Xbox Playoffs, Part 1

After finally getting an Xbox recently, my first game purchase was NCAA Football 11.  While still playing around and getting used to it before diving into a dynasty, I decided to see how I would fare with a hypothetical playoff.

First, a disclamer on how I set up the game.  I tried to play all of the games at the "Varsity" setting, but a few might have slipped in as "Freshman". All games were played with five minute quarters.

Since the rosters are from the 2010 season, I looked back and picked out the eight teams that would have been eligible based on our playoff proposal.

SEC:  Auburn (final 2010 ranking:  1)
Pac-10:  Oregon (2)
Big 10:  Wisconsin (5)
Big 12:  Oklahoma (7)
ACC:  Virginia Tech (13)
Big East:  Connecticut (not ranked in BCS)
non-AQ: TCU (3)
Wildcard: Stanford (4)

Now, I realize that this little experiment isn't perfect.  The teams are programmed based on how they looked on paper at the beginning of the season.  Auburn and Stanford aren't even ranked in the defaults.

I also realize that there are several different ways to set up the playoffs.  For this version, I straight up seeded them based on their BCS rankings.  I then placed them in the four BCS bowls, trying to have the matchups make sense to be in those bowls based on location and current tie-ins.

Sugar Bowl:  Auburn vs. UConn
Orange Bowl:  Oregon vs. Virginia Tech
Fiesta Bowl:  TCU vs. Oklahoma
Rose Bowl:  Stanford vs. Wisconsin

I then decided to have the Sugar and Orange winners play each other in the Chick-fil-a Bowl, and the Fiesta and Rose winners would play in the Cotton Bowl (although I wish I could have gotten the actual Cotton Bowl location).  I couldn't come up with a good location for the "National Championship", so I just used Dallas Stadium again, but this time using the Big 12 Championship stadium, mainly because it had a smaller midfield logo.

Anyway...here are the results:

Sugar Bowl: Auburn - 37 vs. UConn - 0
Orange Bowl: Oregon - 10 vs. Virginia Tech - 63
Fiesta Bowl: TCU - 35 vs. Oklahoma - 28 / 2OT
Rose Bowl: Stanford - 34 vs. Wisconsin - 7

I played as all of the winning teams in the first round.  And no, I did not do anything to cheat in that Orange Bowl matchup.  I just kept giving the ball to Ryan Williams, and the Oregon defense decided they would just let him run at least 30 yards on each carry.  I even benched him for David Wilson at the end of the third quarter, and Wilson got three more touchdowns.

TCU got lucky to advance.  After Oklahoma missed a field goal, I got the ball down 7 points with under 30 seconds left to go, and no timeouts.  Three incomplete passes later, it's 4th and 10 with 9 seconds left.  That's the Hail Mary that actually completes, but it's only around the 30 yard line, so I figure I'm done with only 2 seconds on the clock.  Then I remember that it's college ball, so the clock will pause for first down.  I am able to run a hurry up and get one last play off, which somehow I'm able to complete a touchdown to tie the game and send it into overtime.

Round 2 went like this:

Chick-fil-a Bowl:  Auburn - 28 vs. Virginia Tech - 31 /OT
Cotton Bowl:  Stanford - 24 vs. TCU - 14

VT in the CFA Bowl felt a lot like TCU in the Fiesta Bowl.  I was up 14-7 at one point, but then the defense started falling apart and so did the offense.  Somehow, I was able to pull out another game tying touchdown at the end, and force OT.  Auburn elected to go on offense first, and VT was able to sack Cam Newton three times after stuffing the RB on the first play.  When I got the ball, I did the usual, even though I hate it - I ran the ball to see if I could get any yards, but keep it in the middle, and then kick the game winning field goal on fourth down.

Meanwhile, TCU's luck ran out in the Cotton Bowl.  Where they scraped by in the Fiesta Bowl because they could get one lucky play out of four, they weren't able to even get that.  This was the only game I played as the losing team.

Finally, the National Championship game, played in Dallas was Stanford vs. Virginia Tech, which was the Orange Bowl in real life.  But in Chip's Xbox world, VT won 24-7, in a game that was closer than the score let on.

So, we have Virginia Tech as champions in this scenario.

Now I have a few more variations to try:
-Seed the champions 1-6, then non-AQ as 7, and wildcard as 8.
-Try a 4 team, plus one scenario.
-Don't worry about seeding, and try to create matchups that the current BCS setup would allow.  This would give us the following matchups:

Sugar Bowl:  Auburn vs. Stanford
Orange Bowl:  Virginia Tech vs. TCU
Fiesta Bowl:  Oklahoma vs. UConn
Rose Bowl:  Oregon vs. Wisconsin