What if the FBS Copied the FCS?

[NDSUstudent]

Ok this will never happen but lets say the BCS decided to copy the FCS playoff system....Here is what it would look like this year...

Autobid:
ACC: Florida State
Big Eest: L-Ville
B12: K-State
B1G: Wisconsin
CUSA: Tulsa
MAC: NIU
MWC: Boise State
PAC12: Stanford
SEC: Alabama
Sun Belt: Arkansas State
WAC: Utah State

At-Large:
Oklahoma
Nebraska
LSU
Georgia
Texas A&M
Florida
Oregon
South Carolina
Notre Dame

The Bracket: First round games are in parentheses

(Utah State vs L-Ville) at #1 Notre Dame
Oklahoma at LSU

(Boise State vs Wisconsin) at #4 Oregon
South Carolina at #5 K-State

(Tulsa vs Nebraska) at #3 Florida
Texas A&M at Stanford

(Arkansas State vs NIU) at #2 Alabama
Florida State at Georgia

[BisonNation11]

Did you account for regional traveling and second round inner-division match-ups? If not just give Patty a call, she can help.

[IndyBison]

One key thing it would have to copy is having a host school for each game to the finals. The Big Ten Championship game last night was a great example of why using the bowl locations for playoff locations won't work. Fans will not follow their team too many weekends to makes them big events. There were 40k fans at the game last night but in a stadium that seated 65k it did work. The reason I heard from most Wisconsin and Nebraska fans is they were holding out for their bowl game trip.

Basketball can do neutral sites for the following reasons:
The arenas they play in are smaller (typically 15k-35k in the first two rounds)
There will be 3-6 games at each site each weekend involving 4-8 schools
At most they will have 3 weekends

Some of these issues could exist with the 4-team playoff as well. Fan turnout will be less since each team will have a lot of fans saving up for a possible championship game.

[NDSUstudent]

Yeah for a playoff that size it would definitely need to follow the FCS in being on campus sites until the title game. The big issue with a playoff of that size is that you can't really do 12 game season and a conference title game unless you really extend the season into January. That is why I doubt a BCS playoff ever exceeds 8 teams.

I know they went with Bowl sites for the BCS playoffs but I wonder if eventually they will look into adding a Midwestern site into the rotation. I doubt the Big 10 likes being left out with no regional location in the rotation.

[bisonaudit]

Yeah for a playoff that size it would definitely need to follow the FCS in being on campus sites until the title game. The big issue with a playoff of that size is that you can't really do 12 game season and a conference title game unless you really extend the season into January. That is why I doubt a BCS playoff ever exceeds 8 teams.

I know they went with Bowl sites for the BCS playoffs but I wonder if eventually they will look into adding a Midwestern site into the rotation. I doubt the Big 10 likes being left out with no regional location in the rotation.

With a 6 or 8 team BCS playoff the conference championship games could, depending on the structure, become defacto playoff games.

[BadlandsBison]

I would like to see the conference championship games done away with and see the field expanded to 8 teams asap.

But with giant super-conferences I suppose a championship game is almost necessary.