This is a continuing look at what my design would look like for this year and will walk backwards one year per week, until the dawn of the BCS era. For other years and a better look at my design look here.

Qualifying teams

Top Group: Ohio St. and LSU
Undefeated: #10 Hawaii

Hawaii did not play two teams that were in the final BCS top 25 in 2003-2006 but would likely have scheduled differently had this rule been in place. If this rule is applied here the current system would have been used.

Since Hawaii was not in the top eight the field would be expanded to the second gap to guarantee they got three rounds of competition to prove their worth.

Added Teams: Virginia Tech, Oklahoma and Georgia

Tournament

The following play-in games would be held on December 19th or 20th:

Hawaii @ Virginia Tech, Georgia @ Oklahoma

The lowest ranked team to advance would play LSU in the Sugar Bowl. The other advancing team would face Ohio St. in the Rose Bowl. The winners would advance to the National Championship Game.

Possible BCS Bowls

Fiesta: Kansas vs. USC
Orange: West Virginia vs. Boston College

Teams in bold would have been tied to that berth, italics indicate a BCS berth would have been guaranteed.  Missouri, Arizona St. and Illinois would have been eligible for BCS bowls. Only one of Kansas and Missouri would have been eligible.

What actually happened and a tier based plus one next.

What actually happened

BCS Games

NCG: LSU 38 Ohio St. 24
Orange: Kansas 24 Virginia Tech 21
Fiesta Bowl: West Virginia 48 Oklahoma 28
Sugar: Georgia 41 Hawaii 10
Rose: USC 49 Illinois 17

Arizona St. and Boston College were BCS eligible but not selected.

Controversy

The selection of teams was far more controversial than the standings would indicate. LSU was selected with two losses over one loss Kansas and undefeated Hawaii. LSU redeemed themselves by manhandling Ohio St. and Hawaii eliminated themselves by losing convincingly to Georgia.

No teams finished undefeated in 2007.

Missouri was left out for Kansas, who took the second and final BIG 12 BCS berth. Illinois was selected over Arizona St. but this was mitigated by the fact that they faced a team from the same conference as Arizona St.

A Tier Based Plus-One

Ohio St. would have played Oklahoma and LSU would have played Virginia Tech in the semifinal games. USC and West Virginia would have earned direct participation to the Rose and Orange Bowls respectively. (Guaranteeing access to undefeated teams would have replaced Oklahoma with Hawaii and put Oklahoma directly into the Fiesta Bowl)

Hawaii (or West Virginia) would have been guaranteed access to a first round game. Georgia, Missouri, Kansas, ASU, BYU, and Boise St. would have been eligible for a second bowl game.

[Editor's Note: I am in the process of updating my data to use 9 wins over FBS teams for eligibility.  This eligibility list reflects the original criteria of 10-2 or better. Once the data has been updated this post will be updated and these notes removed]

Possible first round games:

[Editor's note: This season is one of several that strongly motivated me to implement the rule change as not enough teams are available to fill the slots with the original rule]

An improvement?

I was not alone in my opinion that some years don't deserve a champion and 2007 was one of them.

My primary design would have allowed a much larger number of the one loss teams to participate, but only because undefeated Hawaii was in the picture. If Hawaii had proven to be unworthy in this design and one of these added teams would have won controversy would have been created.

The selection of the top 4 would have been between far closer in the raw score than between LSU and Virginia Tech.