News-Record.com

If you followed my AP voting at all this season, you know that I've been very skeptical of Hawaii. By the end of the season I had finally bumped the Warriors to No. 12 based essentially on this flawed logic.

"I'm still not sure if Hawaii is any good, but they're undefeated. And in a season in which everyone else has two losses, that's got to count for something ... right?"

Wrong. If I were a gutsier voter I would have stuck to my convictions that Hawaii was a product of its soft schedule. Certainly that was proven emphatically last night in the Sugar Bowl, when Georgia outclassed the Warriors in every which way in a 41-10 romp.

It was a painful game to watch because of its lopsidedness (is that a word? It is in blogdom at least). Pretty much like the Rose Bowl, in which Southern Cal once again buried an overmatched Big Ten team. This time it was the Fighting Zookers of Illinois who were steamrolled, 49-17.

So if you're scoring at home, that's two boring blowouts in two BCS Bowls.

Why do I bring this up? Just to complain? (nope). To pat myself on the back for having the right instincts about Hawaii (perhaps). Or it could it be too ...

wait for it ...

wait for it ...

Talk about a playoff!!!!!!

Didn't see that one coming did you? You did? Ah well, I'll press on nonetheless.

Those two games disproved the growing sentiment that more teams need access to the BCS. Actually, less do. There was no way either Illinois or Hawaii deserved a BCS berth, yet both got one becuase, hey, there 12 spots to fill and someone's gotta fill them.

All of which confirms my belief that an eight-team playoff would give us just the right amount of teams to play for the national championship. If you don't make that cutoff, then your argument for being a national title contender is probably a weak one - like Hawaii's clearly was.

An eight-team playoff could work this way - seed the top four teams and let them play home games (yep, this would cause the most controversy, I get that.) Then play the next four games at BCS sites - the Rose Bowl, the Sugar, the Orange and the Fiesta. Then play the title game at one of these sites - just like the BCS game that's being held at the Sugar Bowl. Or add the Cotton Bowl to the mix and save one of the bowls for purely the title game.

As for all the other non-playoff teams? Let them keep playing in the same bowls as always. No need to topple that gravy train.

You could put the first round of the playoffs sometime in mid-December, or schedule it right around Christmas if you'd like. Then play the semis on Jan. 1 and the title game on Jan. 8. Heck, the season right now is already stretched to Jan. 7.

Worried about adding too many games? Then take that 12th game that was recently added back off the schedule. The max a team would play is 15 games if it was in a conference that has a title game.

The one glitch? Would fans travel one week to a semifinal game and then travel again the next week to a title game on short notice? How would you handle travel arrangements, etc? I'll grant that these problems aren't easily solved, but I have a feeling that college football fans are just loony enough to pull off the back-to-back week thing. If you've ever seen the army of RVs that show up at every major college football game the day before the freakin' game, you know what I mean.

So there. Now that this issue has been tidily solved, I'll move on the Middle East.