I've been a college football fan for as long as I can remember.  This interest has evolved over nearly four decades as I've seen players as diverse as Herschel Walker, Mark Herrmann, Doug Flutie, and many other past and contemporary gridiron stars take full advantage of their hours upon the stage.  There have been numerous great teams over the years including blue blood franchises such as Penn State, USC, Michigan, Oklahoma, and many others.  Classic titanic games have also been part of my visual football experience, including Texas' pulsating victory over USC in the Rose Bowl a few years ago, a late 1970s Sugar Bowl game between Alabama and Penn State which saw the Crimson Tide make a goal line stand to preserve a tenaciously fought 14-7 victory, Oregon spanking USC earlier this year, and who could ever forget Boise State's electrifying 43-42 overtime win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl a few years ago. 

There are also the coaches whose personalities and skills make college football so special.  These include Penn State's eternal Joe Paterno who will probably be strolling the sidelines long after most of us are gone, Ohio State's crusty Woody Hayes, Alabama's Paul "Bear" Bryant" and current big guns such as Texas' Mack Brown, Florida's Urban Meyer, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, and USC's Pete Carroll.  The festivity of a college football game is unrivalled.  There is the tailgate experience, the songs and chants of schools such as Kansas' "Rock Chalk Jayhawk," Oklahoma's "Boomer Sooner," Michigan's "Hail to the Victors", and Notre Dame's "Onward to Victory."  A variety of colorful mascots also add zest to the college football atmosphere as evidenced by Purdue Pete, Sparty Spartan of Michigan State, Texas A&M's collie Reveillie, and many others.

Determining who's the national champion as always been controversial in college football.  In 1998, in a good faith attempt to provide some clarity to this situation, the Bowl Championship  Series (BCS) was created.  This saw the four elite bowls:  Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, and Orange get the honor of  hosting the national championship game every four years with the top two ranked teams in the country.  This system was advantageous to teams from major conferences such as the Pacific Ten, Big 12, Big 10, Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference, and Big East conference whose champions were guaranteed spots in BCS games.  The BCS did not have room for powerful teams from less prestigious conferences such as the Mountain West, Western Athletic Conference, and other conferences.

This began to change in 2004 when an unbeaten Utah team received an invitation to the Fiesta Bowl where they promptly spanked Big East champion Pittsburgh 35-7.  This victory helped propel then Ute coach Urban Meyer to the  head coaching position at the University of Florida where he has won two national championships since then and is seriously contending for a 3rd national title this year.  In 2006, the unbeaten Boise State Bronchos from the Western Athletic Conference outslugged Big 12 champion Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.  The following year, Hawaii from this same conference, had an unbeaten regular season and received an invitation to the Sugar Bowl where they were trounced by Georgia.  However, the next year an unbeaten Utah team was invited to the Sugar Bowl where they decisively defeated a strong Alabama team.  However, since the Utes come from the Mountain West conference which is not considered as prestigious, they did not receive the opportunity to play in the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma and won by Florida even though Utah had a better record than either of these teams.

This year additional controversy is possible with the BCS.  Currently Alabama, Florida, and Texas are ranked in the top 3 and unbeaten.  Alabama and Florida will play each other in the Southeastern conference championship game and one of these teams will lose.  The way the BCS is set up Texas (if it stays unbeaten) will likely play Alabama or Florida for the national championship in the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, CA a few days after the regular Rose Bowl game.  However, Texas Christian University, the University of Cincinnati, and Boise State University are also unbeaten as of this writing and ranked among the nation's top teams.  Because of the way the BCS is set up, one of these teams (maybe Boise State) is likely to not get invited to a BCS bowl let alone have the ability to play for the national championship.

This unfair situation needs to be rectified because there is an increasing amount of parity in college football.  My modest proposal for resolving this situation is a sixteen team four round playoff in which each team is seeded as in the NCAA tournament.  For instance, the top seeded team would play the 16th seeded team in the first round.  There should be no more than two representatives from the six BCS conferences (in some years only one team from these conferences will deserve a BCS bid) and the champions of the Western Athletic Conference, Mountain West, Conference USA, and the Mid-American conference should also get invitations to this playoff.  The keystone four bowl games could be included in this as sites for quarterfinal or semifinal games and the championship game could be played at the site of the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls.  Such a system would be more democratic, allow for the emergence of a cinderella team, be a big financial bonanza for the television networks and participating schools, and excite the country's imagination.

Now if only the administrations and athletic departments of the BCS conference universities would end the restrictive cartel that the BCS is and open up the BCS to more competition!
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