Answering a Question With Another Question

I'm admittedly not really much of a college football fan - regardless of whatever you say about the passion and the purity of amateur sports, you won't convince me - the pros are better athletes, plain and simple. The chance to watch Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, LT and the rest of the otherworldly superstars in the NFL will always trump seeing 10 slapdick future grocery clerks and one superstar play in a 56-3 rout of Alabama-Birmingham. But hey, that's just me.

Despite that, I've probably watched more college football this year than during recent seasons, and it's pretty obvious why. This college football season has been the most exciting in a long time, provided you're not a huge fan of the traditional powers like USC, ND, LSU or Florida (although if you follow the Gators, you'll get a consolation Heisman out of it, so don't worry too much).

The 2007 installment has had the excitement and feeligns of arbitrariness usually relegated to college basketball, starting with Appalachian State's shocker at Michigan Stadium. Over the following months, we got to witness Ohio State's persistent falling ass-backwards into title contention, USC's failure to play up to its talent, LSU providing proof that the SEC has more parity than any other conference in the country and the constant hilarity that was Notre Dame.

All the shocking upsets and constant shuffling amongst the top 10 left me with one question - Did this season's unpredictability prove that college football doesn't need a playoff? I've heard the argument (most recently from Dan Shanoff) that the college football season basically is a playoff, because the top teams will ultimately play in enough tough conference games (and hopefully at least one tough non-conference game) to really legitimate their stake at a national title.

Or, is the opposite true? Did this season only just serve to ultimately give us a lousy national championship with two teams who just basically managed to play a weak enough schedule that they weren't tested at the right time. Ohio State seems like the perfect argument for this. I mean, if you were to really think of the two best teams in the country, I don't think there's any way you'd put OSU in the top three. Maybe the top five, but that's probably a stretch, because I still don't think they match up to Mizzou, WVA, LSU or even Florida and USC. Isn't that as good an argument as any for having a playoff system to weed out lucky pretenders from the national championship game? In the completely made-up tournament in my head, I see OSU losing in the semis to a team like Georgia or even Arkansas.

Of course, tangentally related to this is the question of conference championships. After a completely dream season, Missouri could get totally screwed by having to play a really tough Oklahoma team in the Big 12 championship, while Ohio State gets to sit home and root for the Sooners. My completely uninformed opinion is simple - either all the BCS conferences should have one or none of them should.

I'm not nearly expert enough on the politics or machinery of college sports to offer anything close to an answer on this. I'm only curious to know what people think - has this college football season answered, in any way, the debate over the current BCS system? If you're interested enough, feel free to write up an opinion and email us, and I'll post it as its own item (yellowchairsports@gmail.com).