College Football Plus 1 System Would Work

Nobody loves the BCS. At least, I don't think anyone does. It's a step up from the previous system, much like an 87 Geo Metro is a step up from horse and buggy. You can do better.

If you follow college football and don't pay attention to Phil Steele, you should. His preseason magazine is gold. He wrote an article about the BCS mess and has advocated for a Plus-1 system to determine a champion for years. It makes sense. Too much, probably. So we'll never see it.


You keep the BCS rankings, but instead of placing the top 2 teams in the national title game, you take the top 4. At the end of the regular season and conference title games, you put 1 vs. 4 in a BCS bowl and 2 vs. 3 in another.

So last season, Auburn would have played Stanford in say, the Sugar Bowl. Oregon would have played TCU in the Rose Bowl. The semi-final locations would rotate between the 4 BCS Bowls: Sugar, Rose, Orange, Fiesta.

Take 2-3 weeks off for rest and mainly to get things worked out like ticket sales and travel arrangements for fans. The winners would play the bye week before the Super Bowl at whichever BCS bowl's turn it was. Last year would have been the Fiesta Bowl.

It takes virtually nothing away from the regular season because 1 loss could potentially knock you out of the final top 4. For the team that finished 5th, they had a chance to control their own destiny. And more to that point, Steele went back and looked at every 5th ranked team since the BCS started and none of them were in the same class as the top 4. The only years the system wouldn't have worked perfectly (4 out of 14 I believe) the top 2 teams were clearly the 2 best teams and deserved to play automatically. Even then, they would have probably won the semi-final games and played for the title anyway.

Teams 5-8 could still play in BCS bowls as well, just like the current system. Last year it would have looked something like this:

Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma vs. Uconn
Sugar Bowl: Arkansas vs. Ohio State

Rose Bowl: Auburn vs. Stanford
Orange Bowl: Oregon vs. TCU

The winners of the Rose and Orange Bowls would have played 2-3 weeks later at a neutral site. We'd have none of this "TCU deserves a shot because they went undefeated too" nonsense. They would have a shot if they won their semifinal game.

An 8 game playoff could also work, but the Plus-1 system keeps the regular season as important as it's always been and it's the easiest system to transition to from the current format.