Tournament of Champions - 2005 Edition

The Tournament of Champions is a proposal for a playoff alternative to the BCS to select a genuine national champion among 11 division 1-A conferences and 119 teams. Invitations are given to all eleven conference champions and to qualifying independents. For the purposes of this run-through, the BCS rankings is used for the seeding order, and independents ranked sixth or higher qualify.

We've looked at the 2006 and 2007 regular seasons and the Tournaments they would have produced. For 2005, we have the first opportunity going back in time to test this system with a qualifying independent. Notre Dame at 9-2 will be seeded among conference champions having earned their place finishing sixth in the BCS rankings.

Seeding	Team	Conference
1	USC	PAC 10
2	Texas	Big 12
3	Penn St.	Big 10
4	Notre Dame	Independent
5	Georgia	SEC
6	West Virginia	Big East
7	TCU	Mountain West
8	Florida St.	ACC
9	Boise St.	WAC
10	Tulsa	Conference USA
11	Akron	MAC
12	Arkansas St.	Sun Belt

The Rose Bowl hosts the National Championship game this year, with the Tournament leaving some excellent teams available for the other top-tier bowls: Ohio St. (9-2), Oregon (10-1), Miami (9-2), Auburn (9-2), Virginia Tech (10-2), LSU (10-2), Alabama (9-2), Texas Tech (9-2), UCLA (9-2), Florida (8-3), Wisconsin (9-3), and Louisville (9-2). Pick any six for the Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange bowls for some outstanding matchups.

With a qualifying independent in the mix we have our first 12-team bracket:

Notable in the 2005 edition:

• With an independent qualifying, the fifth seed must play a first-round game.
  
• 2005 Tulsa is a decent team that improved throughout the season; its first-round matchup against TCU would prove to be a very good game.
  
• We have another example of a non-BCS champion (TCU from the Mountain West) out-seeding a BCS champion (the ACC's Florida St.)
• It seems that the Sun Belt conference is the bottom feeder in each of the 2005, 2006, and 2007 tournaments. Not being the bottom feeder would be good incentive for lesser conferences to improve.
  
• Penn St. vs. West Virginia and Notre Dame vs. Georgia are great second-round matchups.
  

And the National Champion is...

In 2005, the BCS probably had its easiest year with no controversy in selecting USC and Texas to compete. We also think nothing would stop USC and Texas from colliding in the finals of this tournament. We could see Georgia upsetting Notre Dame, and West Virginia having a good shot against Penn St. along the way, but otherwise we'll take Texas and Vince Young repeating their real-life victory over USC.