College Football at the division one level is one of the most electrifying sporting events today. From the loud crowds to the crazy upsets, the college football atmosphere as a whole is amazing and a fun experience.

The most important month of college football is December. January is when the conference championships come into play and bowl game berths are at large, most importantly Bowl Championship series berths.

This is where the top teams play in the biggest bowl games such as the Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl and the granddaddy of them all, the VIZIO BCS National Championship where the top two teams in the country face off for all the marbles.

Although the previous BCS system had been around for years, there was always so much controversy on who should play for the national championship being that there would be teams who are not in the biggest conference with undefeated records and they somehow get bypassed. That’s not fair.

“The old BCS System was always in favor of the SEC just because of how big of a powerhouse that conference is with Alabama, LSU, Georgia and other big time SEC schools,” said Miles Gordon, football player at Hampton University. “It was almost predictable on who will be playing in the national championship that year because the old system went off polls and computer rankings, and almost every year it was the same team playing for the title.”

Let’s just say all that controversy is now out the window because college football has started a new system which is in effect this year. There will be a four team playoff to decide which team will play for the national title and the teams are being selected by a 13 member committee instead of a computer which is far more convenient.

This new playoff system has been long awaited and it’s finally about to come into play. I feel this new college football playoffs system raised the intensity of the season as a whole because all the teams in each conference are grinding to get to the playoffs so they can play for a national championship.

“I’m very excited to see how this college football playoff is going to pan out, being the fact that there are so many talented teams out there such as Ole Miss, TCU and Mississippi State,” said Donald Dicko, defensive backs coach for the Laney College football team. “These are teams that you would not have even expected to even be in the mix, so this is going to be very fun to watch come January.”

Each team selected in the playoffs will be seeded by the committee where the No. 1 seed will play the No.4 seed and the No.2 seed will play the No.3 seed in a semifinal game and the winner advances to the national championship which will be held in AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

“I got the opportunity to play in AT&T Stadium and it was so unreal, it was almost like a different world from the enormous jumbotron hanging above us too just how big the stadium was itself. I [have] never seen nothing like it,” said Aaron George, wide-receiver for the Florida Tech University football team. “I think that it’s great that the championship is being held there, that is really a big game atmosphere and for it to be there is only fitting.”

Now you are probably wondering, what happens to the teams that don’t make it to the playoffs?

Well just like last year there will still be national bowl games but just not as many. This year the highest-ranked non-playoff team in its respective conferences will advance to the bowl games. It will be the #1 team out of the Big Ten versus the #1 from the Pac 12 in the Rose Bowl, No.1 SEC team versus the No.1 from the Big 12 in the Sugar Bowl, and in the Orange Bowl it will be the No.1 ACC team versus either the No. 2 SEC team or the NO. 2 Big Ten team.

The Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl are the last three bowl games and the committee will decide on what teams will play in those.

This new playoff system will be intact up until 2025 and it’s going to be exciting to watch, especially since unlike previous years you really don’t know who will end up in the playoffs and the national championship game when it’s all said and done because there are a lot of good teams out there. All you can do is sit back and relax and watch the drama unfold because college football is in for a ride for the next 11 years.

Randall Shumpert

Published November 5, 2014