Ramblin' Racket hasn't featured enough general commentary on college football lately, and with season's end rapidly approaching, now is the time to get it out.  And what's football fans' favorite subject?  Playoffs.

Everyone loves to gripe about major college football's lack of a playoff to determine a "true" champion.  The fact is, we don't need it.  How can I back that up?  Because we've never had one, and everything has worked out fine.  I'm going to break down, in my eyes, the bad things about our current system, and the good things about it.

Here are the problems with Division 1-A's current postseason structure (these are in no particular order, i.e. not ranked biggest to smallest problem):

(1) With the BCS, an arguably deserving team may get left out of the national championship game.
This is certainly a legitimate issue, and we've seen such circumstances lately.  Auburn in 2004 is the most obvious example of this, with the Tigers going through a powerhouse conference undefeated yet left on the outside looking in.  Michigan this year is another example, although arguing the merits of the Wolverines versus the Florida Gators is a huge can of worms I don't care to open.

I think they lived past not going to the BCS title game.

Another great example is 2003's USC Trojans, who were ranked 3rd in the BCS despite #1 rankings in both human polls.  And guess what?  They received an AP national title following their Rose Bowl win.  And that example leads me to believe, #1 on this list is not that big of a deal.  Not being BCS champ doesn't mean you can't be A national champ.  So they "split" the title, true.  That leads me to...

(2) There may be a split championship, i.e. no "undisputed" champion.
In the modern era, with information on teams across the nation easily available, there is consensus most years on the national champion.  Sometimes, though, the major polls still split.  In the past 30 years, there have been five split titles (including GT & Colorado in 1990).  All of those teams claim the title from that given year, and whom does it hurt?  No one.  At worst, it gives fans something to gripe about, and if there's anything fans love, it's something to gripe about.  An undisputed champion would cut out about half of American men's conversation material during the holiday season.

Sure, I wasn't happy about Colorado getting part of the 1990 title, but I lived.

Also (and this is admittedly very cheesy), multiple champions allows more joy across the country.  Who says that only one fanbase in the whole USA should get to enjoy the warm-n-fuzzies that come with a national championship?  One of my policies is that more happiness is always a better thing.

(3) It's nearly impossible for a "mid-major" team to win the championship.
In my opinion, this is the strongest argument for a playoff.  Brigham Young is the only non-BCS conference school other than Notre Dame to have won a national championship (1984), and may stay as such for a long, long time.  We'll never learn just how good the 2004 Utah team was,  and whether they could have won the title game.  For a non-BCS team to win a title, they would probably need to schedule several elite BCS schools and go undefeated on the season.  Unfortunately, even then they could get the shaft.  This is a legit reason the current system sucks.

Could they have won it all?  We'll never know."

(4) There are too many bowls.
I don't mind a lot of bowl games.  Everyone knows which bowls matter.  No one thinks that the Houston Bowl is as prestigious as the Orange Bowl, or even as prestigious as the Citrus Bowl.  And if Joe I-Don't-Watch-Football has that misconception, his neighbor will let him know what the deal is.  Bowl games reward players for a (usually) winning season, and pump money into a city's economy.  If it's good for the economy, then it's good for America.  I hope you're not anti-America.

(5) I have to listen to people whine about there being no playoff.
The only thing more annoying than fans whining about the bowl system is listening to potheads whine about how marijuana should be illegal.  You know how annoying they are?  Yeah, playoff-pushers, that's what y'all sound like.

(1) Lots of teams/fans get to be happy.
Like I said above, I think more joy > less joy, in almost all circumstances.  In a playoff, one and only one program gets to end its season truly happy.  With the bowls, even the International Bowl champions get to say "Yay! We're International Bowl champions," rather than "Yay, we lost in the first round of the playoffs to the #1 seed!"  Two years ago, my father and I had a great time visiting Orlando and watching Tech whup up on Syracuse in the Champs Sports Bowl.  Neither of us had any illusion that we'd just completed a fantastic season, but we had fun in another city during the holidays.

(2) Other football divisions get more TV time.
Right around now, you may have been watching the Division 1-AA or Div. II or Div. 3 playoffs.  Most of these teams get minor regional television coverage, if they get any ever.  In the playoffs, they get to be on national ESPN coverage.  If we were in the midst of a Division 1-A playoff, I doubt you'd see as much of these teams... Maaaaybe on the U, but that basically means you don't see them.

National title.  Friday at 8PM.  You know you wanna watch.

(3) Playoffs take a long time & a lot of games.
People often compare a theoretical football playoff to March Madness, but the similarities are fairly slim.  Teams can play basketball games on consecutive days without much trouble, but football is a hugely physical sport, and playing with less than a week's recovery is both dangerous and fatiguing for players.  Also, adding several games to the players' schedules is dangerous in and of itself.  In any given game, any given player can easily be injured, meaning a playoff increases the chances of injuries substantially.

To this argument, people often like to point out that other divisions play the games, so why can't D-1A?  For one, big-time football is played by (mostly) bigger, stronger, faster athletes, meaning injury chances again go up.  Also, fairly few players from other divisions go pro, meaning an injury is less likely to end a career in sports for players not in D-1A.

(4) Bowls "control" home field advantage better than a playoff would.
Chances are very few fans would travel to watch their team in each round of a playoff.  Lots of Tech fans had to choose between travelling to the ACCCG or to the Jackets' bowl game.  Because of travel expenses, fan attendance at any given playoff game would be substantially reduced, except perhaps for host teams.  With the bowls, you know where you're going, and you can plan your travel accordingly and well ahead of time.