Columnist Dean Juipe: Football fans want college playoff series

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1998 | 9:55 a.m.

First it was the Bowl Alliance.

It was hopelessly flawed.

Modifications were made and it led to a revamped and retitled Super Alliance.

It, too, was hopelessly flawed.

Now college football has what is known as the Bowl Championship Series.

And it's just as hopelessly flawed as its predecessors.

What is it with the college presidents and the people charged with operating the multitude of postseason bowl games that have existed for decades and continue to multiply? Why haven't they come up with a plan to allow a true national championship game to be held on an annual basis?

College football needs a championship game and one whose participants are not determined by some computer. And putting a system in place that would satisfy that objective wouldn't be all that difficult.

Some day, some year, some century, it will happen. And when it does, everything that came before it will seem like the Dark Ages.

Some blessed day college football will come to its collective senses and initiate a workable playoff plan that will culminate with the top two teams in the country playing for the national championship. Until then, the misery continues.

The Bowl Alliance and its Super Alliance successor each failed because not every Division-I conference was a participant. That was a catastrophic shortcoming.

Now we have the Bowl Championship Series, which really is no series at all. Making its debut this year, the BCS is using a complicated computer formula to rank the nation's top teams and eventually match as many of the top eight as possible in selected bowl games. The Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls will pick off the BCS' top teams, with the Fiesta getting this year's first- and second-ranked teams.

There's just one monumental problem: Identifying, beyond a doubt, the top two teams.

Using a computer to do it just doesn't work for the average fan. For instance, if the regular season were to end today at least four unbeaten teams -- Ohio State, Tennessee, UCLA and Kansas State -- would rightfully feel they deserve a spot in the Fiesta Bowl.

Yet a BCS computer program will resolve the issue and select the lucky two. The Fiesta gets the big game and the others get the scraps -- meaningless games no matter what schools are involved.

There is a solution and it's to go ahead and implement a much discussed but never enacted playoff system that takes eight top teams -- use a computer to identify them, if need be -- and have them meet in a series of games in which the winners continue to advance. Yes, that stretches the season and, yes, it keeps kids out of school, but the benefits of such a move easily outweigh the negatives.

Instead of serving as a simple showcase for two good teams, each of the major bowl games would take on added significance if the stakes were such that the winner advanced. Every game would have the heightened interest and added drama of leading toward a true national champion.

A void would be filled and the world would be a better place.

The public is not going to be content with any other alternative. It wants a legitimate champion and it wants that team to have earned that distinction on the field.