College Football Pretend Playoffs: The Seedings

The way it looks now it will literally take an act of congress to get a college football playoff and with a little more than a week remaining until Texas and Alabama face off in the BCS Championship Game we’re still left wondering what if. What if teams like Cincinnati and TCU were given opportunities to play for all the marbles? Would they get trampled over by a champion from a BCS or would they actually have a punchers chance at providing a March Madness like shocking moment? Unfortunately we’ll never know and instead we have a series of bowl games that look like this;

Rose Bowl – Ohio State/Oregon

Sugar Bowl – Florida/Cincinnati

Fiesta Bowl – Boise State/TCU

Orange Bowl – Iowa/Georgia Tech

BCS Championship – Texas/Alabama

Honestly, unless you’re a fan of one of those teams which game are you just nuts about watching? The Texas/Bama game should be fun for a championship but we’ve got to deal with Boise State/TCU before we get there. Really?

I’ve always argued that you could use the current BCS formula to select the top eight teams for a playoff and things would be much more exciting during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. How about this for the first round?

Rose Bowl - #4 TCU/#5 Florida

Sugar Bowl - #1 Alabama/#8 Ohio State

Fiesta Bowl - #2 Texas/#7 Oregon

Orange Bowl - #3 Cincinnati/#6 Boise State

Come on, you can’t tell me that doesn’t look like a better BCS Bowl lineup. Can you imagine the ratings for these match-ups? Advertising revenue would be through the roof with excitement and anticipation off the chart. The next round would move to the home sites of the two remaining top seeded teams and then finally a BCS Championship game that rotates sites as normal. It would be a lot of fun but we’ll never see it. So in the meantime we’re going to use imagination and computer simulation over the next week to play through our pretend playoffs.

2009 ACC Preview

It’s that time again! The preseason magazines have been purchased. The information has been digested and the opinions have been formed. Now over the next several weeks I’ll be cranking out my predictions and previews for the college football conferences beginning with the ACC.

ACC Predictions

Atlantic	Coastal
Florida State	Virginia Tech
Clemson	North Carolina
Boston College	Miami
N.C. State	Georgia Tech
Maryland	Virginia
Wake Forest	Duke

2009 Predicted ACC Champion – Virginia Tech Hokies

My Pre-Season All Conference Team

Offense
QB – Russell Wilson, NC State
RB – Jonathan Dwyer, Georgia Tech
RB – CJ Spiller, Clemson
WR – Aldarius Johnson, Miami
WR – Jacoby Ford, Clemson
TE – Greg Boone, Virginia Tech
C – Ryan McMahon, Florida State
OL – Anthony Castonzo, Boston College
OL – Thomas Austin, Clemson*
OL – Andrew Datko, Florida State
OL – Rodney Hudson, Florida State*

Defense
DL – Jason Worilds, Virginia Tech
DL – Darren Evans, Virginia Tech
DT – Marvin Austin, North Carolina*
DL – Ricky Sapp, Clemson*
LB – Mark Herzlich, Boston College
LB – Quan Sturdivant, North Carolina
LB – Darryl Sharpton, Miami
CB – Stephan Virgil, Virginia Tech
CB – Kendric Burney, North Carolina
SS – Kam Chancellor, Virginia Tech
FS – Deunta Williams, North Carolina

Special Teams
K – Matt Bosher, Miami
P – Kevin Jones, Duke
KR – TJ Graham, NC State
PR – CJ Spiller, Clemson

* Indicates second year I've picked this player for All-Conference