Find me on Twitter! @jpcadorin

If anyone doesn’t love the fact that college football just came up with a system to actually determine a national champion, I truly believe you’re crazy.  A selection committee will pick the four teams they think are most deserving, they’ll play in two of the best bowl stadiums in the nation, then play an actual championship in a worthy (if not just plain rich) stadium and city.

Is there something wrong with the system they came up with? Sure, but the same could be said for pretty much every sport.  The NHL and NBA allow too many teams in, MLB doesn’t allow enough, and the NFL…well…they’re doing alright with theirs (most watched thing EVER).

Eventually, there will be eight teams, there’s gotta be, and I love it.  But I really hope that when that change comes, they also change the quarterfinal games and semifinal games to campus sites.  The reason we love college football is because it’s college.  It’s tailgates, it’s student sections, it’s Jump Around and everything like it.  The NCAA is corporate enough (again, the title game goes to the highest bidder), can’t we keep the greatest college element in play?

In my dream world, there’s an 8 team playoff that gets started the week before/around Christmas time, the semifinals are on New Year’s Day, and the championship shortly after that.  Keep another 15 or so bowls, but please, not 35.  It wouldn’t hurt if the Big Ten had a team or two represented in the playoffs, but that’s a dream for another day.

I like the new system; that obviously doesn’t make it perfect.  The whole system needs to completely shut down and restarted.  Bowl execs getting $700,000, cruises, and cars for what amounts to maybe a month’s worth of work?  In what world does that make sense?  Coaches salaries are unbelievably high, there are more bowls than any of us can name and it’s all driven (like the rest of America) by corporate greed.

That’s never going to change.

So while we’re at it, this is an upgrade.   Nothing more, nothing less.  It’s a little bit better than what we have but nowhere near what it should be.  There’s lots to be changed, but at least the number of teams is improving.

Four is good, eight is better.