(Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

(Yaaawwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnn)

(Click)

Those sounds are the three most common reactions that I know of to the happenings of All-Star Saturday. Damn shame, too; back in the days of Larry Bird's perfect 3-pt shoot around and MJ's back to back wins in the dunk contest, the festivities taking place right now were must see TV. Now? Excuse me if I don't care whether LeBron, D-Wade or Kobe can execute a few jumpers and basic dribbling maneuvers.

We don't even get the stars out to play in the old school events anymore--who else finds it riduculous that Kobe is a freakin' judge for the dunk competition while I have to watch Nate "11...12...13 attempts" Robinson and Tyrus "show me the money" Thomas. Åt least we get Dirk in the three point shootout but would it have killed Al Harrington, Paul Pierce and Steve Nash to chuck a couple rocks tonight? Seriously, league leader or not, Jason Kapono???

It's time to give the fans something to watch on Saturday night--something with some real fire to it that every fan from every team can enjoy. Without further adieu, I humbly introduce the (insert corporate sponsor here) 2 on 2 21 Throwdown.

The entire league will vote on whom they feel is the best player on each of the other 29 teams (no voting for their own). Then, the best player on each team in each conference (with the highest vote getter overall who doesn't lead his own team being the wild card to make for a total of 16 players per conference) will be matched up top to bottom to form 8 two-man teams in each conference. So the voted best player on the best team in the West would be matched up with the best player on the worst team in the West to make the first team, the best player on the second best team with the best player on the second worst team, etc. The wild card gets paired with the #8 team best player unless it's his teammate, in that case he's paired w/#7 and 8 and 9 form a team.

Then, hold a single elimanation 16 team bracket of a standard game of 21. Conference champions then play for the title. And to make sure you don't get players sitting out, offer up some real prize money, like say $2.1 million for the winning team, $1 million for 2nd place, and $500k for semi-finalists. I guarantee you the players would come to play for that kind of corn.

This year's match-ups? (my humble guesses as to the voting results; bear with me and let's assume everyone's healthy)

Western Conference
1/15 Dirk Nowitzski/Pau Gasol vs. 8/WC Kevin Garnett/Allen Iverson
4/12 Tim Duncan/Mike Bibby vs. 5/11 Tracy McGrady/Baron Davis
2/14 Steve Nash/Ray Allen vs. 7/9Carmelo Anthony/Elton Brand
3/13 Carlos Boozer/Zach Randolph vs. 6/10 Kobe Bryant/Chris Paul

Eastern Conference
1/15 Rasheed Wallace/Paul Pierce vs. 8/WC Dwayne Wade/Vince Carter
4/12 Chris Bosh/Emeka Okafor vs. 5/11 Jermaine O'Neal/Joe Johnson
2/14 LeBron James/Andre Miller vs. 7/9 Dwight Howard/Jason Kidd
3/13 Gilbert Arenas/Michael Redd vs. 6/10 Ben Gordon/Eddy Curry

Tell me you wouldn't tune in for that...

As the debate rages on about whether the BCS sucks or blows, I thought I'd dust off my playoff theory from last year and see how it turns out with this years numbers.

A reminder of the rules (with a couple of changes for this years format):

