This is just how they want it to be every year. Teams play their schedules and then their followers scream about the BCS. The bowl guys and the TV guys, and conference leaders and the NCAA guys and some of the coaching guys and the university Presidents all love the screaming, despite the President of the United States’ calling for a more equitable resolution for a national college football champion.

It’s all about money and always will be. And the guys listed above will never budge because they like it how it is, even if it is a faulted system.

The bowl, TV and NCAA guys are all in for one reason….money. A new system won’t threaten that. In fact, revenues would likely improve. The university Presidents who cite “too long of a season and too much time away from scholastics” are a joke. How do you explain every bowl team practicing daily now until their game? And what about the semester breaks which link up nicely with bowl season? Or fifth year, summer school and “light load” academic schedules that prevail today. Alabama has cancelled classes a day before and and after the January 7th national championship game. That is a confirmed indication that universities are capable and could react to the issues extra games could cause.

Coaches who don’t want a playoff shouldn’t be coaches. It’s the conference guys who count on the bowl revenue who are the biggest obstacle. Those ties to the bowls mean guaranteed income. A playoff would leave it up to their teams winning their way to the big payoff. How would the Pac 10 and Big 11 feel if Boise State took home their Rose Bowl revenue? The NCAA knows how to split up revenue for its basketball tournament, so you could expect them come up with an equitable formula for football. The trouble is that NCAA greed would replace traditional legacy greed and therein lies the rub. The NCAA would likely take a big cut and disperse to all its members. The PAC 10 and Big 10 would most likely take a pay cut.

Conference alliances to bowl games should be abolished. The Rose Bowl didn’t always host a Big Ten and Pac 10 school. In many years this alliance has made for weak games. The top eight teams should play January 1st in the Rose, Orange, Cotton and Sugar Bowls. Four winners should play January 7th to decide the final to be played on January 14th.

This system would extend the current season by one week. Of the 34 current bowl games, five are accounted for in this system and a sixth has been added January 14th, therefore 28 bowl games either lineup in December for one of 16 qualifying games, or book teams out of the top 16 as they pretty much do now.

16 to 8 to 4 to 2 to 1. It adds four postseason games for the final two teams, three more games than now, played over six weeks to the five weeks they currently have to play one game. This will give credence to test the injury, academic and professional athlete theories that the student/athletes will be exposed to. If it’s a glaring problem, cut regular season games (it was ten games for decades) or instill additional off weeks, adjust academic schedules, or approve special dispensations for the final four teams. Of course, a reduced format starting with eight teams or even four will be an improvement.

So let the lawyers figure out the financial splits and let the NCAA change some rules that uniformly start the season on Labor Day weekend and prevent regular season games after Thanksgiving weekend or the first weekend of December. The NCAA should also promote conference championships, figure out an exception for the Army-Navy game, and determine hosts, teams and rankings for 16 quarterfinal playoff games for the second and/or third weekends in December.

Of course, the 17th ranked team will scream bloody murder and declare the new system unfair. Computers and voting panels will still be used, but 16 teams will earn a spot and only head-to-head results will determine the outcome. The screaming will fade out, just as the BCS should do.