The Genesis of Winter Wildness

The Genesis of Winter Wildness
by Jeff Lewis

Editor's Note: When asked what could be done to fix the BCS, Jeff came up with the following interesting concept—one that could most appropriately be called "Winter Wildness."

How to fix the BCS? I would throw out the entire computer-based ranking system and instead run a national tournament. It would be a 64-team tourney, with byes and real regional brackets, in which the teams in the regional bracket are geographically located in the region. None of the "UConn is the number two seed in the West" nonsense that March Madness perpetrates.

Each region get 15-17 teams in their tournament bracket, which means that the top five get a bye until the third round (more on that in a minute). Here's the conference breakdowns for each region (with the number of team that qualify in each bracket in parentheses, followed by the number of total teams in the region):

East (17 of 32 teams advance to the tourney): ACC, Big East, SEC
South (17 out of 32): Big 12, Conference USA, Sun Belt
Midwest (15 out of 27): Big 10, Mid-American, Independents
West (15 out of 28): Pac 10, WAC, Mountain West

One benefit of this arrangement is that it would be slightly tougher for each individual East Coast team to make it into the tournament, so the West Coast could never complain about East Coast bias again.

Here's what a branch of the East bracket would typically look like (with the top seeds jumping in at the third round). America may not be ready for such a complex bracket, but I think it would make both the tournament and the conference races very exciting because it would give a substantial advantage for a conference championship:

Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5	Winner
SEC #3	SEC #3
Big East #5		SEC #3 v. BE #1
ACC #4	ACC #4
Big East #3			BE #1 SEC #1	SEC #1
Big East #2	BE #2
SEC #6		BE #2 v. SEC #1
ACC #5	SEC #5				SEC #1
SEC #5
SEC #4	SEC #4
Big East #3		SEC #4 v. ACC #1
Big East #4	ACC #3		ACC #1	ACC#1
ACC #3			SEC #2
		SEC #2 v. ACC #2

The winners of each region would meet for the equivalent of basketball's Final Four.

The major conferences in each region—ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big 10, Pac 10—would receive more tournament entries and more byes than the smaller and weaker conferences, but one result of the tournament would be much more exposure for the middling conferences than they currently receive because they would get to play more games before a national audience. Plus, a decent team in, say, Conference USA would have an excellent chance of getting a strong seed in the tournament. Here's how I envision the tournament invitations, by conference:

East
ACC (12 teams): 6 teams, 2 byes
SEC (12): 6, 2
Big East (8): 5,1

South
Big 12 (12): 6, 2
Conference USA (12): 6, 2
Sun Best (8): 5, 1

Midwest
Big 10 (11): 7, 2
Mid-American (12): 6, 2
Independents (Army, Navy, Notre Dame, Tulane): 2, 1
Note: The #3 teams in the Big 10 and Mid-American get byes to the second round, as does the #2 independent.

West
Pac 10 (10): 6, 2
WAC (9): 4, 2
Mountain West (9): 5, 1
Note: The #3 team in the Pac 10 and the #2 team in the Mountain West get byes to the second round; the WAC gets fewer teams than the Mountain West, but the WAC's #2 team get a bye to the third round.

One concern I've heard about having a national football tournament is that it might require teams to play too many games. In this proposed tournament, this could happen in the case of a Cinderella story, but because the top teams get a two-game bye, it would typically take only four victories to win the tournament (a Cinderella team with no byes would need to win six games). Top teams, however, would no longer need to schedule patsies to artificially boost their records, and the patsies would have a chance to play the good teams later, during the tournament, so non-conference schedules could be held to a minimum. If teams played one or two non-conference games, a eight game conference schedule, and one conference playoff game—in the case of the top teams—the national champion would usually only have to play one or two more games than is the current norm.

I also have a solution for saving the integrity of the bowl games. The playoff games beginning with the Regional Third Round would be considered bowl games and would use the current titles and sponsors. The major bowls would, naturally, come later in the playoffs. For instance, the Rose Bowl would be in the final four, between the West champion and the Midwest champion (likely the traditional Pac 10 v. Big 10 match up). For 2005-2006, there are 28 scheduled bowl games, and since the tournament would need 30 bowls, the NCAA could keep all of the existing ones.

In order to remove both computer-rankings and any Steve Spurrier-style-running-up-the-score from the mix, tie breakers for entry into the tournament would be based on teams' conference rankings from the previous season. In other words, if Oregon and Arizona are tied for sixth in the Pac 10, the team with the better ranking the previous season would qualify for the tournament. This would make the conference races sacrosanct and would give out-of-the-running teams additional incentive to continue to try to win (to help them qualify next year).