2010 College Football Championship Playoff was an event to remember! (v1.1)

Wow!  Who would have thought back in late November that we’d see such a dramatic and sudden change in college football! For so long fans of the game, especially Boise State fans like myself, have held the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in contempt for its ridiculous polls-and-computers method for crowning a college football champion.  It was so maddening when every other college sport, including 1-AA, Div II, and Div III football, holds playoffs to determine on the field or court or diamond who is the champion.  We all felt so helpless against a cabal of wealthy interests determined to keep the status quo of riches for the established football factories and crumbs for the “mid majors”.  We knew that almost everyone we knew wanted a playoff and everybody playing the game wanted a playoff, but felt like the BCS was a “Berlin Wall” separating fans and players from fairness, an evil edifice that would never come down in our lifetimes.

So we were all stunned when President Obama declared that he was going to have the Justice Department file an emergency injunction to halt the entire college football bowl season until an anti-trust investigation was completed, unless the university presidents and conferences in Division 1-A football agreed to his demands.  “We’re not going to go through another season where an undefeated 2008 Utah, 2007 Hawaii, or 2006 Boise State has no chance to play for a title,” Mr. Obama sneered angrily.  “Any system that tells us in 2008 that a Texas team that beat Oklahoma is ranked lower than them, or in 2009 has a 2-loss PAC-10 champ in a BCS bowl while the undefeated Boise team that humiliated them goes wanting is fundamentally unfair and unAmerican.  This is a corrupt system designed to maintain the superiority of six football conferences over the other five, and if there’s one thing we have learned in American history is that ’separate but equal’ is never equal.”  (Oh, how I have wished Mr. Obama could find similar backbone to stand up so forcefully for universal health care coverage, but even that’s not as popular as killing the BCS was!)

Mr. Obama’s plan was quite simple.  First, the existing contracts between all the bowls and all the conferences were declared null and void under anti-trust rules.  Second, a 16-team playoff was instituted with the winners from all 11 conferences gaining an automatic berth, plus five more “at-large” selections consisting of the next five highest-ranked teams in the BCS formula.  Third, to appease the bowls, only first and second round games were held on higher-seeded teams’ home field, while the semi-finals and championship were played in two of the current “BCS bowls” (Championship and Rose Bowl, plus the Cotton Bowl.)

Most interestingly, “consolation” bowls were created, where the losers of the quarterfinals and semifinals were matched up in the other three “BCS Bowls” (Orange, Fiesta, and Sugar Bowls), and four other January bowls (Outback, Capital One, Gator, and Liberty Bowl) hosted the losers of the first round match-ups.  Thus every team in the sixteen-team playoff has a chance to win a bowl game in January, and for the loser of the national championship, they still get a bowl win from the semifinals.

Some of the teams locked out of the playoffs, like BCS-ranked #14 Virginia Tech, #15 LSU, and #16 Oregon State, complained about such cupcakes as unranked Troy and Central Michigan taking what they considered to be their “spot” in the playoffs, but all three had three losses and found it tough to defend the notion that they had any better chance of winning the entire playoffs than those two teams.  The public’s support for President Obama’s playoffs was overwhelming and since the other two dozen bowls were still in operation, those teams and many others still got to play a post-season contest.  And as Mr. Obama said, the playoffs had to give an equal chance to every team from every conference or it wasn’t truly a playoffs.  When he made those references in his televised speech to Notre Dame’s “Rudy”, the Indiana high school team chronicled in the movie “Hoosiers”, and Buster Douglas’s knockout of Mike Tyson as icons of the American spirit of supporting underdogs, any hope of supporting a system that kept out Troy and Central Michigan was sunk.

Another consideration was that the extended playoff was going to possibly have the national champion playing 17 games.  The first two rounds would be held in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of December, then the Christmas Break, followed by the necessity of having one semifinal on Jan 2nd followed by a consolation game January 5th.  President Obama asked that universities provide special consideration for student-athletes this semester, apologized to players and coaches who might face a terribly short week with lots of travel, but insisted that the possibility of two deserving top 10-ranked undefeated teams having no chance to play for the title was an “emergency situation”.  The president told the country this would be the only year run this way with such a grueling schedule and in the future, teams will schedule only 10 or 11 games and the playoff bowls will be spread farther apart.

Just like that, the BCS “Berlin Wall” fell.  Schedules were shuffled and many people sacrificed many long hours in negotiations and arrangements, but the 16-Team Obama Playoff System was instituted.  The results, as we all saw last night and over the past month, were so thrilling that people are already thinking of the BCS as a dark chapter in college football history and can’t remember why anyone was so reluctant to change it.  The overnight TV ratings and the increased gate at the playoffs have already brought around those reluctant college presidents and bowl committees.  And as it turned out, the SEC, Big East, and Big 12 each got two teams into the playoffs and the Big Ten got three, and the big six conferences had eight of the twelve berths to the big six “BCS Bowls” anyway (with the Cotton Bowl earning “big six” status this year).  Let’s look back on a miraculous playoff system that may have just made college football more popular than March Madness and perhaps even the NFL.

