Political football in colleges

Every fall, the old argument about a national playoff system for college football gets raised.

It seems like 99 percent of the population is in favor of such a system and believes anyone who isn't must be crazy.

The only (crazy) ones who apparently don't favor a playoff are a couple of hundred university presidents, various college football coaches and a few dozen bowl officials who enjoy walking around in garish orange and yellow blazers this time of year.

While I'm in the national playoff camp, I also believe bowl games shouldn't be eliminated. Bowl games do serve a purpose and are especially important for local teams, now that nearly half of all Division I teams get the opportunity to play in a bowl every year.

If a playoff system was in place right now with no bowl games, Utah, BYU and Utah State would basically be done for the year. Each has been eliminated from their conference races and with no bowl games, there would be nothing to play for.

Instead with myriad bowl games — 28 to be exact, featuring 56 Division I-A teams — each has a hope (well, the Aggies' is extremely faint, but stay with me here) and something to play for in November.

My idea, which is hardly original, is to have a 16-team playoff like Division 1-AA does, but keep the lower-tier bowl games for the teams that don't qualify. It'd be sort of like NCAA basketball, with a main tournament for the top teams and like the 40-team NIT in basketball, bowl games for 40 teams that don't make it to the main tournament.

The first round of the playoffs could be played at school sites in early December with quarterfinals, semifinals and finals being played at the seven biggest bowls, the four BCS bowls plus, say, the Cotton, Gator and Capital One bowls until the first week of January. The major bowls could rotate the semifinals and finals on a yearly basis, sort of like they do now with one getting the national championship every four years.

Under a playoff system with no extra bowls, most years the Mountain West Conference and Western Athletic Conference would get one team at the most into a playoff and perhaps none, depending on what method was used in choosing.

However, with bowl games still around during the Christmas holidays, it would give teams something to play for in late October and November when they would already be out of a playoff or conference-title hunt.