Playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs?

I think Jim Mora said it best.

I for one don't want a playoff in D-1 college football. It's the Football Bowl Subdivision.

I enjoy the yearly BCS conundrum. Colorado missed out on the national championship game by .05 points to Nebraska in 2001 - a team we'd hung 62 points on in their final game - ruining the corn's perfect season and preventing them from even the Big XII North, let alone the conference title. Granted Miami would have drubbed us like Oregon did, so it really should have been the Ducks playing for the championship. But I only mention this because my team has been kicked in the pants by the BCS, and I still think it can work.

It's certainly not perfect. First there is the rubbish about BCS conferences (see this post about the Big East). Then the fact that the Big Ten and Pac-10 have no conference championship game, which has already been mentioned by several BD bloggers. Though in years past this has allowed Ohio State and USC to move up the ladder after another school's loss in their conference title game, it could end up hurting a team like Penn State this year. If they had another chance to prove themselves, maybe they could sneak in to the conversation. After all, their only loss was by one point on the road on a last second field goal.

The conference championship game actually hosed Missouri last year. They beat Kansas in a highly anticipated rivalry week game, giving each school one loss and giving the Tigers the Big XII North. They then went on to lose their second game to Oklahoma in the Big XII championship, vaulting one-loss Kansas over them in the BCS standings. Kansas was then rewarded with a BCS bowl, the Orange Bowl, against the ACC's yearly patsy Virginia Tech. The only reason the Jayhawks won the Orange Bowl was because of their loss to Missouri to conclude the regular season.

Another pitfall of a playoff would be the issue of all the bowl games. Do they remain part of college football's postseason? (Though many of these pre-Christmas games could be contracted anyway. What is the Magicjack Saint Petersburg Bowl?) A playoff certainly takes significance away from earning a bowl bid for non-playoff schools.

I like what Ookie Crisp had to say in his 'BCS Bashing' post. The regular season is the playoff. You have twelve games to prove that you should play for the crystal football, or that you should land one of the premier BCS bowls. This can't be college basketball where 65 schools make the tourney after a thirty game regular season. Maybe everyone just wants a playoff so they can fill out more brackets and have office pools.

Just get rid of the computers; you can never trust a computer. Let the voters decide who should play for the championship. And if there was a playoff, none of this eight team business that's been proposed and supported by everyone from BD Sports to Gameday to Obama to Flo at the local IHOP. Four teams, the best of the best. This year that would be Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, regardless of what happens this weekend.

I'll conclude by alluding to another famous Jim Mora quote: playoffs in D-1 college football would be diddly-poo.