1) All teams will play an 11-game regular season, with no games starting before Labor Day and none after Thanksgiving weekend. (That said, I'm not ignoring games that happened after Thanksgiving ... except as noted below)
2) Conference championship games are to be abolished. (I'm sorry but if your conference needs a championship game to get it's winner into the top 16 of the BCS rankings--I'm talking about you ACC--then your conference champion stinks)
3) The BCS formula will be used to select and seed the top 16 teams (it sucks as a top two system, but does quite well for a larger sample size), with the eight higher seeds hosting first round games on the first weekend of December. I used the BCS averages from the wk 7 standings for all teams except USC, Rutgers and WVU, since they played regular season games on Dec 2 and not in some sort of money grab ... excuse me, conference championship game. (I also included #17 Wake Forest and dropped #16 Tennessee because if 8-4 Pittsburg of 2004 got in and 8-4 Stanford of 1999 got in, winning your conference must count for something. Right?)
This year's first rounders?
16/17 Wake Forest @ 1 Ohio St
9 Arkansas @ 8 Boise St
13 West Virginia @ 4 LSU
13 Oklahoma @ 5 USC
15 Rutgers @ 2 Michigan
10 Norte Dame @ 7 Wisconsin
14 Va Tech @ 3 Florida
11 Auburn @ 6 Louisville
4) Any team losing in the first round of the playoffs is still eligible for selection to any bowl game other than the four current BCS bowls. Since the NCAA now has 12 regular season games, a bowl game makes 13. In this system, 11 games plus a first rounder plus a bowl game equals 13. The bowls are a nice reward for teams who've had a winning season. Just because the elite are in a playoff doesn't mean the Navy's, BYU's and South Carolina's of the world don't deserve a pat on the back for their efforts too.
5) The remaining eight teams are reseeded as necessary, with the quarterfinals taking place at the sites of the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls on New Year's day. Conference tie-ins are to be respected with regard to the higher ranked team wherever possible.
For my money, only Auburn wins a road game in these match-ups, meaning the quarterfinals look like this:
Rose Bowl: 11 Auburn vs. 1 Ohio St. (Big Ten Champ)
Fiesta Bowl: 8 Boise St vs. 2 Michigan (more on why Michigan is here in a second)
Sugar Bowl: 7 Wisconsin vs. 3 Florida (SEC Champ; either w/or w/out the championship game I might add)
Orange Bowl: 5 USC vs. 4 LSU (ditto LSU)
6) The (reseeded) winners meet in semifinal match-ups the second Saturday after New Year's Day, one being held alternatingly at the Rose/Fiesta Bowl and the other between the Sugar/Orange Bowls (If the highest ranked team is Pac-10, Big 10 or Big XII, it hosts the Rose/Fiesta semi; ACC/SEC/Big East number 1's would host in the Sugar/Orange). Those winners would meet the following Saturday in the championship game (which happens to fall the day before the NFL conference championship games btw), which would rotate among all four bowl sites, but never so that any one site would host a quarterfinal, semifinal, and championship game in the same postseason. (This logic holds that Michigan goes to the Fiesta and LSU the Orange in the quarterfinals)

I say both Boise St. and USC walk out of Glendale and Miami respectively w/the upsets (they proved it with their matches 2 weeks ago, right?) setting up the undefeateds (OSU/BSU) on one side of the bracket and two coaches who finished undefeated only two years ago (USC/Fla) on the other. Who wins? Who knows! But we'd find out by settling it on the FIELD. What a novel friggin' concept, eh?

And who here wouldn't want to see this happen? Who could possibly object to the restoration of the importance of New Year's Day as bowl-Mecca? To elite college football lasting well into January, but only for the four most deserving teams every year? To the multi-billion dollar contract that would fund practically all of college athletics (ahem, university presidents?) To a chance to potentially avenge humiliating defeats? And most importantly, to know, for 100% sure, that the champion of college football is exactly that, a champion?

Someone get me Fox Sports on the phone...

Would you rather survive 12 all in bets in poker and lose 1 or survive all 13?

Would you rather get 92.3% of your tax refund or 100% of it?

Would you rather win all of your games or all but one?

Do I even need to wait for you to think about this?

So why if your a sportswriter who has the freedom to vote for any national champion of college football you want are you stupid enough to vote for a 13-1 team over the ONLY 13-0 one?

One day history will look back kindly on Mr. Archuleta as the only man with enough balls (and apparently math skills) to crown Boise State as national champions. The rest of them, and every other defender of the Big Crock of Shi...excuse me, the "bowl championship series" are going to have to pull their collective heads out long enough to answer for the ridiculous hypocracy of this system.

There isn't a single arguement left against a playoff anymore. Go ahead, trot'em out there:

A playoff would ruin college football's regular season How can anyone say that the regular season matters? USC and LSU, two teams who lost TWICE prior to the bowls, finished fourth and third respectively, ahead of not only undefeated Boise St, but 1-loss Louisville and 1-loss Wisconsin (who both somehow managed to move DOWN a spot despite beating top-15 teams on a neutral field). Five (count'em, FIVE) teams have now finished the regular season undefeated in the BCS era and been left out of the title game (four of them, for the record, won their bowl game). If zero losses doesn't equal national championship shot, then the regular season has already been ruined.

