In light of this year's chaos of close games and mad upsets, no other season in NCAA Div-1 football history has proved that there should be a playoff system. The bowl system they got going on right now is pretty much "hey! You guys play them cause it'll be cool!" Honestly, in any type of sporting event, I don't understand why a champion would be decided in any other way besides a playoff.
Since it's been so crazy this year, ESPN has taken it upon themselves to see what would've happened if such a system existed and they created a ten team playoff simulation using NCAA Football 2008 on the XBox 360. The ten teams are as follows: West Virginia, Kansas, Hawai'i, USC, Ohio St., Virginia Tech, Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia, and LSU.
I thought this was pretty cool, so here it is; clips from this playoff system (actually it's only the clips from the team that really matters). Enjoy!
1st Round - UH vs USC
http://youtube.com/watch?v=njlYya7fHfE
2nd Round - UH vs LSU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YC9giv0_rhs
Semi-Finals - UH vs Georgia
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7TYhEiYOWqc
National Championship Game! UH vs West Virginia
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xK40zsP4cEw
Isn't that amazing?! If only there were a playoff system!! I know it might seem a long shot for Hawai'i to run the table like this but hey, the thing that makes UH so dangerous (besides their high powered offense) is the fact that all the players buy into their system and, more importantly, no matter what the situation, they always believe (and find a way) that they could win (it seems like this was a factor in the simulations as well). And that's what they got going for them against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Like Appalachian St. when they opened the season against Michigan, Hawai'i is a team that's used to winning (App St. isthe Div II champions for the past two years) and they just don't know any better.
So we'll see how accurate this simulation is come Jan. 1st and hopefully Hawai'i will shut the mouths of all the doubters (even if it is for this one season).
One final thought: If Hawai'i beats Georgia by a sizable margin, Kansas loses to Missouri, and the LSU/Ohio St. game is close, I think Hawai'i will be receiving a number of postseason #1 votes. What do you think? But we'll see because there's always that east coast love factor that you can never predict.
On that note: How does June Jones coach Hawai'i to be the only undefeated team in the nation, to Hawai'i's first ever BCS bowl game and NOT get the AP's coach of the year award?! I bet Colt Brennan's like "Hey, coach! Welcome to the hate wagon!" FYI for all you people already thinking, "He didn't win because of Hawai'i's schedule!" Such ignorance! While Hawai'i's strength of schedule was ranked 117th, Kansas' sported a schedule ranking 110! And that got schedule got Mangino the coaching award and Kansas up to as high as #2 this season! Meanwhile, Hawai'i struggled to get past #16 despite blowing people out! There was even a point in the season where Hawai'i won their game, Kansas had a bye week, and as a result of that, Hawai'i dropped two spots and Kansas went up four! What?! How do you win a game and drop and how to you not play and go up?! Talk about east coast love.