A College Football Playoff System? Yes We Can!

Let's have a playoff already!

By VAI SIKAHEMA

Updated 11:48 AM EST, Sun, Dec 7, 2008

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It's time we settle this "mythical" college football national championship nonsense once and for all.

Let's have a playoff already.

The format is already done in Division 2 and 3, rather successfully I might add. You wouldn't even necessarily have to adopt the lower division playoff format, as the bowl games are already in place to assume a Division 1 national champ.

I watched second-ranked Florida knock off No. 1 Alabama tonight in the SEC title game.

That means this year's college football national champs will be a one-loss team, and it's likely two teams in the top 10, Utah of the
Mountain West and Boise State of the Western Athletic, may finish undefeated. I'm not suggesting that either of those two non-BCS teams should contend for the national championship, but wouldn't it be interesting to see how they'd do?

Boise State's Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma two years ago is still one of the all-time great college games I've ever watched.

College basketball's Final Four is probably the most exciting two-week span of sports in this country. It's our national version of soccer's World Cup. The Super Bowl is one game, and Major League Baseball and the NBA playoffs aren't that interesting until the championship series.

A college football national championship tournament would completely eclipse the way we decide the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the NBA championship, the Stanley Cup and the World Series.

For years they've tried, but professional sports can't duplicate the pageantry, excitement and thrill of college football. Imagine what would happen if a tournament actually existed to determine a true winner. It would be off the hook, as they say.

The best scenario I've heard is one that gives automatic bids to each of the six BCS conference champs -- ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, Pac 10 and SEC. Two at-large bids may be handed to an independent team like Notre Dame and/or from the remaining non-BCS schools in the MAC, Mountain West, WAC, Sun Belt or Conference USA.

The championship game would move around among the BCS bowls as it already does.

Say it's determined the Rose Bowl is this year's designated title game. Then, the first round of eight teams would be seeded according to ranking and would play in say, the Cotton, Fiesta, Holiday and Gator Bowl.

The final four would play in the Sugar and Orange Bowl or two other big pre-determined venues.

Then two teams advance to the Rose -- the Grand Daddy of them all.

All of those bowls would still be able to host it's festivities as it normally does now, but at least for this particular year, the Rose gets the big one.

The lesser bowls, like Independence, Emerald, Insight, etc., would continue to host the litany of "bowl eligible" teams as they already do. Perhaps the NCAA may even hold out a carrot for say, the Capital One, Alamo or Chick-fil-A Bowl to possibly break into the tournament and host an opening game. Who knows?

Smarter folks than me can work that out.

The system is in place. The public is clamoring for it. Coaching icons like Joe Paterno, perhaps tired of the years when he's had
undefeated teams, yet ignored by the voters, is for it. There seems to be overwhelming support for it, including the president-elect, Barack Obama.

Indeed, that would be a welcome "change."