Fixin' Up The Shack.

You may have noticed that for the first time since I started including them, my usual top-of-the-post photo has nothing whatsoever to do with sports. That would be because this particular entry concerns the BCS, and a literal train wreck is the most apropos of accompanying images.

Yep, it's that time of year again, folks. Leaves are turning, temperatures are dropping, and we're staring at another infuriatingly cruddy set of hypothetical scenarios for the National Championship Game. Which of course is a misnomer for this farce of a "culmination" in which at least at least one team is guaranteed to be shafted by the capriciousness of moronic voters and an even more idiotic computer. Perception will become a very unfair reality. Somebody will be penalized for being and/or playing "the little sisters of the poor." Cries of outrage will be raised. And ignored.

None of which would be an issue if college football had, you know, playoffs.

Jim Mora's hilarious incredulity aside, how many more years are we going to keep griping about this before we fix it? Under the current rules, if Arkansas beats LSU next week, they're still not eligible for the SEC Championship Game by virtue of a ranking-centered tie-breaker. They could beat the #1 team in the nation, who also happens to be in their own division, but they still can't play in their conference championship? Sheesh.

How about this: barring a disaster, UGA will win the SEC East. What if the Dawgs beat the Tigers in Atlanta? Are they denied a shot at the crystal football because they had two early-season losses? What if LSU loses to Arkansas and Georgia both? Are they still granted consideration ahead of Boise State, Stanford, etc.?

What if Oklahoma State and Houston are the only two undefeated programs at season's end? For the sake of argument: Yes, their competition is relatively flabby. But they're destroying that competition, being that they're the two highest-scoring teams in the country and all. Is "strength of schedule", that old abhorrent phrase, really grounds to denigrate a flawless record and gaudy offensive production? (I say yes, but they'll kinda-sorta have a point if they're kept out of the Title game while one-loss-ers play. At least a little bit ... right?)

The names and mascots change, but we have these same stupid arguments every stupid season. The nebulous subjectivity of the whole process is maddening. Unlike a logical equation, we can't ever say, definitively, that X is greater than Y. We can only think it, and who's X and who's Y might vary from person to person, which is just ridiculous. Why don't we settle all of these questions like we do in every other sport, civilized or uncivilized, in every hemisphere on the planet? It's time.

Now before the clamor goes up about all the lost revenues from not playing bowl games, hold on a second. Howsabout we have bowl games that are playoff games.

I know that sounds insane, but just bear with me. Courtesy of USA Today, here's a listing of every scheduled bowl game for the 2011-2012 season:

