Florida may be the 2008-2009 champions of college football, but yet again, it’s not a unanimous outcome. The Bowl Championship Series is a computerized system that decides who the top teams are, but doesn’t have the necessary algorithm to compute a top team when other factors are involved. As far as I’m concerned Texas and USC were robbed because they both were stellar squads that had fairly good seasons, but they finished third and fourth in the final standings. Both had one loss each, but were equally worthy of championship consideration. Utah was the only undefeated team and they finished second overall, but I wouldn’t give them the respect they feel is due because they haven’t beaten enough powerhouses.

That’s a bias that can only be addressed if there was a playoff system. The one I’m proposing utilizes games that are already scheduled, but I’m pretty sure nobody watches them. I’m talking about terrible games like the San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, which only exists so everyone has a chance to play in a bowl game. I have no sympathy for teams who don’t finish in the top 8, or top 10. If you didn’t make a case for your team, then better luck next year. What needs to happen is that starting Christmas Eve, there are a series of games that actually matter. Similar to the NFL system, we’d pit the bottom four (out of six) against each other and then with the remaining 4 teams we have them play on New Years day.

I don’t know why championship games keep getting pushed further and further into January, but a week from New Years, like it happened this year, should be the end-all, be-all. That way we could see who the best team really is. In this case we’d have Texas taking on Florida (a game worth watching) and USC playing against Utah (Utah’s funeral) and then the real champ is decided by a fifth and true-to-life championship game.

I’m not saying get rid of the BCS computers, I’m just saying sometimes computers can’t think like humans, and they need help. Combine the BCS computers with our rationale and you’ll have a more accurate, less debatable (cause no one will ever be satisfied) way to decide a champion. It might even create a scaled-down March Madness type of atmosphere, which college football desperately needs. And then all these corporations wasting money on bowl games nobody watches, could still invite mediocre teams to play if they felt like burning money.

Right now there are too many bowls that mean nothing. I’m talking about the Eagle Bank Bowl, the New Mexico Bowl, the Magic Jack St. Petersburg Bowl, the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl, the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, the Motor City Bowl, the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the Champs Sports Bowl, the Emerald Bowl, the Independence Bowl, the Papajohns.com Bowl, the Valero Alamo Bowl, the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl, the Texas Bowl, the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl, the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, the Brut Sun Bowl, the Gaylord Hotel Music City Bowl, the Insight Bowl, the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, the Outback Bowl, the Capital One Bowl, the Konica Minolta Gator Bowl, the GMAC Bowl, the International Bowl, and the Autozone Liberty Bowl.

The only bowls that matter are the Rose Bowl Game presented by Citi, the Fedex Orange Bowl, the ATT Cotton Bowl, the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, and the Fedex BCS Championship Bowl. In my proposed system, one of these games (the least important) can showcase the the seventh and 8th ranked teams respectively, although they’d have no shot at the national championship.

So again we really only need to focus on 6 teams, but if we’re overrun by one-loss teams we go to 8 if necessary, so that would involve a sixth bowl game. Using 6 teams we go through 5 games played in a single-elimination, three week stretch featuring the teams ranked #3 to #6.

#3 would play #6. #4 would play #5. The team with the highest seed would play the top ranked team on New Years day in a double-header featuring the second ranked team against the winner of the #4 vs #5 game. The winners of those games would then play the following week in a real championship game.

This way there’s no doubt as to who the champion is.

As far as I’m concerned USC is by far the best team in the country and they deserve to be #1. There’s not a single team in the country that is as littered with future NFL prospects. I feel that they’d dominate any team from the Big 12 and the SEC. Their one loss came on the road against an Oregon State team that was demolished by Penn State the week before. Penn State was then embarrassed by USC in the Rose Bowl. Texas beat Oklahoma, but they were denied a shot at the title as well. There are million reasons to change this system, but it looks like it’s here to stay. Seriously, what’s it going to take? It’s a Bad Championship System no matter how you look at it.