Football Mess

This year, the annual college football mess has been unusually chaotic. None of the top-ranked teams has proven it can win consistently thruogh he whole season, and the number of top 5 (top 2, top 10--take your pick) teams who have lost to unranked teams has hit a record high.

To be fair, the commentators this year have shown their impatience with the mess and the lack of a playoff system to resolve it.

I'd advocate a six-team playoff which takes three play dates to resolve (separated by two weeks, ideally). Teams 3-6 would play seeded games in the first round, and the winners would go up against the top two, with the finals to follow. This puts some emphasis, as is the case now, on finishing first or second in the rankings, and even more emphasis on finishing sixth vs. seventh.

I don't think you would let all the major conference champions have an automatic berth in that system. In order to do that properly, you'd need one additional round and make it a 12-team playoff. Teams 5-12 would play in the first round, and winners (perhaps re-seeded) would play vs. 1-4 in the quarterfinals, etc. I like this system even better, but it does require a fourth play date. One could begin the week after Thanksgiving; then you'd have the quarters in mid-December, the semis sometime around the New Year, and the finals in mid-January. It could catch on!