By MIKE MITCHELL
Head Coach Sandpoint High School
By way of credibility, I am a coach of 30 plus years and that includes stints in the NCAA, NAIA, Junior College and High School Football. I have played for the state championship in two different states, so I feel I am reasonably qualified to speak out on the topic of a national play-off.
In other words, I am not some slappy who plays X-box every night and think I have all the answers. I am a football guy and have been for my entire career.
Last night's Boise State victory has got to kick us into action about putting together a national playoff. This year would be a good representative year to analyze how it would have worked.
It was pretty easy to come up with the top eight teams in the country. They were Alabama, Texas, Florida, Cincinnati, TCU, Boise State, Oregon and Ohio State. You can still analyze with computers but this isn't that hard to come up with simply based on records and reasonable toughness of schedule.
This would include all the undefeated teams and that should always be the case. Those teams should have a chance to work through the brackets to a National Championship. No matter how you do the draw, some teams will get a tough bracket but I gave the computer analysis credit and put the undefeated teams as the top seed in their bracket wherever possible.
So, the 2009 National Championship bracket should look like this:
First round on Dec. 12 would include Alabama vs. Ohio State, TCU vs. Boise State, Florida vs. Cincinnati and Texas vs. Oregon. Second round on Dec. 19, and National Championship on Dec. 26. January 1 could still be held for the traditional bowls.
If Alabama and Texas won out, some would say “see, we had the right two teams.” Yes, that may be how this works out. The difference is Boise just may have upset Alabama, or, Florida may have upset Texas. At least they had a fair shot to the title, which is all we expect in this country.
How would this effect the bowls? Let's just analyze the Rose Bowl. We would have to excuse the No. 1 team from a conference so this year’s Rose Bowl would be Penn State vs. Oregon State. This would still sell to TV and to fans in the seats.
So where is the lost revenue we keep hearing about? The constant excuse of lost revenue is weak. It simply holds no water and we the public are tired of hearing lame excuses from Bowl executives.
We have playoffs in the NFL, most divisions of college, junior college and high school. The Division I colleges are the only area in our sports culture not getting with the times, and we fans are tired of the excuses. Boise State University has just shown the whole country that it is time to implement a national playoff system.
Now excuse me, I am going home to watch the Orange Bowl, which has nothing to do with anything except it should be a good game and that is all we really care about in a bowl game anyway.