by Zach Bigalke

Created on: March 12, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

First, it is wholly unlikely that a I-A College Football Playoff will ever come to fruition. But let's ponder hypotheticals if we will. The fact remains that bowls still dominate the college landscape and always will. They are older than any poll, any national championship trophy... and they will always be the showcase for the elite college football teams.

Any attempt at a playoff would work within the bowl structure. This would all work within the six (BCS) conferences: Pac-10, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, Big East and ACC. Each conference champ would get an automatic berth in the playoff. Then the selection committee would reserve the right to select the two teams it deemed worthy through whatever combinations of computer equations and pollster data - independent of conference affiliation, etc. There would be stipulations for entrance (i.e. the top-12 rule for mid-majors and Notre Dame's lucrative tie-ins) that will never die in this tradition-laden (read: set in its ways) sport.

Six bowls would be chosen and would rotate first round (New Year), semis and championship-game hosting. One bowl per year would host both the quarterfinals plus the championship game. Likely bowl participants would be the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, Cotton, and either the Sun or the Capital One Bowls.

Why eight teams? Why not four... or even just six, with the number-one and number-two teams given byes in the first round? Too often there is little to differentiate between one and three (just ask Auburn fans), and it would be very difficult to justify giving 1-2 a first-round bye in college football... if the point of a hypothetical playoff (and let's face it, this is and probably always will be only hypothetical) is to increase the fairness of who is awarded the national championship, you can't give ANY team a bye based solely on how much pollsters and computers liked that team... there would be as much inequity in that as there is in our current system.

This revolves around more than mere money; this revolves around nostalgia and history and "tradition" all greased with the fastidious lubricant of revenue. Bowls emerged as a way of rewarding a great team and its fan base with a warm-weather vacation while generating piles of money from the tourist infusion; a playoff system would have to work WITH the bowl system, because no playoff rally cry will ever be loud enough to usurp the bowls.

That said, a playoff would have uphill battles even if cooperating with the imbedded structure. Bowl committees like the finality that each game offers. It would be difficult to convince, say, the Rose Bowl to be a mere quarter-final venue. There is a long history of infighting among the bowls; even now, the BCS does little to deter bowls from choosing their favored participants. A lot of pride is involved in every college football decision.

This, in my opinion, is the most manageable way to organize some form of playoff system for the highest division of college football. In all actuality, though, my ashes will be long scattered across this earth before any I-A (FBS) college football playoff comes to fruition...

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