Date/time (all ET)	Bowl	Site	Matchup
Sat., Dec. 17 2 p.m.	New Mexico	Albuquerque	Mountain West vs. Pac-12
Sat., Dec. 17 5:30 p.m.	Humanitarian	Boise, Idaho	MAC vs. WAC
Sat., Dec. 17 9 p.m.	New Orleans	New Orleans	Sun Belt vs. Conference USA
Tue., Dec. 20 8 p.m.	Beef 'O'Brady's	St. Petersburg, Fla.	Big East vs. Conference USA
Wed., Dec. 21 8 p.m.	Poinsettia	San Diego	Mountain West vs. WAC
Thu., Dec. 22 8 p.m.	MAACO Las Vegas	Las Vegas	Mountain West vs. Pac-12
Sat., Dec. 24 8 p.m.	Hawaii	Honolulu	Conference USA vs. WAC
Mon., Dec. 26 5 p.m.	Independence	Shreveport, La.	ACC vs. Mountain West
Tue., Dec. 27 4:30 p.m.	Little Caesars	Detroit	Big Ten vs. MAC
Tue., Dec. 27 8 p.m.	Belk	Charlotte	ACC vs. Big East
Wed., Dec. 28 4:30 p.m.	Military	Washington, D.C.	ACC vs. Navy
Wed., Dec. 28 8 p.m.	Holiday	San Diego	Big 12 vs. Pac-12
Thu., Dec. 29 5:30 p.m.	Champs Sports	Orlando	ACC vs. Big East
Thu., Dec. 29 9 p.m.	Alamo	San Antonio	Big 12 vs. Pac-12
Fri., Dec. 30 Noon	Armed Forces	Dallas	BYU vs. Conference USA
Fri., Dec. 30 3:20 p.m.	Pinstripe	Bronx, N.Y.	Big 12 vs. Big East
Fri., Dec. 30 6:40 p.m.	Music City	Nashville, Tenn.	ACC vs. SEC
Fri., Dec. 30 10 p.m.	Insight	Tempe, Ariz.	Big Ten vs. Big 12
Sat., Dec. 31 Noon	Meineke Car Care	Houston	Big Ten vs. Big 12
Sat., Dec. 31 2 p.m.	Sun	El Paso, Texas	ACC vs. Pac-12
Sat., Dec. 31 3:30 p.m.	Liberty	Memphis	Conference USA vs. SEC
Sat., Dec. 31 3:30 p.m.	Kraft Fight Hunger	San Francisco	Army vs. Pac-12
Sat., Dec. 31 7:30 p.m.	Chick-fil-A	Atlanta	ACC vs. SEC
Mon., Jan. 2 Noon	TicketCity	Dallas	Big Ten vs. Conference USA
Mon., Jan. 2 1 p.m.	Outback	Tampa	Big Ten vs. SEC
Mon., Jan. 2 1 p.m.	Capital One	Orlando	Big Ten vs. SEC
Mon., Jan. 2 1 p.m.	Gator	Jacksonville, Fla.	Big Ten vs. SEC
Mon., Jan. 2 5 p.m.	Rose	Pasadena, Calif.	BCS vs. BCS
Mon., Jan. 2 8:30 p.m.	Fiesta	Glendale, Ariz.	BCS vs. BCS
Tue., Jan. 3 8:30 p.m.	Sugar	New Orleans	BCS vs. BCS
Wed., Jan. 4 8:30 p.m.	Orange	Miami	BCS vs. BCS
Fri., Jan. 6 8 p.m.	Cotton	Arlington, Texas	Big 12 vs. SEC
Sat., Jan. 7 1 p.m.	BBVA Compass	Birmingham, Ala.	Big East vs. SEC
Sun., Jan. 8 9 p.m.	Go Daddy	Mobile, Ala.	MAC vs. Sun Belt
Mon., Jan. 9 8:30 p.m.	BCS title game	New Orleans	BCS No. 1 vs. BCS No. 2

I count 35 games up there, stretching from mid-December through mid-January. If we theoretically stretch the title game out to January 15 or so, it gives us five weeks to work with. So here's how we create a viable playoff system while still ensuring all that wonderful bowl-related revenue rolls in:

1. The AP Top 25 would become the AP Top 35, with 32 total teams making the playoffs. If we're letting 32 teams in, it ensures that every team from a "weaker" conference who goes undefeated won't have to watch a one-loss SEC or Pac 12 team in the title game and fume over it. Now, they could plead their case on the field. Hopefully, the ranking, voting, punditry and such around 35 teams would be sufficient meat for the writers to chew, even if they weren't determining the Championship matchup anymore. Besides, we need those people to whittle it down to 32. There are simply too many teams in college football to effectively handle a best-records-are-in system for the playoffs, so the subjective analysis of the polls has to remain as an element. When we're creating the bracket, we need some way to delineate decent 8-and-4-ish teams from crappy ones, right? And if your 8-4 team winds up # 33 in the rankings while somebody else goes to the playoffs, you should've won by more and lost by less, shouldn't you? The point is, the polls would still function, they'd just give us 32 playoff qualifiers instead of dictating every bowl matchup.

Besides being the playoff-determining engine, this system carries some ancillary benefits. Ten more teams now get to hold slots in the published rankings, granting visibility to ten more programs and providing better recruiting opportunities to previously obscure colleges. Not to mention that more rankings allows the TV networks and BCS schedulers to create more "ranked-opponent" matchups. Also, we would gain inherently added theatrics on the bottom end of the polls. Numbers 33 through 35 would be scrapping for a playoff bid, and numbers 32- through 29-ish would have to continue at a high level of play or risk dropping out of contention.

