I agree that bowl season is boring. Who can even keep track of them all? Every year it seems like there is another bowl or two that I've never heard of. It surprises me that there is so much resistance to a playoff, especially considering the billions of dollars the NCAA basketball tournament brings in.

Criticizing the BCS system for rarely putting the two "best" teams in the country in the championship game is like criticizing the NCAA tourney for rarely putting two number one seeds in the championship game. Stupid crap happens. Sometimes Chris Simms throws four interceptions. Sometimes Larry Johnson gets paid not to shoot the ball.

Once you accept the fact that a football team couldn't possibly play the six playoff games that NCAA basketball champions play in March, you're looking at cutting 32 or 48 teams out of the fun.

The bowl system is the only way to give the football equivalents of Gonzaga and Valpo their one chance to shine.

In relative terms, having an eight team playoff in NCAA Division I football would essentially be like doing away with the entire playoff season and going straight to the championship game in the NFL, NBA, or MLB (in terms of the percentage of the league that would be excluded from post-season play).

Finally: I stand by all of the above unless Texas loses the Rose Bowl, in which case, yes, the BCS is ridiculous.

My main target is not the BCS's failure to produce a true national championship. That would be easy enough, but it isn't my point here. My complaint is that the bowl system produces a whole slew of uninteresting football games. A playoff of 16 teams would result in 15 meaningful games.

Bowls do not allow the football equivalents of Gonzaga and Valpo to shine because the mediocre teams are always matched with other mediocre teams, producing games that no one watches and outcomes no one remembers.

I think this is the wrong approach. College football isn't about producing great games; it's about traditions and rivalries. If you want quality games, watch the NFL. This is why I'd prefer to college football to go back to old conferences tied to bowl game system. Absent a true playoff, we're not going to have a realistic national champion scenario (for instance, both Penn St. and Notre Dame are better than Texas), so I think instead of pretending that there is system, we should instead have the old variability. It's not like people didn't enjoy college football before teh BCS. I'd for one rather see Penn St. v. USC, Notre Dame v. Texas in the cotton bowl. If you want to add a playoff AFTER the bowls, fine, but I'd like to see Texas playing in Dallas against a top team, Pac-10 v. Big 10, SEC champ in the Sugar....

BuddingProf, I like traditional games, too, but the most meaningful rivalries of that sort are between schools, not conferences. And most such games are scheduled for the regular season. Most of the regional rivalries (Stanford/Cal, Auburn/Alabama, BYU/Utah, Ohio State/Michigan, etc.), for example, are regular season matchups, not bowl games.

And you are missing the elephant in the room. Thde BCS was created partly because "the football equivalents of Gonzaga and Valpo" could never reach a traditional bowl. Ironically, it was created in large part because of my alma mater, BYU, which is now locked out of the BCS unless is has an undefeated season (like Utah, last year). Some people complained that BYU didn't deserve the national championship in 1984, but because of the bowl system, that team had no chance to play the #2 team, Washington, which was committed to the Rose Bowl. Then in 1996, BYU had another great team -- they won 14 games and lost only once -- but again they were not allowed to play a top-ranked team in a bowl.

Of course, a playoff would not necessarily cure this problem. As long as the NCAA defers to the biggest conferences, "the football equivalents of Gonzaga and Valpo" don't have much of a chance. We will never know whether last year's Utah team was the best in college football because they were not allowed to play USC. That's a game I would have loved to see.

1. I'm not so sure that the bowls didn't have tradition -- pac 10 v. Big 10 was always a big deal, as was the inevitable Miami/FSU v. Oklahoma or Nebraska in the orange bowl.

2. The reason I don't like a playoff is that it will never be (and can't be) like a NCAA tournament. You just couldn't have enough games to create the cool egalitarianism of March Madness. Without dramatically changing the regular season, you could have -- at most -- an 8 team tournament and probably only a 4 team tournament. It has nothing to do with defering to big conferences -- it's a limitation of the nature of football which just doesn't allow that many games. March Madness wouldn't be that great if it started with the final four, and that's what a Div I-a playoff would look like.

