My College Football Tournament Idea

The first BCS rankings come out yesterday (and shockingly, my Purdue Boilermakers' 31-10 win at Northwestern was not enough to get them in ;-) , and once again the talk is out about how the system is flawed and there needs to be a tournament. Opponents always say that the universities need to hold their players to high academic standards and with the tourney, they'd miss too much class and possibly finals.....and I say, what a load of crap. Let's face it, each year, the players on the top BCS teams are not majoring in Geography, Undergrad Studies, or Philosophy. They are majoring in Football with their career in mind being the NFL, and if that's not their goal, they probably should have picked a more promising major with their free ride through college. Also, no one seems to complain about basketball where there is a 30+ game schedule sometimes (where a lot of games are played on weekday nights), a conference tournament, and a 64-team tournament that lasts 3 weekends. Obviously, the 6 BCS conferences, Notre Dame, and the Bowl Games are holding back progress with their exclusive TV deals and the lesser bowls complaining about losing their luster (like they ever had any to begin with). But, with all of that aside, here's my plan....

The Basketball tournament is wildly popular by having 34 conference champions had 31 at-large teams, so why not just copy it? People love to pull for an underdog, and giving the 5 smaller conference champs a shot at the title will bring in even more interest. My plan is to have a 16-team tournament with the 11 conference champions and 5 at-large teams, which could be the top 5 teams in the BCS that didn't win a conference. Just like the basketball tournament, their status as a conference champ would not matter in their cede and it could be determined by the BCS or a special committee. So, for example, the Sun Belt champ could be #16 and take on #1 in the first round.

Each week this season, I'm going to post an updated tournament bracket, just to show how intriguing some of these matchups could be....

Conference Leaders (ties or multiple division leaders broken by BCS rank)
ACC: Clemson (12)
Big 12: Texas (9)
Big East: West Virginia (5)
Big Ten: Ohio State (1)
C-USA: Tulsa (25)
MAC: Kent State (NR)
Mountain West: BYU (NR)
PAC-10: USC (2)
SEC: Florida (6)
Sun Belt: Arkansas State (NR)
WAC: Boise State (15)

At-Large Teams - Michigan (3), Auburn (4), Louisville (7), Notre Dame (8), California (10)

First Round Matchups
#1 Ohio State vs. #16 Arkansas State
#8 Notre Dame vs. #9 Texas
#4 Auburn vs. #13 Tulsa
#5 West Virginia vs. #12 Boise State
#3 Michigan vs. #14 BYU
#6 Florida vs. #11 Clemson
#7 Louisville vs. #10 California
#2 USC vs. #15 Kent State

Let me know what you think and I'll post an updated bracket next week.