Lets see…

1. The Big 10 does not have a conference championship game.
2. The Pac-10 does not have a conference championship game.
3. The Rose Bowl has been complaining that they are loosing the Pac-10 or Big Ten champion every year to the National championship game (Ohio state or USC over the last few years.

All this adds up to moving the Rose Bowl to championship weekend. The new date would bring back the tradition of the Pac-10 champion and Big Ten champion playing each other. The only difference would be the game would be played a month earlier.

I’m guessing the “Rose Bowl” name would stay with the game played on New Years Day and the parade, but I’m sure a new name can be found. With the additional millions of dollars for a new TV contract and corporate sponsorship, a new name could be found real quickly.

The reason why Pac-10, Big 12 and Big Ten are grouped together is to keep the location of the games close to fans. The same reason applies to why the Big East, ACC, and SEC are grouped together. The locations are up for debate, but keeping the current BCS bowl locations might entice the current BCS commissioners into a playoff system. After all, this is the group that decided to place the 5th BCS bowl game within the original four locations.

The semi-final dates and national championship dates were easy to decide on since they fit within the current structure. The quarter final dates were chosen to be two weeks after the Dec first conference championship date, and a week before the Christmas holidays. That would be one crazy college football weekend.

People have noticed that Boise State is not included in my champion based playoff system, and rightly so. The WAC conference is nowhere near the caliber of the other 6 major conferences. Saying Boise State deserves a shot at Florida is like saying the Division II champion deserves a chance for the national title. If Boise State was good enough, they would have been ranked higher than Michigan or LSU and received one of the two at-large bids.

Vanderbilt could have gone undefeated playing Boise’s schedule; would Vanderbilt deserve a chance at a national title? The clear answer is no. Oklahoma is not the same Oklahoma from the past, and beating Hawaii does not constitute a chance at a national title.

The BCS got it right this year, but what about next year or the year after?

Now, isn’t “fans won’t travel to the games” one of the big arguments against a playoff system? I get the feeling that UF fans would travel to more than one playoff game. I’m also sure that most of the big time programs would gladly travel with their team. The smaller schools might have trouble filling seats, but what are the chances a smaller school will play a smaller school in a playoff game?

Here’s hoping that state senators Mark Schauer and Mike Bishop get their playoff wish.

So what changed the voter’s mind? Did pollsters not want a rematch game? Is it less risky to put Florida in since Michigan already had its shot? We may never know, but it’s hard to argue with Lloyd Carr’s argument that Michigan would be ranked #3 and Florida #4 if USC beat UCLA.

One thing is for certain is that the national championship will continue to be disputed until the teams are allowed to settle it on the field.

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Terry sets up his own 1vs8 bracket. We still prefer ours, but his bracket is definitely better than the BCS system we have today.