BCS Tournament: The Champion is

Beyond Common SenseI presented my BCS tournament idea some weeks ago. The long and the short of it is that all 11 conference champions are part of the 16-team tourney as long as that champion is ranked in the BCS final top-25. If not, they can go play in some secondary bowl somewhere where they belong. The remaining positions are filled by at-large teams based exclusively on the BCS rankings. The final BCS standings are in and the tournament has been played.

Once I had the tournament set up, I ran it on ESPN’s Playoff Simulator. Before I started, I was forced to decide whether or not I was going to run the tournament once, twice or a hundred times. My tendency is to run things on a computer a million times to get to the bottom line and to take any sample-size or fluke issues out of it. In the case of ESPN, I would have to re-populate the brackets each new time I ran it. That’s a lot of work. Unless I did it at least 100 times, it doesn’t really give any meaningful information. So, I decided to do it once and let the chips fall where they may. Besides, in real life it would only have been played once – and upsets happen. The best teams don’t always make it to the championship. So, here goes.

The eleven conferences, their champions and their BCS rank are below.

As you can see, the top-16 in the rankings made it with one exception – Ball State #22 (Mid-America champion) is in at the expense of #16 BYU. Two conferences do not have a representative – Conference USA and Sun Belt.

The idea is that 15 games will be played in a 16-team tournament utilizing the top-15 bowls (maybe rotate some in and out of the tournament annually). The championship game and semifinals could be rotated between the ultra-top bowls.

There were three upsets based upon ranking, but two of them were not considered upsets by ESPN – meaning the team that won the game won it the most times when played repeatedly.

First round:

#1 Oklahoma vs #16 Ball State

#2 Florida vs #15 Georgia

#3 Texas vs #14 Georgia Tech

#4 Alabama vs #13 Oklahoma State

#5 USC vs #12 Cincinnati

#6 Utah vs #11 TCU

#7 Texas Tech vs #10 Ohio State

#8 Penn State vs #9 Boise State

----------------------------------------

Oklahoma 56, Ball State 27

Penn State 44, Boise State 32

USC 44, Cincinnati 20

Alabama 59, Oklahoma State 40

Texas 39, Georgia Tech 20

TCU 29, Utah 20 (not considered upset)

Texas Tech 36, Ohio State 31

Florida 43, Georgia 25

----------------------------------------

Second round:

#1 Oklahoma vs #8 Penn State

#2 Florida vs #7 Texas Tech

#3 Texas vs #11 TCU

#4 Alabama vs #5 USC

----------------------------------------

Oklahoma 53, Penn State 39

USC 31, Alabama 22 (not considered upset)

Texas 36, TCU 25

Florida 46, Texas Tech 32

----------------------------------------

Semi-finals:

#1 Oklahoma vs #5 USC

#2 Florida vs #3 Texas

----------------------------------------

USC 42, Oklahoma 37 (UPSET)

Florida 42, Texas 35

----------------------------------------

Championship:

#2 Florida vs #5 USC

Florida 42, USC 34

Rant: What I fail to understand is this. Money drives everything nowadays. There is no way on earth these 15 games (bowls) would not make more money than they do presently! The build-up would be incredible. Each bowl would be watched by a lot more fans because each bowl might have the national champion playing in it! As it is, there is only one bowl that ultimately matters.

Anyway, I couldn’t resist one more opportunity to blast these BCS bozos for clinging to a ridiculously outmoded system that will never last long-term. You can bet your life on it. The only questions remaining are when will it change, what will the playoff format look like, and will you or I be alive to see it?