How would you seed a I-A college football playoff bracket?

[Bill McBlueState]

Pretend Division I-A gets its act together and has a genuine playoff next year. How would you seed the bracket? How many teams would there be, who would get automatic bids, and who would get at-large bids?

I think a 16-team playoff would be ideal. It would start in early December, have three Saturdays of elimination rounds, then have a championship game on New Year's Day. This is essentially what the other three divisions do.

Automatic bids would go to any conference champion that has at least 8 wins over I-A opponents. This puts all conferences on equal footing while setting some minimum bar for participation. Then, the remaining slots would go to the highest-ranked teams that didn't win a conference. Something like the current BCS rankings could fulfill this function. Once the participants are selected, seeding would be done by a committee.

This year's participants, in no particular order, would be
Wake Forest (ACC champ)
Oklahoma (Big 12 champ)
Louisville (Big East champ)
Houston (C-USA champ)
Central Michigan (MAC champ)
Ohio State (Big 10 champ)
BYU (Mountain West champ)
Florida (SEC champ)
USC (Pac 10 champ)
Boise State (WAC champ)
Michigan (BCS #3)
LSU (BCS #4)
Wisconsin (BCS #7)
Auburn (BCS #9)
Notre Dame (BCS #11)
Arkansas (BCS #12)

Troy won the Sun Belt conference, but only beat 6 I-A opponents, all in its own conference, and thus would not get an automatic bid. West Virginia (BCS #13) would be the highest-ranked team not to go.

Comments?

[VelmaD]

1. I was just doing the math with a co-worker

And if Division 1-A did a 32 team playoff...it would take one less game than they currently have bowl games. A 32 team playoff takes 5 rounds and 31 games to get a winner. There are 32 bowl games this year.

[Counciltucky]

2. 16 teams: the 11 conference champions, 5 at-large bids.

This to me makes the most sense. It's not perfect, but as we've all found out with the BCS, nothing is. And let the bowls have the rest of the teams.

(Edited to add last sentence.)

[Bill McBlueState]

3. yeah, this is what the other divisions do

Although I still like the idea of having a minimum standard for a conference champion to qualify. Without that, you run the risk of the division fragmenting into super-weak conferences that exist just to provide automatic bids. The Sun Belt Conference is what I have in mind, where the entire conference comes up with about half a dozen non-conference wins each year.

But it would have to be an objective standard -- like eight wins against D I-A opponents -- not like the BCS setup, in which some conferences are in a permanent underclass.

[Redbear]

4. Also unlike the BCS: No poll should play a roll

I would do it just like basketball––with a committee.

[terryg11]

5. agreed, football polls especially are for shite

Nobody had Penn ST. in their poll even though they are an arguable top ten team.

Boise St. is good but doesnt make it past round two of a playoff system. Same with Louisville and WV out of the Big East

[terryg11]

6. going with teams listed in post, here it goes

In this bracket I seeded one through sixteen but gave the top four seeds to the big four conference champs, Big10, SEC, PAC10 and Big12. After that I did my best seeding job and included the bowl results so far.

1 Ohio St.
16 C. Mich

3 USC
14 BYU

5 LSU
12 Arkansas

7 Boise St.
10 Louisville

8 Wisc.
9 Auburn

6 Mich
11 Wake Forest

4 Oklahoma
13 Notre Dame

2 Florida
15 Houston

That's figuring that conference champs don't get automatic top bids. It probably works better for teams like Boise St. anyway, do they really want to play an undrrated Wisconsin or a much better LSU first anyway?