After a tournament that lasted far too long (largely due to a long break between some games), I have come up with the Xbox NCAA Football 11 National Champion, based on the Death to the BCS tournament suggested for the 2010 season.
Of course I'm not going to reveal it until after the jump.
You might recall that we had set up the following semi-final matches:
(8) Arkansas @ (5) Wisconsin
(11) LSU @ (2) Oregon
Playing as Arkansas and Oregon, I achieved the following results:
Arkansas - 27 @ Wisconsin - 21
LSU - 16 @ Oregon - 14
That ultimately set up the one matchup that I did not want to see happen. Although I am wondering if the game is somehow biased towards LSU, because I was having a hard time tackling them in just about every game I played against them.
So, I had a Fiesta Bowl (the site of the 2010 championship), pitting Arkansas (designated as home) against LSU. After a scoreless first quarter and a close first half, Arkansas blew out LSU 41-10.
In a championship game featuring the 8th and 11th seeded teams, number 8 wins.
Here is where I start seeing problems with the 16 team format suggested by Death to the BCS. I know I've said that rematches would be more welcome if they came at the end of a playoff. However, this was a case of two teams from the same conference, neither of which was the conference champion (in fact, I don't think either of them was a division winner), playing for the national championship.
It appears that the tournament was seeded based on overall record, regardless of conference standing. Although, VT's 11-2 record including a conference title game causes some issues, and still has them seeded below LSU and Arkansas, both at 10-2 and not conference champions. It fact, Arkansas got a first round home game while VT had to travel.
I believe the idea behind this seeding is that there is probably going to be at least one conference champion (usually the Sun Belt) that really isn't worthy of being on the same playing field as the top 15 teams in the country. Naturally, you would want them in the #16 position. But what if the conference champions were awarded the top 11 seeds? That could motivate the Sun Belt team to try to land a home playoff game. After all, look at the NFL the last few seasons. There has usually been a division champ hosting a wildcard game that had a worse record than any of the wildcard teams.
Looking at this tournament with a more NFL-like approach, here are the first round matchups (seeds 12-16 are wildcards):
(16) LSU @ (1) Auburn
(15) Michigan State @ (2) Oregon
(14) Arkansas @ (3) TCU
(13) Ohio State @ (4) Wisconsin
(12) Stanford @ (5) Oklahoma
(11) FIU @ (6) Boise State
(10) Miami (OH) @ (7) Virginia Tech
(9) UConn @ (8) Central Florida
Of course, there is another problem with this group of teams. There are 3 teams from both the SEC and the Big Ten. The Pac-12 sends 2 teams, while every other conference only sends 1. Therefore, the odds improve greatly of a conference matchup in the title game.
Ultimately, if a 16 team format was adopted, there would still be the ongoing argument for how to seed the teams. Who would get home games? Should conference champions be given preference? How do we treat two teams with equal losses, but one has an extra win?
If we drop down to a 12 team format, there is only one wildcard, at least for the moment. Shortly, due to the conference realignment, we will have two wildcards. But it will be much easier to make the argument to place the wildcard team at 12 (and 11 if it's teams).
Let's imagine a 12 team playoff. Stanford would be the only wildcard. Even at 11-1, they still have to travel. If they wanted to play at home, they should have beaten Oregon during the season. This also means that the Pac-12 (well, Pac-10 at the time) is the only conference to send multiple teams. If we were to seed Stanford based on record, they would be 4 or 5 - and that would certainly cause controversy.
Going off on a tangent for a moment, let's assume we're in a world where CUSA and MW have already merged. That would take out UCF (thus sliding UConn, Miami of Ohio, FIU, and Stanford up one seed), and bring in Ohio State or Michigan State as the final wildcard. That 12 seed is still a bit hazy, because I believe that was the season that there was a three way tie for Big 10 champion, and there was no good way to award one team. Either way, we have two 11-1 teams as wildcards. One would travel to play a 10-2 team, and the other would get another 11-1 team. End tangent.
Seeds 1-4 get a first round bye. Seeds 5-12 would be paired up as they are above. The one downside to this format is that you can't predict the exact matchups of round two until at least one or two round 1 games have been played. However, it would be much easier to schedule the games and not have any of them play at the same time.
Back to the Xbox playoffs, I had fun playing as different teams. Some games were more frustrating than others, and I would have preferred to have had my Hokies last a bit longer in the tournament. It wasn't a perfect method, but it provided an interesting look at potential postseason options.
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