A playoff would turn the other bowls into the NIT Hello, you think anyone outside of the campuses, alumni and the teams themselves gives a rat's #### about the MPC computers bowl? ESPN will still televise it and the schools will still make their money off it--how has anything been lost here? It's not like the Armed Forces Bowl or the teams in it have any delusions that they're playing for anything other than TV exposure to 3rd tier D-!A recruits and athletics department money anyway, so why not make it official?

A playoff would take too long Ask the Buckeyes, Wolverines, and Sooners if they would rather have kept playing or had up to 50 days off between games right about now. Ask George Mason if they felt it was worth the trouble to have basketball spill over into April. Ask Oregon St how exciting the College World Series is when it drags out. This is like watching a movie in a theater--if you haven't looked at your watch before the movie's over, then it wasn't too long. You're telling me you'd get tired of watching elite level college football week after week?

This is just flat out stupid. Boise State was KILLING Oklahoma before a fluke bounce let them back into the game. As it turns out, they've proven their a point better than a 2-loss BCS conference team on a neutral field. USC, LSU, Michigan, Auburn, West Virginia and Rutgers fans can all kiss my ####. Either Wisconsin or OSU would be able to join them had the schedule not given them an out (and after today, I'm not so sure it's not the Buckeyes).

Bottom line: Only one team gets to look itself in the mirror for the rest of its life and know that no team ever proved itself better on the field of battle. I take nothing away from Florida--they shut everyone up and proved they were worthy of that number two finish in the regular season.

But they can never prove to myself, Greg Archuleta, or anyone else that they were without equal--because Boise State can proclaim itself better than anyone else. And it can do so 13 out of 13 times.

I always loved (back when boxing still mattered) the debates that went along with who was the best boxer in the world on a pound for pound basis. Sure, a young Mike Tyson would never have fought Sugar Ray and you can't have Winky Wright fight Oscar De La Hoya, but you can compare their styles, their power over their respective weight classes, and come up with a very entertaining debate over who is better.

You don't seem to have this debate in football (because no one remembers about defensive players at all come MVP time) and with baseball having it's own award for pitchers, it's pretty much been settled that there IS one award for offense and one for "defense". Hockey? Now there's what it needs, another named trophy that no one can tell you what it's handed out for.

But basketball DOES make all of it's players compete for the same hardware. For all guards, forwards and centers, there is only 1 MVP, 1 Defensive player of the year, 1 points leader. Any or all of these can be the same man or won by 3 different positions on three different teams. Only in basketball among all team sports does every position interact with and compete with each other on such a continual basis.

So since the David's and Goliaths do interact, you can actually crown a best player in basketball. And it's a shame this hasn't been done until now, because Allen Iverson would be going for about his ninth consecutive award.

Now in his 10th year, The Answer plays the game with more abandon for his own body than perhaps any player in the history of the league before him. At 6', 165 lbs (meaning he'd be giving up around 10 lbs to me for crying out loud), he makes his living slashing to the basket and takes a beating from the likes of Ben Wallace, Tim Duncan, Shaq, KG, Jermaine O'Neal, Amare, Dwight Howard, Al Harrington (the list is endless) everytime he dares to trod in their paint.

Look at his career--only once has he managed to complete a full 82 games. At 30 years old (31 before the Finals end this year), he's collected enough injuries that Reebok can fill an entire TV screen with them. Even MJ took three years off after playing 10 years of nothing but above the rim hoops, and when he returned he'd lost none of his deadliness, but much of his slashing in favor of that unstoppable fadeaway.

But Iverson simply picks himself up off the floor after breaking yet another pretender's ankles and being slammed to the deck as his layup banks in and walks calmly toward the free throw line. Once the poster child for all things "wrong" with the NBA, he has matured as both a leader and a person; he was nothing but a model citizen in Athens (calling it "an honor" to play for his country), speaks out against the dress code while abiding by it, and is simply the most indispensible player on any team (the Heat are .500 w/o Shaq, the Suns are fine w/o Amare, even the Rockets have too much talent to be a .250 team if T-Mac went down again). You rid the 76ers of Iverson, they might have been in their ninth consecutive lottery by now.

No one in the NBA does more with less. No one has the combination of scoring prowess, fearlessness, leadership and resolve. And it's fitting that since no guard since Michael has won multiple MVP awards, that no one but AI has meant so much to his team since then. Appreciate what you're seeing hoops fans, for this season might be the best Answer yet to the question of who is the best player in the NBA.

