Playoffs! Playoffs?

Finally, Still, college football is going to have a playoff starting in 2014. 

The braying of the uninformed aside, college football has had a playoff for a decade. It's a one-game playoff between the top two teams, as determined by the worst method in the world except for all the other methods.

(The method most people want used is the one in which they personally get to choose the two teams.)
 
The discussion now on the table involves four teams rather than two, which maintains the sanctity of the championship series while preserving the urgency of the season. It may, however, sap yet more relevance from the bowl games, particularly those that don't get to host a championship series game. Imagine the spectacular pyre of apathy facing, say, the Sugar Bowl, as it hosts two teams not involved in the playoffs.

Another seductive element under consideration is the removal of automatic qualifiers to the BCS bowls, particularly inasmuch as the conferences have all the coherence and permanence of Dennis Rodman's hairdo. Consider:

• The Big East includes teams in Houston and Dallas. 
• The Big Ten has 12 teams, but can't become the Big 12, because that's the name of another conference, which has 10 teams. 
• The Atlantic Coast includes Pittsburgh, 366 miles from the coast. 
• The Atlantic 10 includes a team from St. Louis, 950 miles from the Atlantic.
• Conference USA stretches from the NC coast to the Arizona border. 
• New Jersey Tech plays in the Great West conference. 
• The Southeast Conference will next year play in Columbia, Missouri, which is neither south nor east.

No wonder college athletes don't know anything: even the presidents of their schools are confused. Despite that, it appears we'll soon have an improved (and more lucrative, imagine that!) champion determinant in college football that won't undermine the weekly excitement of the regular season.
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