For the past two years, we began speculating what the college football playoff would look like that year. There were debates last year about Michigan State, Alabama, and Stanford all being involved. The year before, there was talk about teams like Oregon, Florida, Georgia, and Kansas State.
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But why should we only stop at two years ago? What if we went back to 1990? For all you college football history buffs out there, we have put together the playoff scenarios for every year dating back to 1990, which teams would’ve met in which bowl games, and what controversies would have arisen.
Because there was no committee for any of this, we are basing our match-ups on what the human polls were saying at the time, since it’s humans determining the playoff. Also, because the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are the semifinal games this year, the Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl are next year, and the Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl are the following year, we are pairing the teams up assuming the rotation would’ve stayed the same going back to 1990 and which bowl game would’ve hosted each team.
The records you see in parentheses are each team’s record before the bowl season began.
The scenarios laid out prove how the playoff will cause even more controversy and diminish the regular season, at least in the current format it’s in. You’ll see this with each year, and then we close it out with suggestions for the selection committee to make the system more efficient.
Let’s start with the most recent year, 2013.