With an official 4-team seeded playoff beginning in 2014 and running 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 (1998-2012).

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 1998-2012 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.

Before, I get into a year-by-year analysis I do want to mention that last year prior to the National Title game, I thought the BCS got it right having an undefeated Notre Dame team play the defending national champ and current SEC champ Alabama for the title. However, in retrospect after watching Alabama destroy Notre Dame, a 4-team playoff may have been better served as you look back to Notre Dame’s season and look at all of their close calls including the Pittsburgh game. Naturally, AP #3 Ohio State could not be included since they were ineligible to play for the BCS championship.

I really believe #5 Oregon and #4 Florida would have given the Tide a better game and if you were arguing for #6 Georgia to be included, they had their shot against the Tide in the SEC championship and lost while #7 Kansas St was blown out in their only loss of the season to a 5-loss Baylor teams. #8 Stanford and #9 LSU each had 2 losses and didn’t deserve to play for the National Title as it would devalue the regular season.

Here is a year-by-year breakdown of what systems were best, good and worst for the last 15 years.

Which BCS/Playoff System Would Have
Worked Best in the BCS Era (1998-2012)

*All Rankings Used were Final Regular Season AP Poll

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