[Editor's Note: This is part of a series on the real world constraints on a college football postseason design. The introduction to this series will contain links to the available parts]

Links to the New Year's Day was once a celebration of elite college football. Bowls were once played on days in order of increasing prestige. Bowls were once limited in number to maintain their significance of their reward.

The recent bowl creep and (to a lesser degree) the BCS have eroded these traditions.

Selecting participants and maintaining relationships with conference is a major part of the major bowls image. Most major bowls will not agree to be hosts for seeded games with arbitrary conference alignments. The New Year's and New Year's Eve dates are also largely non negotiable.

The BCS bowls expect to have teams from the top 10 in most years. Having them as an outside NIT like role after the tournament selection will not achieve this. Consolation games and third place games have never worked in any league. The BCS bowls will not agree to become games for those eliminated from the tournament alone.

Old Bowl System

No one values the bowls more than the bowls themselves. A designated championship game takes away from the old bowl systems ability to generate several games that could be viewed as championship games depending on regional interests.

While failing to provide a consensus champion at the national level, compelling games were produced with excellent regional interest and strong national interest.

New Year's Day was a celebration of elite football. Games were played in increasing order of prestige. Bowl games were limited to maintain their value as a reward.

The recent proliferation of bowls is not likely to be undone and contributes to the erosion of the bowl tradition. Adding strong tier divisions to the bowl selection process would help restore this value.

BCS

The current system is designed to work within the current system with as little disruption as possible. To a large degree it has been successful but the traditional tie-ins are regularly disrupted and the traditional bowl timing has been spread over a wider time period.

An authoritative national championship game reduced the luster of games that once could often claim a share of legitimacy as a title game.

A Tier Based Plus-One

This design builds on the bowls by adding more opportunities for the existing bowls to bid on ranked teams. The BCS bowls could be restored to their traditional dates and times and would have a majority of teams who had to win their way into these games.

While they are respected, the BCS bowl tie-ins would be disrupted more than the current designs.

A Flexible Championship System

This design keeps the BCS bowls at a level of prestige near the semifinals and maintains the number and quality of teams available for all remaining teams.

This design is not incompatible with the idea of allowing top teams not selected for the tournament to play a second bowl game but this would cause more variability in the selection options for the remaining bowls.

MWC Proposal

The MWC proposal significantly reduces the conference tie-ins for the four BCS bowls. It does manage to maintain the field of eligible teams constant for all other bowls.

Enhanced Bowl Season

This design argues that using the bowls as tournament games builds their tradition. Allowing smaller bowls to participate as the first round games would certainly increase their marketability, but some mid level bowls would be better served outside the tournament but would have a greatly reduced pool of teams to select from.

The Wetzel Plan

Dan Wetzel leaves the bowls out of the tournament entirely, making all games except the championship home games for the favored teams. While many bowls would be unaffected by this, the oldest bowls with the most precious tradition would be compromised to an unacceptable degree.