This article is part II to an article I wrote a year ago about the most sensible way to align the teams in Division I college football to allow for a workable format for a playoff system.

In this article,  not only do I show you the way the conference can be broken up with regional sense but I also walk you through how the conference championship games would look,  how the playoff brackets would be set and how the bowl games can still be played in conjunction with this system.  In addition,  I lay out the dates that each event could take place and show how it can all be worked into the same amount of time that is currently being allotted for the current BCS system.

Just as a reference point,  I am posting my suggestion for conference alignments once again as I will need to point back to it in explaining the other aspects of the plan.  You will notice that the alignments have a regional feel and quality to it.  You will also notice that I do not lump all the mid-tier teams into a conference together.  The mid-tier teams are mixed in amongst others.  Those programs’ desires to obtain a championship will promote parity.

Each team each year would play every team in their division once and then matchup against a division from another conference for their remaining games.  For example.  In 2011 the Southern Conference East Division would play all the teams from Southwest Conference West Division for their non-conference games.  This would be rotated each year and no conference division would play the other division within their own conference.  So, in no given year would the Eastern Division of the Southern Conference play the teams in the Western Division Southern Conference for their non-divisional games.

Your overall record would be used to determine division winners with record within the division to be used as tiebreakers.

In this plan,  every team plays 11 regular season games.

Conference Alignments

East Region			West Region
Southern Conference			Southwest Conference
Miami	Alabama		LSU	Tex A&M
FSU	Florida		TCU	Texas
Georgia Tech	Georgia		Baylor	Houston
FAU	USF		Louisiana Tech	SMU
UCF	Troy St.		Rice	N. Texas
FIU	UAB		ULL	Arkansas St.
Southeast Conference			Mid-American Conference
Auburn	South Carolina		Iowa	Pittsburgh
Tennessee	Clemson		Purdue	Illinois
Miss. St.	Ole Miss.		Notre Dame	Missouri
Memphis	Vanderbilt		Iowa St.	Indiana
S. Miss.	Tulane		Ball St.	Miami Ohio
Mid. Ten. St.	Lou. Monroe		Bowling Green	Marshall
Northeastern Conference			Midwestern Conference
Penn St.	Ohio St.		Oklahoma	Nebraska
Boston College	U.Conn		Oklahoma St.	Arkansas
Syracuse	Cincinnati		Colorado	Kansas
Navy	Rutgers		Colorado St.	Kansas St.
Army	Temple		Tulsa	Wyoming
Buffalo	Kent. St.		Air Force	Idaho
Mideastern Conference			Mountain West Conference
Virginia Tech	North Carolina		Texas Tech	Boise St.
Virginia	Wake Forest		Arizona	BYU
West Virginia	NC State		Arizona St.	Utah
Louisville	Maryland		UNLV	Nevada
Kentucky	East Carolina		New Mexico	Utah St.
W. Kentucky	Duke		New Mexico St.	Utep
Northern Lakes Conference			Western Conference
Wiconsin	Michigan		Oregon	California
Minnesota	Michigan St.		Oregon St.	Stanford
Toledo	Northwestern		Washington	USC
W. Michigan	Eastern Michigan		Washington St.	UCLA
C. Michigan	N. Illinois		San Jose St.	Hawaii
Akron	Ohio		Fresno St.	San Diego St.

Below I have used the strength and records of the teams during the 2011 season to construct a hypothetical set of conference championship games to demonstrate how the system would work.  Every conference would have a championship game pitting the teams with the best records from each division against each other.   See what that would look like below.

Conference Championship Games

	Conference Championship Games
	East Region				Winner
N23	Southern Conference	Florida St.	Alabama		Alabama
N23	Southeast Conference	Auburn	South Carolina		South carolina
N24	Northeastern Conference	Penn St.	Ohio St.		Penn St.
N24	Mideastern Conference	Virginia Tech	NC State		Virginia Tech
N24	Northern Lakes Conference	Wisconsin	Michigan		Wisconsin
	West Region
N23	Southwest Conference	LSU	Texas		LSU
N23	Mid-American Conference	Notre Dame	Missouri		Notre Dame
N24	Midwestern Conference	Oklahoma St.	Arkansas		Oklahoma St.
N24	Mountain West Conerence	Arizona St.	Boise St.		Boise St.
N24	Western Conference	Oregon	Stanford		Oregon

Now that we know who are playoff teams are after the conference championships,  we can now begin filling our bowl games with their match ups.  In my system,  bowl match ups are predetermined by the place in which teams finished within their respective conferences.  So,  for instance, the Humanitarian Bowl each year would host the Southern Conference East Division 3rd place finisher against the Southwest Conference East Division 3rd place finisher.  Under the heading “Conference Matchup” you will see abbreviations.  This was done to preserve space.  However,  the abbreviations are for the conferences with divisions and the numbers stand for the place in which team finished.  So SECE-2 would stand for Southeast Conference East Division 2nd place finisher.  Moving further down the bowl list NECrun would stand for the Northeast Conference runner-up which would be the team that lost the conference championship game.   In the bigger bowl games like the Cotton Bowl for example,  you see ERDL1 v. WRDL1.   This provides for losers of the playoff games to play in bowl games.  So ERDL1 would mean East Region Round 1 loser v. WRDL1 West Region round 1 loser.