OK, David Letterman I'm not, but every writer needs a tribute column in his/her repertoire. So without further adieu, from my home office in Vancouver, WA, the top 10 things I hate about sports:

10) Figure Skating —Look, I know NBC needs programming until the NFL opens up shop on Sunday nights next year, but when the sport’s most well known moment inspired Todd Bertuzzi and its biggest outcast has better name recognition than its world champion (who is the current world champion?) someone might want to consider if there isn’t a better use of that airtime. (And what’s with the ranking system? 0-6? Is this a judging event or the Richter Scale?)

9) Televised Golf on ESPN —I have nothing against golf per se, but c'mon! Who cares about Tiger shanking another fairway shot in the first or second round of the Gold Bond Medicated Powder Open or some similar tournament I know he'll eventually win (or finish 60th, one or the other) when we could be watching Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon go head to head on PTI? (And are you like me? Ever watch Around the Horn and think that if Jay Mariotti and Woody Paige weren't 2000 miles apart that they'd actually come to blows?)

8) Fair weather fans — Quick, name the starting quarterback of the Patriots the year before they won their first Super Bowl. Simple, right? Well, if it’s not and you’re wearing any of their gear, choke yourself and take it off right now. Just because George Steinbrenner buys a winner every year doesn’t mean its OK for everyone else to. Where are all you Lakers and Yankees fans I used to see so many of back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s? Oh yeah, like your teams, you’ve turned tale and hidden.

7) Soccer — I refuse to watch or endorse a sport where a. The U.S. is on equal footing with Ghana b. The dominant species of the planet can't use its opposable thumbs c. A high scoring game is 2-1 d. More than just the best player in the game at that time is allowed to use just one name and e. Posh ####e is allowed to remain in the news because of her marriage.

6) The Florida Marlins — Forget for a second that the MVP’s of their two World Series winning teams are Eric Gregg and Steve Bartman: when the hell did baseball decide it was OK to have AAA teams every 8 years? Even the Royals and Pirates try to be good every year. Who has this team been listening to motivational tapes of, Randy Moss? New rule: If you finished last season with an over .500 record, you’re not allowed to enter a rebuilding mode.

5) Kobe Bryant — Has sports’ biggest ego and most superficial team ever been so perfectly matched? Let’s recap: Bryant puts up an air-ball in his first big playoff moment, ran off the most dominant center in a generation for the equivalent of a six pack of Corona over who got parking spot A-1, cheats on his wife w/a hotel staffer, causes the only coach with enough bling to be mistaken for Ja Rule to retire and loses 19 of his last 21 contests as a solo act, and the team…loves him? That #### would never fly on a team like Portl…ok, bad example.

4) NASCAR — Or, as my brother and I like to call it, professional left-turning. Look, any activity that uses only slightly more muscle groups than playing chess is not a sport. Any competition where the "athletes" sweat more from sitting on their #### for too long rather than from physical exertion is not a sport. And any league that needs a cellular phone company to sponsor and name their championship hardware is DEFINITELY not a sport. Ask yourself: Wouldn't you personally feel the need to beat Paul Tagliabue senseless if he ever tried to present the Super Bowl champions "the Bud Light Trophy"?

3) John York — Who on Earth got drunk enough one night to allow this clown to run one of the three most decorated franchises in the NFL, Dennis Erickson? (That would explain a couple of things...) Being a die-hard 49er fan is not an easy calling these days (trust me, I know); I haven't seen a front office mismanaged this badly since Enron. You know your team stinks when you had the #1 pick in the draft the previous year and the only jersey you can find of theirs in stores is a linebacker they drafted out of Michigan State five years ago.

2) The BCS — What a wonderful system you’ve developed division I! Lets decide who the two best teams in the country are with a combination of coaches who never see more than 8 seconds a month of any team not on their schedule, has-been alumni bent on being VIP’s at the Fiesta Bowl, and six geeks running glorified Commodore 64’s. Here’s a suggestion: Why not settle this question like every single other college sport at every single level does, with a playoff?

1) Bud Selig —It's not enough that the man is incompetent enough to cancel the World Series, let the All-Star Game end in a tie, look the other way on the steroid epidemic, contemplate contraction and nakedly run the league with one eye on lining the pockets of his...excuse me, his daughter's team while letting the Yankees spend the gross national product of Serbia on Jason Giambi without repercussion. Nooooooo, he had to drag his heels long enough on being "interim" commissioner that George W. Bush decided he couldn't wait any longer and had to find something else to do. Thanks Bud, no really.