First Round: The home games that took place the days of Dec 9-12 were quite an appetizer.  While the #1 Florida / #16 Troy matchup and #2 Texas / #15 Central Michigan games turned out to be the blowouts they were expected to be, these games were no less appealing than a late-season SEC or Big12 “cupcake” match-up that usually takes place late in the season.  There was even some excitement when Central Michigan scored first on an opening kickoff return TD, briefly sparking the notion of an upset, before Texas took the return kickoff on a five-play, 75 yard drive for the tying score, then scored 59 more unanswered points.

But the other six games provided some real excitement, even though every home team won.  #9 Pitt only lost in overtime at Autzen to #8 Oregon.  #4 TCU won by ten against #13 Penn State, but Joe Pa and company gave them a real game for three and a half quarters.  #5 Cincy squeaked by #12 Oklahoma State on a game-winning field goal.  #7 Georgia Tech never trailed #10 Ohio State, but it was never more than a 7-point game.  #3 Alabama survived a terrible performance following their close loss to Florida in the SEC Championship, but rebounded after three first half turnovers to take control over #14 Houston in the second half.  The only surprising rout was a game some people had picked to be severely mis-ranked, #11 Iowa on the blue turf at #6 Boise State, where the chip-on-their-shoulder Broncos dispatched the Hawkeyes by 21.

What was also nice is that two games each were scheduled on Wed, Thur, Fri, and Sat, with the top four-ranked teams playing on consecutive days.  Thus, Wed and Thur featured the Florida and Texas blowouts, but also gave us great Pitt/Oregon and Ohio State/Va. Tech games.

The first round consolation bowls for the eight losers of these games were then set, with the losers to the higher-ranked opponents playing each other.  This made for some competitive New Years Day bowls (more on those later).

Second Round: This round featured the top eight ranked teams in the country, quickly silencing some few remaining critics complaints that the playoffs might not determine the best teams.  Wed – Sat, Dec 16-19, featured a home playoff game each day.  The ratings for these games were through the roof, even surpassing ratings for some of the big bowl games from last year.

#1 Florida proved its dominance by pushing around the #8 Oregon team, which didn’t play its best game on the road.  #4 TCU continued to assert its legitimate claim for a title by handing #5 Cincinnati its first defeat, but we know Cincy fans will long recall the game for the “phantom fumble” call where an official falsely considered a fumble by the TCU QB on a sack to be an incomplete pass.  #2 Texas survived a real battle from #7 Georgia Tech, which was driving for the go-ahead score with two minutes remaining when an interception sealed their fate.  And in the first real upset, #6 Boise State goes into #2 Alabama and pulls off a stunning win when Coach Chris Petersen calls for a two-point conversion to win when a simple kick would’ve tied the game with :03 on the clock.

Of course, Oregon, Cincy, Ga. Tech, and Alabama go on to play in the Fiesta and Sugar Bowls, respectively, as consolations for their second round losses.

Semi-Final Week: The big bowls all began on January 1st, which included the Semi-Final playoff games and the consolation bowls.  To make the games as competitive as possible, the lowest-ranked seeds were pitted against each other.  #16 Troy and #15 Central Michigan put on a great show in the Outback Bowl (which some sportswriter dubbed the “Outhouse Bowl” as it featured the two lowest seeds) with Central Michigan winning on a game winning 4th-quarter touchdown drive.  #13 Penn State manhandled #14 Houston in the Capital One Bowl.  #12 Oklahoma State beat #11 Iowa in the Gator Bowl. And in the one New Years Day semi-final playoff bowl, the Rose Bowl, #1 Florida holds off a very tough #4 TCU by only four points.

On January 2nd, the other first round consolation bowl, the Liberty Bowl, had #9 Pitt beating up on #10 Ohio State.  In the other semi-final playoff bowl, #6 Boise State shocked the football world by defeating #2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl.

Final Week: On January 5th, the one remaining consolation bowl for the semi-final losers, the Orange Bowl, found #2 Texas getting beaten again by a supposed “mid major”, #4 TCU, and it wasn’t even close.  Longhorn fans complain that Texas had only three days to prepare, but they’re answered by Horned Frog fans who note TCU had just four days and farther to travel.

Then on January 7th, the final, real National Championship game was played by undefeated #1 Florida and undefeated #6 Boise State.  Looking back, it seems so obvious that a playoff that began with such a shocking and dramatic beginning would also have such a shocking and dramatic ending.  After a triple overtime thriller that people are calling the greatest college football game in history, I couldn’t be more ecstatic that my beloved alma mater, my Boise State Broncos, are truly the undisputed…

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!  Argh!  Egads, my alarm clock is ferocious!  I’m awake already!  Hey, why is my laptop turned on?  Have I been blogging in my sleep again?  What’s this?  A 2010 college football playoff?  With Boise State winning the National Championship?  Man, I gotta swear off the hashish and pepperoni pizza before I go to bed.