they pulled this stunt.

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[Big Z Man 1990]

Furthermore, the regions as defined by the United States Census Bureau would determine whether a team is Southern or not. This means Maryland, despite having much Northeastern characteristics now, would be placed in the Bowden bracket with other Southern teams, as the USCB still classifies the state of Maryland as Southern.

 

[Babe Ruth]

Z man, I like your idea of having brackets named after iconic coaches. But in today's college football paradigm, I don't see much value in (true) geographic brackets. Even the conferences have abandoned organic regional alignment. You cite Maryland, which is (incongruously) in a Midwestern conference.. the ACC is no longer solely in the Southeast etc. I don't think it matters (to most fans) if the South dominates college football finals, or not. But if you desire an expansion of the finals (just in and of itself), that will come. It's gonna eventually be like March Madness, where their postseason will keep growing. As long as there is more TV revenue to reap & enough meatheads with an unsatiated appetite for it..

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Well, 47 of the national championships in the two-poll era have been won or shared by at least one Southern school.

I want both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line to have an equal shot at the title.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Furthermore, the majority of the American people live outside the South.

Thus, the CFP frequently features 3 teams from the side of the Mason-Dixon line that is least populated. Which I think is wrong. It bottomed out in 2017 when all CFP participants were from the South. I am willing to bet that if Ohio State knew beating Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game that year would eliminate the entire "Mason" side from the CFP, they would have gladly taken one for the team, as the idea is to have as many good Big Ten teams as possible.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Furthermore, grouping teams by region is still done in many official NCAA tournaments, especially below Division I

 

[GKJ]

Why is the Mason-Dixon Line so important in all of this?

All other schools have to do is just be better. Do you think players go to Alabama and Clemson for the scenery?

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

As a fan of two Northern teams, I have grown tired of seeing Southern teams win it year after year.

Plus the CFB national champions in lower levels of football are usually Northern teams. Look at D-III. Many titles in recent years have been won by either Mount Union, located in Ohio, or Wisconsin-Whitewater, located in Wisconsin, though I think both should go D-II (and with St. Thomas having been approved for D-I, many D-III powers will question their commitment to the D-III philosophy and look at moving up in order to award scholarships).

In D-II, most national titles were won by teams on the Mason side from 1996-2016, including multiple titles by teams such as Grand Valley State in Michigan and Northwest Missouri State. Although Southern teams won the last three D-II titles, I doubt this will last.

Even FCS has been dominated by a Northern team in recent years. North Dakota State has won all but one FCS title since 2011.

And in the NAIA, the last Southern champion was Georgetown College from Kentucky in 2001.

I want non-Southern teams, especially Northern teams, to have a decent shot at an FBS national title. The current system overwhelmingly favors the South, since 1992, the first year of a formal national championship game, only once has it failed to include a Southern team - 2014, the first year of the CFP.

NCAA D-I championships used to determine their brackets by where a team was located, especially in basketball. Like I said it is no longer practiced as much in D-I, but it is still prevalent in lower divisions.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Thus I feel if a Southern team really wants a CFP title, they have to go through a team from outside the South to do it - but not in a preliminary round, in the title game.

 

[GKJ]

There’s also a lot more FBS teams in the south. All teams in the north have to do is beat them.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

You really don't care about precedent, do you?

There are also plenty of Southern teams at each of the lower levels of CFB, far more than you think.

 

[GKJ]

You really don't care about precedent, do you?

There are also plenty of Southern teams at each of the lower levels of CFB, far more than you think.

A lot of conferences in FCS are more reflective of its geography, but there's also examples in other sports where that is not the case

FBS has always operated outside the lines of every other sport including FCS/Div-II, they only been deciding the national champion on the field for 22 years. But this North/South thing you're proposing is completely arbitrary, and it's going to leave better teams out of the playoff ultimately. One of your brackets is going to be 3 or 4 Big Ten teams every year.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

On the contrary, if my system had been in place from the get-go, only one team within the top 8 would have missed the playoff, and it would always have been the 7th or 8th ranked team.

So, in a given year it is very likely that at least 7 of the physical top 8 teams will make the playoff.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Furthermore, I feel OSU getting revenge on Oklahoma for the flag plant in 2017 would have been a far better storyline.