Columnist Steve Guiremand: Nice game, but the NCAA still needs a playoff

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Jan. 5, 1999 | 10:30 a.m.

Steve Guiremand covers college football for the Las Vegas Sun.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer, one of the key men in putting together the Bowl Championship Series format that pits the nation's top two-ranked teams together in a bowl each year, walked into the interview tent following Tennessee's 23-16 victory over Florida State on Monday night and cracked a big smile.

"This was a good night for college football," Kramer told a reporter. "That was a great game for college football."

Agreed.

But guess what? It could be even better.

How?

By doing something that makes even more sense. Like having a college football playoff.

It works for every other NCAA sport, including Division I-AA football on down. Why not do it with the big boys?

Sure, it might mean the end of the current bowl game format that we've come to know and despise. But I think the world will survive without trudging college teams to places like El Paso to take in bloodless bullfights or to exotic locations like Detroit for the Murder City, er, Motor City Bowl. And God forbid that we deprive two teams the "honor" of playing on that hideous blue turf in Boise -- smurf turf they've cleverly nicknamed it -- for something called the Humanitarian Bowl.

You want to do something humanitarian? Try not making two teams spend a week in Boise in the middle of winter to play a meaningless football game.

Pick the top 16 teams and seed them like you do for the NCAA basketball tournament. Have the eight first-round games at the higher seeded team's home stadium in mid-December.

The eight winners could then move on and play on New Year's Day in four warm weather locations, like the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

Have the four winners converge the following week at another major location for a Final Four-like doubleheader.

Then take a week off and have the two winners meet in a real college football version of the Super Bowl on the weekend before the NFL's Super Bowl, which is void of any NFL games at the moment.

Do you realize how much money a national football tournament could rake in for the good old NCAA? Heck, they might even be able to, gulp, pay a few players with the profits they'd get from all the television revenue.

If you seeded the top 16 teams from the final coaches' poll this week, here's the first round matchups you would have had: Texas at Tennessee; Penn State at Ohio State; Georgia at Florida State; Texas A&M at Arizona; Michigan at Wisconsin; Georgia Tech at Florida; Air Force at Tulane and Kansas State at UCLA.

I don't know about you, but I find these kinds of matchups much more intriguing than, say, Southern Miss vs. Idaho or TCU vs. USC.

And with each team really having something to play for, I'm sure you'd see much better efforts put forth than schools like Kansas State, Washington, USC and BYU put out in their bowl games this year. Those schools looked like they just showed up to pick up a paycheck in their losses.

In a way, I can't blame them. If you're a top 10 NFL draft pick like USC linebacker Chris Claiborne, do you want to really risk the chance of an injury just so you can say you helped your team beat a 6-5 TCU squad in the Sun Bowl?

Something tells me if you had a playoff format that built momentum round-by-round you wouldn't have scalpers trying to unload 50-yard-line seats at $135 face value just an hour before kickoff like they were here on Monday night. Or hoping to get $75 for a $135 end zone seat.

The only drawback to a playoff? Well, what would all those old guys wearing those funny-colored bowl jackets do with their outfits? But that would be more than balanced out by the fact we wouldn't have to hear clowns like John Cooper whining about how their teams deserve to be rated No. 1.

* BARRY, BARRY GOOD: Note to UNLV head coach John Robinson: one of your new assistants was proudly wearing a Tennessee sweatshirt on the field at Monday night's game.

Of course, new Rebels linebacker coach Joe Barry had a good excuse. His father, Mike, is offensive line coach for the Vols.

While Phil Fulmer was busy accepting the national championship trophy on the field after the game, Joe Barry was busy clicking away pictures of his dad hugging Tennessee offensive linemen like Jarvis Reado and Mercedes Hamilton.

Mike Barry, who received his share of criticism as Robinson's offensive line coach at USC the previous five years, got the last laugh on Monday night. He will be getting fitted for his second national championship ring this decade (he was also OL coach in 1990 for Bill McCartney at Colorado). Meanwhile, the school that dumped him, USC, finished with a school record minus-13 yards rushing in a pathetic offensive display in its stunning Sun Bowl loss to a mediocre TCU squad.

Joe Barry said he planned on switching back to his normal scarlet and gray UNLV colors today when he and Robinson are scheduled to have a home visit with JC All-American running back Joe Hall of Palomar College.

* NOT SO CLASSY EXIT: As the final 10 seconds ticked off the clock Monday night, a number of Florida State players began running straight to their Sun Devil Stadium locker room instead of sticking around to shake hands their Tennessee counterparts.

One FSU player, defensive tackle Larry Smith, still apparently upset over the Seminoles' penalty on a late ill-fated onside kick attempt, actually grabbed an official as he exited the field and had to be pulled away by an FSU assistant. A couple of other players could also be seen yelling at the striped shirts.

And as the officials exited the field and began to walk up the tunnel to the locker room, several were bombarded with debris from FSU fans, some of which could be seen flipping them "the bird."

To his credit, FSU coach Bobby Bowden didn't blame officiating for the Seminoles' loss and actually agreed with the officials who ruled that kicker Sebastian Janikowski had touched the ball before it rolled the required 10-yards on his onside kick.

"He might have hit the ball twice or something," Bowden said. "I think the call was accurate."