Following the 2001 college football season, I told my peers what every sports columnist is telling the nation today: The Bowl Championship Series must be read its last rites and executed in favor of a playoff system.
I once favored determining the national champion by holiday season bowl games for the sake of tradition. But just as the nostalgia of Major League Baseball has been hampered by steroids, the nostalgia of bowls has been hampered by the BCS.
One month from now, off-campus watering holes nationwide will be full of college students asking what should be done with college football in light of their teams being snubbed out of a BCS bowl. I want them to cry “playoffs!” and demand change.
Playoffs would have the control of deciding a true national champion out of the hands of computers and biased-by-nature humans and put it into the hands of teams controlling their destinies on the field. The sport needs concrete evidence in the form of a 32-team playoff tree.
I’m aware that adding a potential five games to the season would be grueling for the players on the field and in the classroom, so let’s adjust schedules. First, eliminate non-conference play. This will leave teams who fail to reach the playoffs with a decent amount of games to play. This will be done in the name of progress, which football is in dire need of. Eventually we’re going to run out of bandages and gauze to patch up the BCS formula after its offseason makeover. Remember, the match-ups in the playoffs will feature marquee teams hailing from different conferences.
Next, we hand the 11 conference champions in Division I a ticket to the playoffs. With 21 spots left, we send invites to the remaining teams ranked in the Associated Press Poll leaving us with seven spots to fill. This is where things get sticky. We look at the seven conferences with the most teams in the AP Poll and the best records and ask their top teams without an invite to the playoffs to step forward and fill the bracket. This may leave room for controversy, but it’s less than what the sport has dealt with in recent years.
Here’s where we teach an old dog new tricks. We pre-rank the playoff teams and have them play at neutral sites that change yearly. For instance, we could have the semi-finals featuring USC playing Alabama in the Fiesta Bowl or Texas facing Virginia Tech at the Rose Bowl. The present BCS coordinators can keep their jobs and determine venues for each playoff round in the off-season.
So there’s my formula with its catchy, original name – the October Manifesto. If you criticize it, at least do college football a favor and think of something better than the ever-changing BCS, which amounts to the postseason tail wagging the BCS dog.

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