Tonight, the #1 ranked Auburn Tigers face off against the #2 Oregon Ducks for the college football national championship, per the rules of the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) that calculates the nationwide rankings of college football based on record, strength of schedule and performance in each game. Tickets are selling for thousands of dollars apiece and the nation will be watching to see who will finish on top.

In contrast, the ICSA has what a lot of college football fans have been demanding for years: a fair and exciting playoff system. In the ICSA, teams qualify by placing well in their district and then going to Nationals. In team racing, it's a 3-day, 14-team tournament, in Women's, it's a 27-team regatta with the top 9 facing the 9 who qualify from a one-day sail off and in fleet racing, the top 18 teams sail their way in by finishing top half at the two Semifinals.

But what if college sailing had a BCS syestem?

In the Sailgroove College Sailing Bowl Championship Series (SCSBCS), teams would be seeded by a complicated algorithm running on the Sailgroove servers that would rank all 300+ teams in the ICSA based on overall performance in intersectionals, championships, women's regattas, minor events, team races and eventually intangible advantages like slickness of pinnies, tolerance of cold weather and number of Groovy Move videos be factored in. The season would end with a bunch of ludicrously-long-named bowl championships for fans to get excited about, the finale being the Sailgroove.org Intercollegiate Sailing Association Corinthian Sailing Bowl (or similarly suitable name) in which the top two teams in the country face each other for the national championship of sailing.

The format would not simply be a team race or a match race, but a mega-race demanding depth in all aspects of college sailing. I propose a best-of-11 series of 7 vs. 7 team races around a double "N" course (see fig. 1.) Each team would include two FJ's and two 420's (two women's dinghies and two coed dinghies), a Laser full rig, a Laser radial, and a sloop (if Larks or Techs make a comeback, we can consider making substitutions or increasing the number of boats.)

For the 2011 SCSBCS Championship, I'm predicting #1 Yale vs. #2 Boston College meeting together in a venue known for this sort of a regatta format, MIT on the Charles River in Boston. While substitutions are certainly encouraged, I see the starting lineup looking something like this:

Boston College
Annie Haeger / Emily Massa (420)
Briana Provancha / Katy Nastro (FJ)
Taylor Canfield / Emily Magliaccio (420)
Tyler Sinks / Laura McKenna (FJ)
Carolyn Naughton (Radial)
??? (Full Rig) (maybe just leave it rigged on the dock and take a DNC)
Emily Maxwell +2 or 3 (Cape Cod 18' Catboat)

Yale
Clare Dennis / Heather May (420)
Marlena Fauer / Egenia Custo Greig (FJ)
Joe Morris / Blaire Belling (420)
Chris Segerblom / Liz Brim (FJ)
Emily Billing (Radial)
Cam Cullman (Full Rig)
Max Nickbarg +2 or 3 (Cape Cod 18' Catboat)

The computers are never wrong, of course, but certainly some in the sailing blogosphere would cry foul that two other deserving 7v7 powerhouses weren't selected:

St. Mary's
Mimi Roller / Katherine Gluskin (420)
Megan Magill / Meredith Powlison (FJ)
Josh Greenslade / Maddie Jackson (420)
Michael Menninger / Franny Kupersmith (FJ)
Kayla McComb (Radial)
John Wallace (Full Rig)
Ainsley Thomson +2 or 3 (Cape Cod 18' Catboat)

Georgetown
Amanda Taselaar / Karen Phillips (420)
Lauren Burke / Emily Gowell (FJ)
Scott Furnary / Katherine Canty (420)
Charlie Buckingham / Ashley Phillips (FJ)
Nancy Hagood (Radial)
Chris Barnard (Full Rig)
Sydney Bolger +2 or 3 (Cape Cod 18' Catboat)

For those of you (all of us) that haven't seen 7 vs. 7 team racing before, it's pretty much just fleet racing with the occasional moments of complete chaos coming into marks. I think we can stick with the 2 boat-length rule, provided that it's defined as two sloop lengths (36 feet), even for interaction between a group of dinghies. The magic number is 52--that is to say, 52 points or fewer is a win.  So a "play 1" is a 1-2-3-x-y-y, where x is ≤ 7 and y's can be anything, and a "play 4" refers to a 4-5-6-7-8-9-10 combination, if you and your team can realistically keep track of all 14 boats on the course.

To make the racing fair, a team of fourteen umpires in boatswain's chairs aboard large cruising boats would make the calls as best they can, but would also be supported by "the booth upstairs," for instant video replay calls to be made by the next mark. All unresolved matters would be resolved by a freestyle sailing competition judged by unsuspecting onlookers.

Suggestions are welcome, but I think this is pretty much the best format possible and I see no reason why this shouldn't pass unanimously at the winter meeting and go into effect for 2011 at the Gorge, replacing the traditional and rather stale current arrangement.

Chris Love is a sailing journalist, sort of, and host of the weekly video series Chalk Talk which airs during the college sailing seasons.  Complaints about his articles can be sent to chris@sailgroove.org.