As is the case every time this month until the change is made the debate about an 8-team college football playoff is making the rounds again. It’s likely to happen at some point in the future, so it seems. How it ends up shaping the football post-season is the more important question and one we will tackle until the end.

Recently in our writers room we had a debate about the merits of an 8-team playoff and one thing is clear that the debate is largely going to revolve around how much power is given to the conferences and bowl games as much as anything. You can’t escape those decisions with any plan.

With the debates leading up to the 4-team playoff the fear (or was it relief?) was that it would weaken the importance of the bowl games. Then, the sport sanctioned 2 major bowl games into the playoff semi-finals, elevated the Cotton and Peach bowls to New Years Six status, and created a rotation for these 6 lucky bowls to retain favored status moving forward.

But what about the rest of the bowls, are they being left out in the dark as fans become ever more obsessed with the playoffs? The more important question for Notre Dame fans is how a newly-minted 8-team playoff would dish out bids but I’m curious about the news that has picked up steam lately that the NY6 bowls could cover the quarterfinals (4 games) and semi-finals (2 games) of the new expanded system.

Call it the Bowl Games Strike Back?

It would be a genius move by the bowls. Let’s say they move to auto-bids for the 5 power conference winners, one spot for the G5, and two at-large bids–the most common and I’d say accepted system for fans. Most years, you’ve guaranteed you won’t have as poor of a NY6 bowl matchup as this year’s Virginia vs. Florida game and even if once and a while you have a struggling conference champion like last year’s blah 10-3 Washington team, at least there’s NFL talent and the opportunity for upset in a way that really can’t be found with this year’s 9-4 Virginia team.

For argument’s sake, let’s use this model for 2019:

8-Team Playoff for 2019

#1 LSU vs. #8 Memphis
#2 Ohio State vs. #7 Baylor
#3 Clemson vs. #6 Oregon
#4 Oklahoma vs. #5 Georgia

Now, I’ve been wanting to kill the bowls for as long as I can remember. I personally wouldn’t like the decision of an 8-team playoff using all of the NY6 bowls but I do wonder if it further devalues the rest of those bowls over the long-term? What if in a new system we got rid of the rest of the bowl games and played several small tournaments instead?

What I did is take all of the non-playoff teams above and put them into 6 separate 8-team tournaments broken up by East vs. West based off the Mississippi River. You’d get seeds set up like this:

EAST GOLD TOURNEY

#1 Wisconsin
#2 Florida
#3 Penn State
#4 Auburn
#5 Alabama
#6 Michigan
#7 Notre Dame
#8 App State

EAST SILVER TOURNEY

#1 Cincinnati
#2 Navy
#3 FAU
#4 UCF
#5 Virginia Tech
#6 Indiana
#7 Wake Forest
#8 Miami (OH)

EAST BRONZE TOURNEY

#1 UAB
#2 Central Michigan
#3 Temple
#4 Louisville
#5 Marshall
#6 Tennessee
#7 Kentucky
#8 Pitt

WEST GOLD TOURNEY

#1 Utah
#2 Minnesota
#3 Boise State
#4 Iowa
#5 USC
#6 Oklahoma State
#7 SMU
#8 Kansas State

WEST SILVER TOURNEY

#1 Texas A&M
#2 Washington
#3 Iowa State
#4 Arizona State
#5 Louisiana
#6 Texas
#7 Air Force
#8 San Diego State

WEST BRONZE TOURNEY

#1 Louisiana Tech
#2 Hawaii
#3 California
#4 BYU
#5 Utah State
#6 Western Kentucky
#7 Arkansas State
#8 Wyoming

Currently bowl-eligible teams who are left out from the East would include Charlotte, Kent State, Liberty, Georgia Southern, FIU, Miami, Eastern Michigan, North Carolina, Illinois, Florida State, Georgia State, Boston College, Ohio, Southern Miss, Miss State, Western Michigan, and Buffalo. From the West the following would miss out: Washington State, Wyoming, Nevada, and Tulane. Only 9 of these teams went 7-5 while everyone else went 6-6 so sorry about that!

Would this set up be better?

One thing that jumps out is that the East (as would be the case most years) looks much stronger by sheer number of teams alone. For example, the East Gold Tournament has up to 7 teams that might be favored to win the West Gold Tournament. As such, the interest in the West might be pretty tame. My biggest question is if the semi-finals and finals in the West Silver and Bronze Tournaments would generate bigger ratings and more revenue than your average bottom third bowl game. Easily, right?

Location would be something to figure out, as well. Do we play the first rounds on the campus of the higher seed than the semi-finals and finals are played at the same neutral site warm-weather location? Does that ease the burden of travel for fans and alumni? Maybe purposely seek out medium-sized stadiums so capacity is closer to 100% full? Or is it just easier* to keep games on college campuses altogether?

*One of our writers, who shall remain nameless, believes in the sanctity of the bowl games in part due to the bowl committees well-honed skills at organizing events for visiting fans. To my knowledge the Camping World Bowl has provided Notre Dame and Iowa State with a pep rally, a free fan fest in the adjacent baseball stadium at 9 AM before kickoff, and a hospitality pavilion on the same baseball field for the low price of $85** as the highlights of this year’s contest. I’m not sure which is more entertaining a night in Ibiza or the amenities provided by the Florida Citrus Sports group for this bowl game. 

**The bowl group has offered this experience for more than the price of a ticket to the game which is a nice touch. 

I’m sure there would be some push back on 12 more teams playing an additional 3 games on the season and 24 more teams playing an additional 2 games. I wonder if it would be worthwhile for these tournament games to be played using 10 minute quarters? Could it be advantageous to create a television experience for viewers that last just 2.5 hours? At some point, a playoff expansion is going to officially destroy the record books for team stats anyway so is it fine to play shorter games outside of the playoffs knowing those stats are kind of “extra” anyway?

One thing that I think is a great benefit is the increased likelihood of rivalry games in these tournaments. Sure, we wouldn’t get to see Alabama blast Michigan (current Citrus Bowl) at least right away but we would get another edition of the Iron Bowl. There might even be a way to condense these tournaments into even more regional competitions, although that gets really tricky geographically out west and if you get too small anywhere on the map the balance of competition is thrown out of whack.

Does this make sense for college football? Probably not for many decades as the bowl games continue to hold an enormous amount of sway over the decision making process. The NBA is struggling–as they get ready to introduce an in-season tournament for the future–with a way to make teams and players care about something that doesn’t affect an actual NBA title. I suspect this would be a major draw back to any non-playoff tournaments, just not enough teams (particularly blue-bloods) are going to care about one to possibly three more “meaningless” games. Over time, perhaps a tradition of actually caring could develop (removing all redshirt rules would be a good start, let’s see the youth!) but I doubt it even gets to that point as the tournaments suffer from the same indifference plague as the bowl games–and it’s easier to sell not changing.