Wetzel’s playoff plan: I’ll drink to that

[CrimsonWhite]

I like Wetzel's plan. Except I don't understand why we have to kill the bowl games. Use them as venues for the playoff games.

Before we get to the playoff, let’s start by giving the Bowl Championship Series some credit. It might not be a good system, but it is better than the old one.

For decades, college football “determined” its champion by having two or three of its highest-rated teams play on New Year’s Day, only rarely against each other.

Fans at home would turn the channel (manually) and wonder why they couldn’t just have that great team play this great team rather than blow out two inferior opponents. (Too complicated was the answer.)

At the end of the day, a bunch of sportswriters, who probably watched only the game they covered in person, held a vote and named the “national champion.”

That was the system. Seriously, that was the system. If you set out to design the worst possible and least satisfying way for a sport to stage a championship, this might be it. Only through the clouds of nostalgia (and New Year’s hangovers past) does it seem even remotely palatable. Any college football is fun to watch, so you took what you got.

At least the BCS uses a convoluted formula to choose the two “best” teams and makes them play each other. For that we are grateful. The result has been a surge in interest in the sport. Which the apologists for the BCS like to claim proves their genius.

It doesn’t.

Wetzel's playoff plan: I'll drink to that - College Football - Rivals.com