One of my favorite seasons is upon us, the college football season. I love watching my beloved Longhorns take the field and, more often than not, beat the competition senseless. There's just one tiny, insignificant gripe I have about major college football...THEY DON'T HAVE A PLAYOFF SYSTEM!
How is it that football leagues from the NFL all the way down to Pee Wee have playoffs to determine their champions but major college football uses a convoluted system of coach polls, media polls, computer polls and voodoo dolls to choose the top two teams to play for its "championship"? The antiquated bowl system needs to be put out to pasture and replaced with a playoff system that will once and for all crown a legitimate NCAA football champion.
In 2008-09 there were 34 bowl games. Quick tell me the two teams that battled it out in the "Papajohns.com Bowl"? (Rutgers & NC State) Or the two annual power-houses that fought to the death in the "MagicJack St. Petersburg Bowl"? (South Florida & Memphis) Do the fans of those teams really even care that much? If you want to keep these piss-ant bowls for pee-on schools I don't care. But please for the love of all that's decent give the fans (and majority of coaches) what they really want...a playoff system. I personally prefer a 16 team playoff but I'd be more than happy with 12 or 8 teams. Here's how you do the 16 team version:
1. The champions of the eight following conferences receive automatic bids into the playoffs: ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, Pac 10, Southeastern, Mountain West and WAC. All of these conferences must institute a conference championship game. No team in these conferences are allowed to play more than 11 regular season games or less than 10.
2. The remaining eight teams, regardless of conference, will be selected by using the current BCS ranking system (don't want to put those computers out of work.)
3. Playoffs start the weekend following the conference championships.
4. The first three rounds will all be played using the 14 largest existing bowl games (the NCAA can determine the 14 on their own).
5. The championship game can be held on a rotating basis.
And there you have it: A legitimate national champion.
And don't give me the ridiculous arguments currently in use against playoffs:
Argument Against: It would add too many games for the student athletes involved.
Argument For: Let's be realistic if you're playing football on a "scholarship" at one of these major schools your major is football. And all the minor NCAA conferences already have playoffs.
Argument Against: It would lessen the importance of the regular season games.
Argument For: Again I call BS. For example Texas beat Oklahoma during the regular season but thanks to a silly tie-breaking system in the Big 12 Oklahoma ended up going to the conference championship game and going on to the BCS Title game (which they lost). So in reality how important was it to Texas to have won that regular season game when a team like Texas is playing for one thing, a National Title. Anything else is a disappointment.
So please give the fans and the schools the playoff system they deserve.
