Like all SportsBlog Nation bloggers, I devote a small portion of each day to pondering many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - that every measurement of a wavefunction causes a decoherence among the possible superpositions, splitting into multiple universes of which the observer remains in only one. I'm reasonably certain that among all of these collapsing wavefunctions, there's on such path that ends up with me as the NCAA president (presumably after my successful coaching career).
That universe is infinitely better than this one, becuase that universe has an NCAA football playoff.
Don't ask how alternate-I managed it. I'm sure it required a fair amount of arm-twisting and backroom deals. Possibly a sex scandal was involved - I fight dirty sometimes. The point is, while we're getting ready for a month of tedious speculation, ceaseless bickering, and meaningless football games, Universe-CM is deciding a football championship on the field. A shocking concept, I know.
Here's the elegantly simple 8-team Carolina March playoff rules:
- The field consists of the eight highest-ranked conference champions and independents. If you're not your conference champion, you're not the national champion. Sorry Michigan and LSU, enjoy your bowl game.
- Teams are seeded by BCS ranking. (Not that I really care. A tournament committee would work, and so would a poll. I'm using BCS for simplicities' sake.)
- The first round games are played around the 17th of December, at minor bowl games. Lesser bowls will leap at the chance for a Florida-Notre Dame match-up instead of the 8th-place SEC team taking on the 5th-place Big East.
- The semifinals are Christmas Day, in the Orange and Sugar Bowls. The Fiesta Bowl can bite me; I don't know how much tortilla chip money it took for them to suddenly call themselves a major bowl, but we know better.
- The championship is on New Year's Day, in the Rose Bowl, as it should be. College football shouldn't extend two weeks into January - that's basketball season.
So straight from an alternate universe, this year's football playoffs:
Can you imagine how much better football that would be than the crap being forced upon us? Well, you won't have to imagine it, because I'm going to beat this point into the ground throughout December. I'm lining up other SBNation bloggers to actually predict the alternabowls, so we can periodically point out how much better December could be. Unless you prefer the fact you won't see Ohio State take the field for another 36 days. After all, what's more exciting - votes and polls and commentary or actual football?