Every Saturday during the fall, I spend most of my morning, afternoon, and on occasion, evening watching college football. Every year is a repeat of the year before…two teams get to play for a national title and all the other teams that poured their heart and soul into the game are on the outside looking in. The Bowl Championship Series is an unfair and outdated system of choosing certain teams to the major bowls.

The system is built for and only for the six major conferences. The Boise States of the world always face the parody of a “nice” season by winning the Fiesta Bowl. Why are they not allowed to have a shot at the national title?

If the BCS is such a great system, then why don’t other sports use the bowl system? Imagine this, the men’s basketball selection committee comes out tomorrow and says they are changing from a playoff format to the bowl system. Everyone and their brother would be screaming about how stupid the NCAA is for letting this happen. Why is it all right for football to follow this system? This is an instance where we let tradition get in the way of progress. I am big on tradition, but not when it gets in the way of something that plainly makes sense.

For a long time, the destination for college football teams is a bowl game at the end of the year. Whether it be the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl or the Papa Johns.com Bowl, this is a system nice for lower echelon teams that have a 7-4 record and come from the Sun Belt Conference. I like to compare it to the NIT, It’s fun for the teams participating, but at the end of the day nobody really cares. I just find it idiotic that there are three undefeated teams and two one-loss teams that don’t get to play each other at the end of the year.

Some say that adding a playoff would make the season too long for college players. There is an entire month between the conference championships and the BCS bowl games. Why not get rid of this month that gets the players out of the football routine and most of the top teams have NFL talent and they are going to play longer seasons anyway.

Many people say that a playoff system would get rid of the money grab that is the bowl system. As sad as it is and the NCAA would never admit this, but college football is all about money. The bowls generate a lot of revenue for the schools that participate. I’m not just being a whiny Missouri fan but our team is a prime example for it being all the benjamins. In 2007, the #4 Tigers played the #2 Jayhawks at Arrowhead in what might quite possibly the biggest game ever played between the two. Missouri defeated the Jayhawks and went into the Big 12 championship game with a number one ranking. They were beaten by the Oklahoma Sooners, and to top that, the Jayhawks got the Orange Bowl bid over Mizzou. Why did this happen? Because of the Jayhawks prominent basketball program, the BCS felt the Jayhawks were a more marketable team than the Tigers.

While I it pains me to say this, I would say they were right, but it shouldn’t be about money, it should be about who is better on the field. That being said, the revenue created by the bowls are put to good use by the universities involved and maybe a playoff would get rid of that money.

I have come up with a solution that will make everyone happy.

To the left is a picture of my solution; an eight-team playoff where each game played is at a bowl location. This leaves room for the six major conference champions, and two at-large bids. All the other teams will still be able to play in the other bowl games, but they will have no affect on the playoff. Notice in the middle I have created a new bowl game, the championship bowl. If you believe that a certain bowl is more deserving of a semifinal, I have a solution to that as well. Each bowl will rotate its position every year so each bowl game is able to be a semifinal. Like every system, it has its flaws. I’m sure the ninth and tenth team could probably state their case that they deserve a playoff berth.

I’m also not completely sure that there should be automatic qualifiers from the six major conference championships, but this is just a start.

This will probably never happen, and the BCS will prevail. The BCS is designed to create a matchup between the top two teams in the country. In theory that sounds ideal, but at the end of the day it doesn’t get the job done.

Photo credit: Shane Keyser/MCT