3. A four team tournament wouldn't tell us who is best because -- unlike march madness -- we wouldn't get to see how the teams react to a number of different types of opponent. By forcing a team to win 6 games, we can almost guarantee that they've played a run-and-gun team, a defensively oriented team etc. But in college football that just wouldn't be the case. If there were a four team tournament this year, it would feature USC and three teams (texas, osu and penn st) all of whom are stout defensively, feature running qbs and decent though not outstanding passing games. USC could win the title without beating a top passing team in the playoffs when we know that passing teams (Notre Dame, Fresno St.) are what gives them problems. A short playoff just wouldn't provide that much information about the teams.

4. I think we can agree that the current system is the worse of both worlds -- a "scientific" method to determine a champion that holds out the hope of determining the best team but doesn't actually tell us all that much.

5. Finally, I think college football was more interesting when it was just left up to argument who was the best. I think the debate about who is really the best team is interesting and, if we didn't pretend that we had a system that told us, we could just leave it up to argument. I'd rather have a debate than a fake answer anyday.

Yes, if the playoff were limited to four teams, that wouldn't tell us much. But lots of people are pushing a 16-team playoff, which would require four rounds of games to determine a champion. Only two teams would play four post-season games (three more than the current bowl system), two other teams would play three post-season games, and four others would play two post-season games. That is hardly the disruptive force that opponents portray.

As for whether college football is more interesting when there is no clear winner, do you feel the same way about other sports? Why is Div. I-A college football the outlier here? It has nothing to do with the burden of extra games, concern about "student" athletes, or any other noble reason. It is because the bowls are in bed with the big conferences and the NCAA refuses to intervene. Don't you think it's strange that playoffs work so well in every other sport, including college football in other divisions, but seem impossible for Div. I-A?

1. Actually, I like (or rather, liked) that college football was different from other sports. Not all entertainment forms have to reduce to a single "best" form -- I like things to be different.

2. You missed my caveat -- "without modifying the regular season." I like the mash of conference games and the early season non-conference battles (although I'd like to see more of the later). The thing that is really killing a playoff is the conference championship games, which mean that, under your system, a champion team from the SEC, Big 12 or ACC would have to play their 11 or 12 regular season games, the conference championship game, and 4 playoff games, leading to a total of as many games as pro league. I don't view this as an improvement.

3. To bring this debate back to the normal topic of this blog, the difference between the old approach that I favor and a playoff system is actually a lot like the difference between domestic legal systems (with a "playoff" style appeals system, right up the championship game at the supreme Court) and the international legal system as seen by McDougal and the Columbia school, in which there was no authority, but only arguments of greater and lesser persuasiveness. The "no rules only arguments" approach has always grated on american legal thinkers, but its ambiguity appeals to me. Especially because it doesn't exist elsewhere...

BuddingProf: Do you think the NFL would be "better" without a Super Bowl? NCAA basketball without a tourney? Horse racing without the Kentucky Derby? I believe these events are the backbones of their respective sports, and that college football's popularity would skyrocket if they created an analoguous system.

What would it be? How about the BCS Tournament Championship. Take the top 16 teams, make a bracket, and assign a bowl game to each of the 15 games. So the first round 1 v 16 match-up could be the Capital One Bowl, and the finals could be the Rose Bowl, and it could switch every year like the BCS. If USC was playing, say, Wisconsin in the first round, that match-up would undoubtedly get much better ratings than this year's Wisconsin/Auburn Capital One Bowl. Wisconsin cannot even sell its allotment of tickets to students, because the game is practically meaningless. I bet all the tickets would be gone in an hour if Wisconsin was playing USC or Texas.

In a world where the money always seems to win out, I'm surprised nobody has moved towards a system where the top teams could play four meaningful postseason games. I know I'd watch them all. Moreover, even if your bowl isn't one of the top 15, invite two teams that aren't in the tournament. While the BCS Tournament would certainly overshadow those lesser bowl games, that really isn't that different from how things are now.

Justin,

I think I answered your question and that I said no. It's just that I don't think all sports have to be organized the same way.