Something has changed in college football as of this season. With the addition of Nebraska to the B1G, even if it came with a measure of buyer’s remorse, we have reached a point where all six of the BCS automatic qualifying conferences either a) have a championship game or b) play a round-robin schedule.
This opens the way to tweak the +1 formula that I’ve advocated for some time now, and the tweak is this: you take the top four teams with the caveat that they must be the champion of their conference (unless independent). No more taking two bites at the apple. This would cut Alabama out of the setup this year, and that’s fine. College football sets great store by the sanctity of the regular season, and a second bite at the apple is not proper for a team that didn’t take the chance the first time.
In fact, consider some of the logjams of years past. In 2003, this would have meant that USC, Oklahoma and LSU would have been joined by Michigan. Easy peasy. In 2004, with multiple undefeateds? USC 1, Oklahoma 2, Auburn 3, but not Cal at 4 (lost to USC) and not Texas at 5 (lost to Oklahoma) – so Utah, at 6, climbs on board. Simple.
This new formula will go into the reckoning this year come second week of December, as I do the annual “why we should blow it all up and go back to 1990” breakdown.
Meanwhile, I don’t have anything to say about the rapidly developing nightmare up in State College, PA, other than to borrow a quote from Battlestar Galactica: “Sooner or later the day comes when you can’t hide from the things you’ve done anymore.”