UF and FSU Team Up Again! - This time for Football Playoffs

<p>The Gators and Seminoles have found a common foe and now, they are going to work together to try to defeat it.</p>

<p>At halftime of Saturday's game, Florida State President T.K. Wetherell said he and Florida President Bernie Machen are working on a proposal to eliminate the Bowl Championship Series and start a Division I college football playoff.</p>

<p>Wetherell said he and Machen are both putting versions of a playoff system together and will combine their ideas before officially proposing the plan to the NCAA.</p>

<p>At this point Wetherell said he is unsure what Machen will suggest, but Wetherell said he will recommend eliminating the 12th game and incorporating the bowl system into an 8-team playoff (he added he would be amenable to a 16-team format).</p>

<p>"You can do things like use the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Gator... whatever bowls you want, and rotate them into different rounds each year," Wetherell said. "And we have to get rid of the 12th game. That's just a way for the NCAA to pay off smaller schools in games that aren't just bad, a lot of times they're so bad they should have never been considered in the first place."</p>

<p>Wetherell said arguments that a playoff would take athletes out of class for too long are bunk.</p>

<p>"It doesn't make one bit of difference," said Wetherell, a member of the FSU football team from 1963-67 and holder of the record for longest kick return in school history. "The athletes would miss the same amount of time they do now under the current system."</p>

<p>Wetherell pointed out college baseball spans three semesters (winter ball and the season goes through spring and into the summer) and said more classes are missed for the NCAA basketball tournament than would be for a football playoff.</p>

<p>He said the addition of a BCS Championship Game this year is a positive step but not enough.</p>

<p>"I do not want to see Ohio State-Michigan again," said Wetherell, who added he is in the minority among ACC presidents regarding a playoff. "To me, the possibility of those two playing again is another reason to have a playoff.</p>

<p>"That happened with (FSU) and Florida a couple of times in the past and each time, the second game wasn't as good as the first."</p>

<p>Wetherell said he believes a playoff system is "inevitable" because of the revenue it would bring, but added it likely will take two or three years to phase in.</p>

<p>"Unless (Florida) gets screwed (out of the BCS title game) ... then it may be sooner rather than later," Wetherell said.</p>

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