Much has been made of the observation that the NBA, once the dominant sports league in America during the late 80's and early 90's thanks to the tail end of Magic vs. Larry and the start of the Bulls dynasty, has lost its way.

Everyone's heard the reasons:

The NBA embraced the hip-hop culture and it backfired (this is a bunch of ####--if Nelly can come to be in St. Louis, which has everything BUT basketball, then you have no case)

The NBA diluted its product by expanding too much (####--all 3 major sports leagues--oh, and hockey too--have at least 30 teams now)

The NBA #### up by letting teams draft high school kids (####--Kobe, McGrady, LeBron, Jermaine O'Neal, Garnett...)

The only actual blow that lands when trying to assault the NBA's current status is that more than any other sport it encourages and maintains dynasties. Witness: In the last 25 years, only 7 teams have won the NBA title, and the only teams with less than 3 over that time span are the 76ers in 83 and the Rockets in 94 and 95. In other words, if you're team stinks and Tim Duncan or Shaq isn’t your first round pick/free agent signing that year, get used to it.

So the solution to reversing fan disinterest (and as a Trail Blazer fan, I lost interest about 5 years ago) is NFL style parity right?

Wrong, it's NFL style fantasy.

Fantasy football, with its 10 million estimated players and growing, is the biggest fan outreach program in the history of professional sports. Not only that, it's the single most educating force I've ever seen in who is great due to name recognition (Troy Aikman) and who is great due to statistical dominance (Shaun Alexander).

(How big is it? My wife, who five years ago begrudgingly sat with me on Sundays to get some quality time together, now spends half the week grumbling if Steve Smith doesn't go for 100+ yards and a touchdown. Oh, and SHE'S the commissioner of the family league)

But what truly makes fantasy football work is the head to head match-ups possible because every team plays the same number of games (one) a week. You can assemble your team and go up against someone else on equal footing every match up (except of course, the weeks you're playing the guy with LaDainian Tomlinson).

Why not take advantage of this model? Paging David Stern...

Currently, the NBA schedule runs just a shade over 24 weeks. Call it 25, just to give the guys a week off around the all-star break. If the NBA were to run 14 weeks at exactly 3 games/wk per team (42 games) take the all-star break (which would be the first full week of February, just like now) and play the final 10 weeks with 4 games/wk per team (40 games), it would have the exact same number of games, spread out over just as much time.

But by staking claim to certain days of the week as basketball nights (say, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for the 3 games/wk part of the year, add on Sundays after the NFL is done with them in February for your fourth game), the NBA could once again become a destination form of entertainment. (Even NASCAR has figured this one out, and Stern's supposed to be the smartest commissioner in sports?) You could even have a feature night like the NFL (Friday Night Basketball, anyone?) where there was a single nationally televised game.

And the fantasy payoff? No more season long races where the pace of moving up the leader board rivals that of plate tectonics. How does a 22-week, 2 five-team division regular season (each team in your division 3 times, the other division twice) with the top four going to the playoffs in weeks 23 and 24 strike you? Going head to head every week over points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks (best 3 of 5 wins) sure beats watching Iverson blow up for 57 and having nothing to show it because the #### on auto draft stayed ahead of you in season-long points due to Ben Wallace, Bonzi Wells, Tony Parker and Robert Horry all playing and scoring 15.

The NBA stopped being the premier sport in America when the outcome started becoming pre-ordained. So as long as we know what we're going to see, how about putting it on every week when we know we can see it? You might just win back a few fans and gain some new ones with fantasy sports (and it'll give my wife another league to be in first place in).