2. 32 playoff teams means 31 playoff games in the bracket. (16 round one + 8 round two + 4 round three + 2 round four + 1 National Title Game.) These would occur over the aforementioned five-week span, spread over Thursday and Friday nights and Saturdays until the brackets shrink enough to go squeeze every game into Saturday in Round Three. If the whole football-football-football-New-Year's-Eve-and-New-Year's-Day tradition proves sacred to too many people, we can obviously adjust the schedule to accommodate that.*

*Though I note that New Year's day falls on a Sunday this year. Did you see any bowl games scheduled for January 1st in that list up there? Nope. Even big-time NCAA bowl games aren't crazy enough to compete with the NFL, so I don't want to hear about the sanctity of college ball on New Year's. It's about cash and ratings, not "tradition."

3. Now, here's how we retain all the bowl revenue: Have every company who wants to sponsor a game bid on them, the same way corporations bid on naming rights for arenas. For example, instead of the BBVA Compass Bowl being between two at-large teams from the Big East and SEC, it would now be whatever playoff game BBVA Compass elected to shell out the cash to sponsor. If they can't or don't choose to spend a ton, maybe they get the round one matchup between the 14 and 19 seeds. Whatever game they get, they get their name and ads plastered all over it. Heck, we can even keep calling these games the "whatever bowls." They'll be just like bowl games from a sponsorship/revenue standpoint, only part of the larger playoff bracket as well. Same principles apply for every game on the docket: highest bidder gets the best matchup to associate with their brand. (ESPN could broadcast the BCS Playoff Bowl Auction every year. Don't you want to see the representatives from Meineke Car Care and Beef'O'Brady's furiously try to outbid one another for the rights to a "Sweet 16" game?)

Calm down, I'm getting to your concerns about logistics, tradition and such ...

4. Just like March Madness, nobody gets a home-field advantage. Whenever people argue about the rankings in college football, they always bring up that tired, overused, annoying phrase "on a neutral field." As in: "I think the Sooners would win that game on a neutral field," or, "We could beat the crap outta Auburn on a neutral field!!!" Oh, you could? Good. Then prove it. So that's where we do this, then. We'd even get some continuity with the current system, as the locations of the various games would not move from their current dots on the map. In other words, the Outback Bowl is always played in Tampa Bay, so whichever game becomes the Outback Bowl through the bidding process gets played in Tampa Bay. The Chick-Fil-A Bowl would still be in Atlanta, etc. You get the idea.

5. Since these games would now be determined by seeding, we're obviously doing away with things like "the Big 12 always plays the Pac 12 in the Holiday Bowl." Ask me if I care. The conferences as we know them now aren't going to exist in five or ten years anyway. Half of them are already misnomers via geography or the inability to count, for Pete's sake. Are we really going to be hung up on this? I hope not.

6. If Army, Navy, or Air Force don't make the playoffs, we use the 33-35 teams of the hypothetical AP Top 35 to provide them opponents for automatic bowl games. Because they're the service academies and we owe them that for the men and women they train to protect our country. (Dear BYU: you no longer get an automatic ride to the Armed Forces Bowl. Sorry, you are neither "armed" nor a "force." As a matter of fact, the Armed Forces Bowl will now be Army vs. Team # 33.) Anyway, this brings our total count of games up to 34. The 31 for the playoffs plus 3 potential service academy games. We're now only one game away from preserving every last one of the 35 currently-extant bowls.

So ...

7. The bowls that have long, prestigious histories (and that had names before every damn thing had a sponsor) retain those names and are granted places of honor in the playoff hierarchy. My thought: The Sun, Gator, Cotton, and Fiesta Bowls host the "Elite 8" matchups, and the Sugar and Rose Bowls host the "Final 4." The Championship Game remains as it is now, officially untitled as a "Bowl" and untethered to a specific city, but massively sponsored. The second-highest bidder in the land gets to host a runner-up game for third place. (Outback Bowl? Capital One Bowl? Who knows. It'll change from year to year.) Aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnndddd ... with the "Runner-up X Bowl", we're up to the 35-bowl total we have now. So there.

To sum up my hypothetical future: We now have a five-week stretch of killer games culminating in a legitimate, indisputable national champion. We preserve field neutrality, bowl revenue, the service academy games, and the traditional import of the big-name bowls. Most importantly, we never have to listen to Boise State fans whine. Ever again.

Tell me why this can't work. I defy you to out-argue me. I'd destroy you on a neutral field.