LSU and How to Fix the BCS

LSU is not the reigning National Champion, people. Everytime I hear that, it reminds me that college football is the only sport in the world without a real champion. There is a season ending poll, and a BCS championship whose participants are chosen by computer, but no real champion. If anything, USC was the national champion last year because they won the poll that mattered -- the poll that wasn't attached to the BCS. And I don't even like USC.

The BCS would be so easy to fix -- you could have the current system AND an 8-team National Playoff pathetically easy. Here's how to do it:

The 5 Power Conferences (the BCS conferences minus the Big East, which stinks w/o Miami) each get an automatic bid to the group of 8, for each conference champion. This will do 2 things: It will eliminate games in early September having any bearing on the National Championship, and it will keep hope alive for teams that schedule tough and lose 2 non-conference games.

The 3 remaining slots would be filled by the top 3 at-large teams, either decided by the current BCS computer rankings, or by a committee like for the Men's Basketball Tournament. The 8 teams would then be seeded by computer or committee ranking and put into quarterfinals at the home teams' stadiums. The quarterfinals would be played a week or two after the season ends, with the semifinals a week after that. The Chamionship game could be played on Jan 1st if you want it old school, or Jan. 2 if you want a separate special night. The other, totally meaningless Bowls would be played as normal, with the quarterfinal losers pairing off into 2 BCS bowls and playing each other and the semifinal losers playing in the National 3rd Place Game, also a BCS bowl.

You see, everything would stay exactly the same, except you have a proper National Champion and 6 extra post-season moneymaking games. Who would be against this? Also, teams wouldn't schedule all wussy teams in non-conference because there would be no reason to. Conference games would be the ones that really matter, and if they didn't win their conference, they would need schedule strength to get one of the highly competitive at-large bids.

The one downside I see is 4 elite programs getting to play 3 post-season games, taxing those poor kids. Oh, who am I kidding? Those "poor kids" won the athletic lottery. They will have every chance to be successful in life. Don't they owe America 2 extra games once in a while? We'd do it for their kid, if we had the talent. Plus, don't these kids WANT a real National Championship? Don't they WANT adulation and their name in lights as much as possible? Cry no tears for the players, kemosabe. If they didn't want to play college football, they shouldn't be playing college football.

Hey, you and I just wasted some time, because this will never happen. But it's fun to dream...