So now the BCS works, eh? Congratulations: You've just had the #1 and #2 teams in the county go undefeated without even a MAC team coming out perfect, never mind another major conference, and supposedly this is proof of the system's genius?
My 7-year-old cousin could have given you the 2006 national title game (or the 2002 game with sole undefeateds Miami and Ohio State squaring off). Two undefeateds equals national championship game. You don't need Jeff Sagrin's computer program to tell you that.
Where are the defenders of the Big Crappy Scam for last year’s debacle with five undefeated teams? Or the year before with no undefeateds? How about in 2001 when conference champion and unanimous #2 Oregon finished behind BOTH 2-loss conference champ Colorado (whom the Ducks absolutely spanked in Tempe) and Big XII North division runner-up Nebraska (we won't even go there) in the standings. Or in 2000 when Florida State got to be embarrassed by Oklahoma instead of "number 3" Miami (who beat the Seminoles head to head), or "number 4" Washington (who beat the Hurricanes and for good measure, number 5 Oregon State as well)?
I'm sick of hearing the excuses. The BCS, for all of the so-called possibilities it presents with different conferences playing each other, was designed to put #1 and #2 together. And after eight years and numerous formula tweaks, it can't even get that right except when the answer is absolutely served up on a silver platter.
(For the sake of brevity, we won't even go down the road of the screwing and near screwing the Pac-10 has received courtesy of this mockery of bowl match-ups--let's just say that the 00 Beavers, 01 Ducks and 03 Trojans have avenged the conference's honor nicely, while the 04 Bears in a losing effort outscored the three opponents of the above mentioned teams all by themselves. Be afraid Oklahoma, be very afraid ...)
If every other sport in every single division can have a playoff to determine its champion, so can Division I football.
Any hack, however, can armchair quarterback. Marines don't knock the system without appropriate recommendations for change. So pay attention Mr. Brand. This is what a Division I college football playoff would look like:

Rules--
1) All teams will play an 11-game regular season, with no games starting before Labor Day and none after Thanksgiving weekend.
2) Conference Championship games are to be abolished (Sorry FSU, one 24 point quarter does not a BCS team make. And while we're on this subject, where are all the traditionalists who rail against a playoff because it devalues the regular season? Do they realize that the three teams ranked ahead of the ACC Champion are a Boston College team the Seminoles beat, a 4 loss Michigan team and Louisville?)
3) The BCS formula will be used to select and seed the top 16 teams (it sucks as a top two system, but does quite well for a larger sample size), with the eight higher seeds hosting first round games on the first weekend of December. In this year's case, I used the BCS averages from the wk 7 standings for all teams except USC, UCLA and WVU, since they played regular season games on Dec 3 and not in some sort of money grab ... excuse me, conference championship game.
This year's first rounders?
16 UCLA at 1 USC
9 West Virginia at 8 Notre Dame
13 TCU at 4 LSU
12 Georgia at 5 VA Tech
15 Texas Tech at 2 Texas
10 Miami at 7 Oregon
14 Alabama at 3 Penn St
11 Auburn at 6 Ohio St
4) Any team losing in the first round of the playoffs is still eligible for selection to any bowl game other than the four current BCS bowls. Since the NCAA has already approved a 12th regular season game, a bowl game would make 13. In this system, 11 games plus a first rounder plus a bowl game equals 13. The bowls are a nice reward for teams who've had a winning season. Just because the elite are in a playoff doesn't mean the Navy's, BYU's and Fresno State's of the world don't deserve a pat on the back for their efforts too.
5) The remaining eight teams are reseeded as necessary, with the quarterfinals taking place at the sites of the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls on New Year's day. Conference tie-ins are to be respected with regard to the higher ranked team wherever possible.
Let's say that Auburn and West Virginia spring upsets. The quarterfinals look like this
Rose Bowl: 11 Auburn vs. 1 USC (Pac 10 champ)
Fiesta Bowl: 9 West Virginia vs. 2 Texas (Big XII champ)
Sugar Bowl: 5 VA Tech vs. 4 LSU (SEC champ since the title game doesn't exist here)
Orange Bowl: 7 Oregon vs. 3 Penn St
6) The (reseeded) winners meet in semifinal match-ups the second Saturday after New Year's Day, one being held alternatingly at the Rose/Fiesta Bowl and the other between the Sugar/Orange Bowls (If the highest ranked team is Pac-10, Big 10 or Big XII, it hosts the Rose/Fiesta semi; ACC/SEC/Big East number 1's would host in the Sugar/Orange). Those winners would meet the following Saturday in the championship game, which would rotate among all four bowl sites, but never so that any one site would host a quarterfinal, semifinal, and championship game in the same postseason.

There you have it. A grand total of four teams exceed 13 games a year, so you academic critics who conveniently ignore that half the players aren't on track to graduate anyway can stand down. The bowls are preserved, New Years Day is restored, traditions are respected and we can finally all agree on who the champion is. Oh, and the bazillion dollar TV deal that would come with this system sure wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings either.