The BCS and Rationale for a Playoff, part II

With the updated BCS rankings, an eight team playoff would produce the following first round matches:

#1 Oklahoma v. #8 Penn State
#2 Florida v. #7 Texas Tech
#3 Texas v. #6 Utah
#4 Alabama v. #5 USC

The benefit of this new arrangement would keep Texas and Oklahoma apart until the national championship and would do the same for Florida and Alabama.

Regarding the bowl setup, I would suggest minor adjustment of the other bowls. There are a couple that are a joke anyway (the Meineke Car Care Bowl?). Just keep January 1st and January 8th free. I would also keep the Friday and Saturday that are two weeks after the major conference championship games free. This year that would be December 19 & December 20.

The weekend two weeks after the championships would be the first round - two games on Friday, two on Saturday. This will usually be far enough ahead of Christmas that travel should not be too much of an issue. The second round games would occur on January 1st. The highest remaining seed in the 2nd round would get the 8:00 PM Eastern prime-time slot while the other game would get a 4:00 PM Easter time slot. Finally, the national championship would occur on January 8th, convenient because it is exactly one week after New Year's Day.

This schedule would essentially offer the reverse playoff timing of the NFL. Instead of 1 week between preliminary rounds and two before the final game, this would offer 1.5-2 weeks between preliminary rounds and one leading up to the championship.

This creates minimal change to affect the other bowls. I think this would generate much more money for the NCAA, media outlets and involved schools. An Oklahoma fan would have much greater interest in the Fiesta Bowl and Sugar Bowl than they do this time around. All adding up to more money...

Thoughts?