A look at the College Football Playoffs

This ESPN graphic is super helpful. Let's start there. 

So here are the top 6 bowls in the land.

Compared to the 2013-2014 BCS Bowls, the new additions are Cotton and Peach. As a refresher here was their schedule last year, with BCS in bold:

2013-2014

Peach: Dec 31
Rose: Jan 1
Fiesta: Jan 1
Sugar: Jan 2
Cotton: Jan 3
Orange: Jan 3

And this is the graphic above, but for an easy comparison, here's what's coming up, with this year's playoffs in bold:

2014-2015

Peach: Dec 31
Fiesta: Dec 31
Orange: Dec 31
Rose: Jan 1
Sugar: Jan 1
Cotton: Jan 1

That alone is an improvement, reclaiming New Year's as a college football holiday. (Sort of a shame for the NHL who has established New Year's Day as their holiday, but I suppose there's room for both.)

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Just for fun I thought I would look at what bowl games were like a generation ago. For starters, in 1990-91 there were 19 bowls. Last year there were 35. Which means that when I was growing up, making a bowl really meant something. This was the schedule of the last two days of the season:

Sun: Dec 31
Copper: Dec 31
Sugar: Jan 1
Rose: Jan 1
Orange: Jan 1
Hall of Fame: Jan 1
Gator: Jan 1
Fiesta: Jan 1
Cotton: Jan 1
Citrus: Jan 1

Holy Hanna in a handbasket, look at that. And that's it. That's how the season ends, with 8 games on the same day. For what it's worth, the Peach Bowl did exist, it was just on Dec 29th. I think back to back days with tripleheaders is a nice solution.

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The notable bowls that didn't get invited to the playoff series are Outback Bowl, Capital One Bowl, Gator Bowl. As an aside, I understand having sponsors, but you really need to have a name beyond the sponsor. The Capital One Bowl used to be the Citrus Bowl, but you wouldn't know it today.

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Speaking of sponsors, here are the official current names for the top 6 bowls:

Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl
Discover Orange Bowl
Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual*
Allstate Sugar Bowl
AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic

*This is a goddamn mouthful. I'm okay with the others.

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Here is the rotation schedule:

The next two years provide 6 games in 2 days, but in 2016-2017, New Year's Day is on a Sunday. The result is the Rose, Sugar and Cotton bowls get bumped to Monday. The Rose Bowl Parade is never on a Sunday, and I'm guessing the main reason is avoiding conflicts with the NFL.

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I'm sort of fascinated with the idea of neutral site games that aren't actually neutral. Both Illinois BCS games (and I went to both) were essentially road games. LSU in New Orleans, USC in Pasadena. Here are the locations and teams that could benefit from a home atmosphere.

Rose: Pasadena, CA (USC, UCLA, Stanford?)
Sugar: New Orleans, LA (LSU)
Orange: Miami, FL (Miami, Florida, FSU)
Cotton: Arlington, TX (Texas, A&M, Baylor)
Peach: Atlanta, GA (Georgia)
Fiesta: Glendale, AZ (Arizona State)

For what it's worth, ESPN just did a profile of the 16 teams they expect to contend for the playoffs this year. 7 of their 16 are listed above with potential home atmosphere. The schools that could come into play this year are UCLA, Stanford and LSU. Another way to look at it: 7 of the 12 schools that I listed above are being projected as top teams.

Here's a quote from ESPN's Mark Schlabach: "The committee doesn't want to put a higher seeded team in an unfair venue. For instance, if USC is No. 1 and LSU is No. 4, they won't put the game in the Sugar Bowl. Or vice versa, if LSU is No. 1 and USC is No. 4, the game wouldn't be played in the Rose Bowl. They'll try to reward the two highest seeded teams and put them closer to home. It might be more difficult protecting the No. 2 seed, depending on who the No. 1 seed is and where the games are being played."

If they are going to recognize some sort of home atmosphere advantage, it does seems like the Big Ten has a disadvantage in that area. But I can't blame anyone for not having a bowl game on January 1st in Chicago.