Bowl Game Matchups

	date	Bowl Games	Conference Matchup	Hypothetical 2011 matchups
1	D11	Humanitarian	SCE-3 v. SWCE-3	Miami	TCU
2	D11	New Orleans	SCW-3 v. SWCW-3	Florida	Texas A&M
3	D11	St. Petersburg	SECE-3 v. MACE-3	Mississippi St.	Purdue
4	D12	Las Vegas	SECW-3 v. MACW-3	Vanderbilt	Pittsburgh
5	D12	Poinsettia Bowl	NECE-3 v. MWCE-3	Syracuse	Tulsa
6	D13	Hawaii Bowl	NECW-3 v. MWCW-3	Rutgers	Nebraska
7	D13	Little Caesars Bowl	MECE-3 v. MWCE-3	Virginia	Arizona
8	D13	Independence Bowl	MECW-3 v. MWCW-3	Wake Forest	Utah
9	D14	Champs Sports	NLCE-3 v. WCE-3	Western Michigan	Washington St.
11	D14	Insight	NLCW-3 v. WCW-3	N. Illinois	California
12	D18	Military Bowl	SCE-2 v. SWCE-2	Georgia Tech	Baylor
13	D18	Texas Bowl	SCW-2 v. SWCW-2	Georgia	Houston
14	D18	Alamo Bowl	SECE-2 v. MACE-2	Southern Miss.	Iowa
15	D19	Armed Forces Bowl	SECW-2 v. MACW-2	Clemson	Illinois
16	D19	Music City Bowl	NECE-2 v. MWCE-2	Boston College	Oklahoma
17	D20	Holiday Bowl	NECW-2 v. MWCW-2	Cincinnati	Kansas St.
18	D20	Car Care Bowl	MECE-2 v. MWCE-2	West Virginia	Texas Tech
19	D20	Sun Bowl	MECW-2 v. MWCW-2	North Carolina	BYU
20	D21	Liberty Bowl	NLCE-2 v. WCE-2	Toledo	Washington
21	D21	Chick-fil-A Bowl	NLCW-2 v. WCW-2	Michigan St.	USC
22	D27	Outback Bowl	SECrun v. MACrun	Florida St.	Texas
23	D28	Capital One Bowl	NECrun v. MWCrun	Ohio St.	Missouri
24	D29	Gator Bowl	MECrun v. MtWCrun	NC State	Arizona St.
25	J1	Compass Bowl	ERD1L v. WRD1L	Penn St.	Notre Dame
26	J1	Cotton Bowl	ERDL1 v. WRD1L	Michigan	Stanford
27	J1	Rose Bowl	ERD1L v. WRD1L	Auburn	Arkansas
28	J2	Fiesta Bowl	ERD2L v. WRD2L	South Carolina	Boise St.
29	J3	Orange Bowl	ERD2L v. WRD2L	Virginia Tech	Oregon
30	J4	Sugar Bowl	ERD3L v. WRD3L	Wisconsin	Oklahoma St.
31	J8	National Championship	ERD3W v. WRD3W	Alabama	LSU

Now that we have that out of the way,  we can take a look at what the playoff brackets look like.  In this proposed system you have a 14 team playoff. You get your Top 10 teams from the conference championship games and you also get two wildcard teams from the East Region along with two wildcard teams from the West Region.  You select those wildcard teams as the two highest ranked teams in East Region that lost their championship games.  If you end up with situation where you don’t have ranked conference losers than you set up some parameters for selection and tiebreaker to take the two next best teams from each region that weren’t champions.  The majority of the time you will end up with ranked teams that lost championship games.

The highest ranked team in the East Region and the West Region would get first round byes while everyone else would play week one.  From there you carry through the normal course of a bracket playoff system and illustrated below.  The notations at the top with a letter and number stand for the date in which the games would take place.  So D15 stands for Dccember 15th.

Playoff Brackets

Playoff Brackets
D8	D15	D22		J8
Round 1	Round 2	Round 3		Championship
East Region
Alabama	Alabama
Bye
		Alabama
South Carolina	South Carolina
Penn St.				Alabama
Michigan *	Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech
		Wisconsin
Auburn *	Wisconsin
Wisconsin
West Region
LSU	LSU
Bye
		LSU
Notre Dame
Boise St.	Boise St.
				LSU
Stanford I	Oklahoma St.
Oklahoma St.
		Oklahoma St.
Arkansas *	Oregon
Oregon

In the end,  each team plays 11 regular season games.  The two teams that play in the championship game would have either played 14 or 15 games at the end of the season.  You have teams now playing 13 and 14 games in a season.  So there’s no extra wear and tear to worry about.

I will continue to expand on this as questions and comments are received about the workings of this system.  This system makes the most sense to me.  By all means, share your thoughts.