Strange. "Technically" this thread doesn't really belong on this forum ... but at least it was about football for awhile. To bring it back to that ... here goes.
I got to wondering what an eight-team playoff might look like. Trouble is, the NCAA gives us just a rank, without letting us in on the actual numbers. And, of course, they really only look hard at the very top. So … we’ll use their rankings along with some other power rankings where we have actual numbers.
We start with one rule: The P-5 conference champions are all in. That decision is made easier by the fact that those champions are all in the top eight NCAA ranking (those rankings in parens): Alabama (SEC, 1), Clemson (ACC, 2), Washington (P-12, 4), Penn State (B-10, 5) and Oklahoma (B-12, 7).
Now we’re going to need a second rule, which I have heard discussed … so it’s not new: No P-5 conference can have more than two teams in the playoff. That adds Ohio State (3), but bumps Michigan (6) and Wisconsin (8).
We need two more, and that brings teams like Southern Cal, Colorado, Florida State and some others into the mix. Trouble is, when you get that far down, you need better numbers than the crude NCAA rankings. So I combined an ESPN number, Sagarin and one other. Adding up those more detailed values gave me a clear choice of Southern Cal and Florida State. They were less than 2 points apart, with nearly a 5-point drop to Colorado. (That difference was almost entirely the ESPN power number, where the Buffs got hammered.)
So my bracket would look like this:
Florida State (9-3) at Alabama (13-0)
USC (9-3) at Clemson (12-1)
Oklahoma (10-2) at Ohio State (11-1)
Penn State (11-2) at Washington (12-1)
Of course, Oklahoma and Ohio State played during the regular season, so you might want to break that up and have
USC (9-3) at Ohio State (11-1)
Oklahoma (10-2) at Clemson (12-1)
Any way you do it, these all look like they would be great games.
FWIW, in this scenario, the Rose Bowl would end up with Wisconsin (10-3) versus Colorado (10-3). That seems like it would be a good matchup.