“I just want change. I don’t like what we’ve got,” said Texas Head Coach Mack Brown. “I don’t see the best teams playing at the end.”
The statement is one that has been continuously echoed by countless players, coaches and fans against the current Bowl Championship Series system that sees only the top two teams in the nation compete for the national championship. Even President Barack Obama weighed in on the matter, showing his support for a playoff system.
Longhorn fans are sure to remember the controversy from the 2008 national championship game when Texas was overlooked in favor of Oklahoma, who were beaten 45-35 on a neutral field by Texas earlier that season. The Utah Ute’s exclusion from the contest in 2009 as the only unbeaten team that season also raised further question marks about the validity of the title game. Had a playoff system been in place, Texas and Utah would have almost certainly been given a chance to state their case for the Coaches’ Trophy.
However, the public’s outcry was finally heard as the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, which includes UT President Bill Powers, approved a plan to implement a four-team playoff system that will begin in 2014 and last through the 2025 season.
A selection committee, much like the one that selects the teams in the men’s basketball tournament, will decide on four teams who will then be seeded and thrust into the semifinals.
“The strong sense,” Bill Powers told The Alcade, “is that the committee will be broad enough to cover the country geographically and that they will be able to watch all the games, but small enough that it can operate. I think we’re talking nine to 15 members. The new plan takes place in two years — we’ll want to get the details resolved over the next several months.”
The semifinals, scheduled to be on either New Year’s Eve or Day, are set to be shared among six bowl sites, including the Big 12 and SEC-run Champions Bowl or the Big Ten and Pac 12-run Rose Bowl. The final, which will be awarded to the highest bidder, would then follow on “Championship Monday”, the first Monday in January that falls at least six days after the semifinals.
Fans aren’t the only ones happy with the announcement.
“It’s an exciting time to be involved in college football,” Mack Brown said in a statement. “There’s more interest and discussion than ever before, and that’s a great thing for our sport. We’ve all wanted to see improvements to the system we had, and in my opinion, we’re headed in the right direction.”