A few years ago I came up with the perfect college football playoff system here.  With the Boise State head coach’s recent complaints, I thought it might be timely to provide this system again, and what it would look like if applied to the 2011 season.  I think it is also timely since there has been another reason that the BCS system is ruining college football – the breadkdown of lesser conferences.  For reasons that should be fairly obvious, the perfect college football playoff system would help to preserve weaker conferences, and may in fact strengthen them over time.  But first, a quick review of the system:

- Conference champions from every conference get an automatic entry (11 teams).

- The top five teams, after removing conference champions also get a place (5 teams), making 16 teams in all.

- Teams will be seated 1-16, with 1 playing 16 and so forth.  The higher seated team will host the first round game.

- All subsequent rounds will be neutral site bowl games, with pairings selected by a bowl committee.

For this year, the automatic spots for conference champions would go to:

Clemson – ACC
West Virginia – Big East
Wisconsin – Big 10
Oklahoma State – Big 12
Southern Missisippi – CUSA
Northern Illinois – MAC
TCU – MWC
Oregon – PAC 12
LSU – SEC
Arkansas State – Sun Belt
Louisiana Tech – WAC

and the at-large spots would go to:

Alabama
Stanford
Arkansas
Boise State
Kansas State

Making a few assumptions, the pairings would be:

LSU/La Tech
Kansas State/Wisconsin
Oregon/Southern Miss.
Stanford/West Virginia
Oklahoma State/Norther Illimois
Arkansas/Clemson
Boise State/TCU
Alabama/Arkansas State

Some interesting things to note – Neither Michigan nor Virginia Tech would even make this field, in spite of getting BCS bowl games this year!!  The Big 10 would not get a single home game, and unless they pulled off a road upset, would not have any teams in the final 8.  BYU would have to be one of the top 5 teams after conference champions are removed, to make the field.

Possible second round bowl games would be:

Rose bowl – Stanford/Oregon (Since no Big 10 team would advance)
Orange bowl – Arkansa/Alabama
Sugar bowl – Kansas State/Oklahoma State
Fiesta bowl – LSU/Boise State

Discuss if you like. (Note.  Updates added for accuracy after original post).