Taylor Lewan calls for homefield advantage in College Football Playoff until championship game

Former Michigan star Taylor Lewan has a somewhat controversial idea for the future of the College Football Playoffs. It would require a significant readjustment from some of the major bowls.

Simply put, he wants to see more playoff games played on campus. As the system is currently set up in the 12-team playoff era, only the first round of games are on campus.

That means there are four games played on campus before the games move to the more traditional bowl sites. He would see that expanded quite a bit, he said on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast.

“Here’s the thing, this might ruffle feathers in the BCS category,” Lewan said. “I think we need to do away with the bowl games. Just listen to this real quick. You play all the games based on ranking, so like if you’re a one seed you have a home all the way to college football Super Bowl.

“And then every year it would go between Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, all those things. That’s where it would kind of move around, so you still get a touch and a taste of those historic BCS games.”

Do away with bowl games altogether? Now that’s a far more controversial topic. However, Lewan later clarified that he didn’t necessarily mean get rid of bowl games altogether. Instead, he simply wants to see more games played at home.

“First, second, third round needs to be (on campus). I think bowl games are fine,” he said. “But when it comes to the College Football Playoff, I think home field advantage should play all the way until the final game, the college football championship. College football championship, neutral site, you’re playing in Pasadena, you’re playing in New Orleans, wherever. Like you pick a spot, they bid for that spot, they go play there. And every year kind of switches like the Super Bowl.”

There are obvious drawbacks to this plan. First, you’d be hard pressed to get the New Year’s Six bowls to agree to a plan that would see their games played only once every several years, rather than once every couple.

The current setup keeps those major bowl games happy enough, and they won’t want to risk that. But outside of that, the idea has some merit.

Home games were relatively boring in terms of the quality of football played in the first round — some of that is just the natural seeding of things. But play further than just the first round and all the sudden the matchups get juicier and juicier.

Anyway, it’s food for thought. There will be plenty of that in the weeks and months to come as the future of the College Football Playoff is decided.