BCS still a bust

We have been through all the bowls and we are now ready for the national championship game. However, something just doesn't seem right. Something doesn't add up. Everything we have seen so far was supposed to lead up to a final showdown. We were supposed to be taken on an exhilarating ride of excitement and emotion that built up into a magnificent college football finale.

But that didn't happen. We saw some good games and we saw some bad games. We even saw a few great ones. What we didn't see was anything that in any way led up to the national championship game. Everything that happened before has nothing to do with what is going to happen now.

And that is what is inherently wrong with the entire premise of the BCS system. It attempts to give us a great championship game instead of giving us a great championship postseason. By predetermining the two most deserving teams to play in the BCS championship game they have minimalized every other nearly-as-deserving team that plays in the other bowls – especially the BCS bowls. All this rhetoric – and that's exactly what it is – about preserving the integrity of the regular season ignores the fact that they have, to a great extent, destroyed the integrity of the postseason.

Nothing that happens prior to Jan. 7 has any impact whatsoever on what happens on Jan. 7. It was a lot better back when, for example, No. 1 played No. 6 in the Orange Bowl and No. 2 played No. 5 in the Sugar Bowl and No. 3 played No. 4 in the Rose Bowl and the national champion could come from any one of those matchups. At least there was some drama to the consequences. Am I the only one, or are the Jan. 1 (2 and 3) games a lot less interesting to watch now than they used to be? If you agree, then tell me if that is progress.

Yes, I know this is a masked argument for a playoff system but the entire postseason is such a disappointment. And, it is not disappointing because of what it is, but because of what it isn't. It isn't a system that brings out the best of the existing bowl structure and it isn't a system that brings out the best in the championship game. Most importantly, it isn't a system that ties these two very important factors together into one coordinated postseason plan.

That would be a playoff.

So, I am going to say this one more time – for this year at least – and then I am going to enjoy the BCS championship game.

We need an eight-team playoff. It should incorporate the top seven bowls and be done over a three-week period beginning somewhere around Christmas Day. We would use a system similar to the final BCS poll to select the eight teams to make the playoffs. All the other bowls would still exist very much like the NIT in basketball.

College football is all about change. There were multiple national champions at one time. There was once only a college division and a university division and now there are four. I used to even know what their names were. There was a 10-game regular season, then an 11, and now a 12. There is a conference championship game now, too. That is, unless you are in the Big Ten, the Pac 10 or the Big East. Then, there isn't one. There used to be only four or five bowl games. Now, there are over thirty. Yes, a lot has changed about college football over the years and a lot will continue to change as well.

And, we need to change the way we think about postseason play in college football.

We need a lot of smart college presidents, and smart college athletics directors and smart conference commissioners and smart bowl committee members to quit sitting around and thinking up reasons why a playoff system will not work and start thinking up reasons why it will.

That is the change I am most eager to see.

Terry Bowden is Yahoo! Sports' college football analyst. For more information about Terry, visit his official web site.

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Updated on Sunday, Jan 6, 2008 2:27 pm, EST

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