First of all, I'm not one of these playoff zealots who is outraged about the bowl system and the process by which they select college football's national champion. It's quirky and the recipe seems to get tweaked every time a weakness gets revealed, and a few years it has been downright unfair, but it's better than it was before the BCS, when the bowl match ups were haphazard and it really came down to the polls.
A FCS (Division I-AA)/March Madness style playoff is never going to happen, but it seems to me a BCS plus one concept could work pretty well within the current system. With the BCS bowls now spread out over about 10 days it seems it would be doable to have de facto semi-final match ups around New Year's weekend with a championship game a week to 10 days later, as this year's title game is on January 10th.
The current system is better than the old bowl set up and at least avoided situations like the 1994 regular season when both Nebraska and Penn St. ended the year undefeated, but didn't play because it pre-dated when the Big 10/Pac 10/Rose Bowl were part of the BCS' predecessors (called the Bowl Alliance and Bowl Coalition). As you look back over the last 12 years since the BCS has been basically in its current form, almost every year, a BCS plus one would have worked well, which I've had fun checking out while watching tonight's Sugar Bowl. http://www.bcsfootball.org/news/story?id=4809942
The very first year of the BCS pitted undefeated Tennessee vs. Florida St. in the Fiesta Bowl, (note that was before there was a separate title game, which came in with the 2006 season) but a number of teams could have laid claim to be Tennessee's opponent that year. Ohio St. and Kansas State ended up three and four in the BCS standings, though Kansas State had been upset by Texas A&M in the Big 12 championship game. That year, there were a number of one loss teams including Rose Bowl opponents UCLA (also suffered a late season upset), and Wisconsin who would have made good semi finalists.
The year 2000 is another good example where there were two teams left on the sidelines. That year, Oklahoma finished the year undefeated, but there were three one loss teams, Florida St., Miami and Washington. And even though Miami had defeated Florida St., and Washington had defeated Miami, Florida St. got the nod to play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. Wouldn't it have been fun to have a Florida St.-Miami rematch play the winner of Washington-Oklahoma to decide the title. Even a BCS plus one wouldn't have solved the issue in 2000 when a one loss Oregon St., which pounded Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl, and Virginia Tech would also had complaints, but it seems like a big improvement for the 5th place team to be left out than the 3rd place team.
In 2001, the BCS had another stumble, when Nebraska backed in to the Rose Bowl title game against Miami despite getting blown out by Colorado in its final game of the season. That year, the BCS third and fourth ranked teams, Oregon and Colorado were relegated to the Fiesta Bowl, but wouldn't semi final games featuring Miami and Colorado and Nebraska and Oregon been a hoot. (OK if we'd gone 1-4 and 2-3 Colorado would have played Nebraska, but some flexibility could be designed into the pairings to avoid intra conference match ups.)
The 2003 season saw Oklahoma which lost the Big 12 championship lose to LSU in the championship, even though many thought USC should have had a shot. Too bad we couldn't have had LSU-USC in one semi with Oklahoma playing Michigan in the other and decided it on the field, instead of the split national championship between USC and LSU we ended up with.
In 2004, undefeated Auburn was left out of the championship game as previously undefeated Oklahoma lost to undefeated USC. USC - Texas and Auburn - Oklahoma would have made for a great final four.
In 2006 (Florida over Ohio St.) and 2007 (LSU over Ohio St.) there were no major snubs, though Michigan and LSU (2006) and Virginia Tech and Oklahoma (2007) the third and fourth place teams those years might beg to differ.
In 2008 there were a bunch of one loss teams, though Oklahoma and Florida got to play for the championship instead of fellow one loss teams Texas and Southern Cal who were three and five in the final BCS standings (two-loss Alabama was fourth which would made for some controversy in choosing the semi participants that year).
And of course in 2009, there were five undefeated teams, so someone would have been left out, but undefeated TCU vs. Alabama and Texas vs. Cincinnati would have been pretty cool match ups (sorry Boise St., which was actually 6th behind Florida).
Detractors to this idea might argue that in years like 1999 (undefeated Virgina Tech and Florida St.) 2002 (undefeated Miami and Ohio St), 2005 (undefeated USC and Texas) or even this year, where there seems to be a logical 1 vs. 2 match up, the extra game would be unnecessary or even unfair to the top two teams. And while I think the Oregon Auburn match up is a great one, I would have also liked to see Stanford play Auburn and TCU take on Oregon in semifinal match ups.
I think the biggest stumbling block is the fact that teams' fans wouldn't be able to plan travel to a championship game if they didn't know their team was in it, or the burden of trying to get to both a semi and a championship bowl game a week apart. My thinking there is that the semi match up would resemble the typical bowl experience, while the championship game would be more like the Super Bowl or Final Four, which has a more neutral site feel. College fans who's teams make the final four in hoops don't know if their team's going more than a week in advance, and many of them manage to make the game -- the same would happen for a football championship.
This idea has probably as much chance to happen as a full blown playoff, but as the bowl season winds down, it's fun to think about and look back at some of the BCS semi final match ups that might have been.
Birthday shouts to CJ and AD, the January birthday boys.
