After reaching the 2008 Final Four, the North Carolina Tar Heels shocked many (including themselves) when they laid an egg in their semi-final game and never got a shot at a National Championship. With a star-studded team and a weak NBA Draft class, several players for the Tar Heels were put on the spot to decid between leaving and making millions or staying and having another possible shot at a National Championship. One by one, Wayne Ellington, Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Marcus Ginyard, and Danny Green all declared they were going to return to North Carolina in hopes of winning it all. And so the story of the 2008-09 UNC Tar Heels began, with the storybook ending of them winning the 2009 National Championship earlier this month. “Storybook ending” doesn’t really fit the ’09 Tar Heels quest, “expected ending” seems a bit more fitting. An overwhelming amount of experts and fans picked UNC to win it all, even President Obama, which isn’t surprising because he makes most of decisions based on what other people think.

We have all heard of “March Madness,” but the madness could be maddier. The NCAA basketball tournament has received increasing praise the past couple years because they use a playoff to determine their champion. College football; however,  has been the victim of much criticism with it’s BCS system they have had in place for about ten years. For all the proponents against the BCS, North Carolina winning it all in basketball was the worse thing that could have happened. Even though they have a playoff, ultimately the best team won it all, so why have a playoff at all? They could have pitted North Carolina against a randomly selected team from the top 10 in the country and North Carolina still would have won.  And so the BCS money rakers will argue, “why do we need a playoff when we already know who the best team in the country is?” It’s well known that nobody is going to change the BCS, but there is still room to change up the March Madness format.

We have officially copyrighted the following format under the name “JIB Bracketpalooza.”  Our format is simple and in two parts. A selection committee will be required to pick the top 12 teams and then 52 other good teams. The committee will seed the top 12 teams 1-3 and put the groups of three into four regions. Now here is where it gets interesting, the top 12 teams will each get to pick their first round opponents from the other 52 teams selected. After the top 12 have selected their 12 opponents, the remaining 40 teams will each have a “lottery ball” thrown into a rollercage and the rest of the matchups will be a lottery. If the point of a playoff is to find the best team, then seeds should not matter at all. A true champion will beat every opponent put in front of them, whoever thinks otherwise is mad, mad, mad, mad…

Tags: College Football

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.