I like that all conferences are included and that it does not extend further into January than the current design.

One of the major arguments used against a playoff is the travel costs of the fans. It might be good to consider having the first two round be hosted by the higher seeded team.

Another major concern is that more games means more chances for injuries. If a team played at Hawaii, participated in a conference championship system and qualified for your tournament they could end up with 18 games. The most allowed in any other division is 16. This is the principle issue with a 16 team playoff. The only alternative to trimming the field would be trimming the regular season. The cost of cutting 60 games to allow 8 high profile games (roughly 3 of which would be of questionable value) makes cutting the regular season by a week unlikely.

I like that you included other bowls in the first round. With 8 teams taken out of bowl consideration for the tournament four top bowls would need to be accounted for.

Allowing the losers of the first two round to participate in a bowl would help with this and help maintain the bowl’s identities by allowng them to continue selecting their participants. This should be designed so that they would not play each other to avoid these games becoming loser bowls. At least one team would still be playing for the limelight in each of these bowls.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on these issues. The postseason design is complicated, but if we continue to ignore the elephant in the room the situation will go nowhere.

WVPirates,

looks like you and I had a lot of similar ideas.

I first floated my ideas on the old Buckeye blog about 2 years ago. See my post for my recent posting on the current SBN OSU blog.

I love it. A 16 team playoff that includes the conference champs needs to be run by the NCAA which it currently is ran by the BCS. Including all 11 conference champs would have a trickle down effect for talent to go to other schools to play right away. Look at hoops with Steph Curry who went to a smaller school and nearly took his team to a final four, now imagine that with football. This also would force the last of the Indies (looking at you Notre Dame) to join a league.

Now the 16 may never win the title but what if the 98 Marshall squad with Randy Moss, or the 1996 BYU team that was over looked by the big bowls pre-BCS and went to the Cotton Bowl. More recently the two Utah teams in 04, 08, or the Boise squad over OU. That does not even include the conference champs ranked in the top 16 like 2005 TCU that got no chance.

18 could be too many if your team plays in a conference Championship but if your team plays 18 games that equals more revenue for the home team and gets lesser programs like a Troy, UTEP, UCF or a team like that more exposure and mabye more recruits that could lead to less lopsided games in the Tournment. While 16 seed may never win if a team like Rice won the C-USA and played Florida in the First round and upset them it would be the biggest win Program History for them and thats what is lacking in the BCS right now team that have never really had a good team having a shot at winning it all don’t get the chance to take down a powerhouse program and with this system it could happen a team like Rice or Florida Atlantic could potentally make a run at the National Championship. I think that a tournment in some shape or form will eventually happen in Div. 1-A if this is the form than I will take credit for it gladly(hopefully I will make some money off of it).