With the recent announcement of an official 4-team seeded playoff that will begin in 2014 and run for 12 years, I thought it would be a great day to take a step back in time and analyze which would have been the best system (BCS, 4-Team, 8-Team or 16-Team playoff) in the BCS Era (1998-2011).

In the first two years of the BCS, I thought that the best team in the country for that year (Ohio St ’98 and Nebraska ’99) did not get a chance to play in the national title game. This prompted me to come up with a solution to include all deserving teams of a chance at taking home the title. My proposed system was to include four teams and seed them #1 vs #4 and #2 vs #3. The semi-finals would include the current bowls with those games being played on January 1st and the national championship game would be played at a later date.

Naturally the main reason I chose just four teams and not eight or 16 was to preserve what I think without question is the best regular season in all of sport! You cannot give me a single plausible argument as to why teams with two or more losses should be given a chance to play for a national title. I think you will find in most years there are three teams that are fighting for those top two spots and as long as you include those teams, I don’t think it really matters as to who is the #4 or #5 team as long as the true deserving teams are in the field.

Below is the complete chart of every year from 1998-2011 with a breakdown of how the teams were ranked heading into the bowl games and what each playoff format would have looked like. I used the AP Poll rankings and not the final BCS Rankings because we are heading into a direction where a selection committee will pick the teams and will be much more subjective (like the AP Poll) than a computer ranking. Make sure you are checking out my May 30 Blog which includes what I wrote in this year’s magazine about a Determining a National Championship and also my June 27 Blog which included my original 4-Team playoff argument from 2000.

Which BCS/Playoff System Would Have
Worked Best in the BCS Era (1998-2011)

*All Rankings Used were Final Regular Season AP Poll

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This chart shows clearly that the 4-Team Playoff System is the far superior system than what a 8-Team or 16-Team Playoff System would produce. In every one of the 14 years, the 4-Team playoff would have been at least a good system to determine a national champ. In my opinion the BCS got it right 3 years and was a good system for 7 additional years which made it in my opinion a better system than an 8-Team playoff. Many teams included in a 8-Team format would be undeserving of a chance to play for the national title and I think the above chart shows this in 10 of the 14 years (71%). A 16-Team playoff is fun to look at the different matchups but certainly 3-4 loss teams do not deserve to play for a national title and also it's unfair to unbeaten teams to have to win three extra games to play for the title like everyone else.

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