Finally

Finally!  I think that's the only word that can sum up the feelings of most sports fans with today's announcement that college football is going to have a playoff starting in 2014.  The controversy surrounding BCS team selections, schools switching conferences on a yearly basis, and the general fan disgust in the current system seem to have been enough to send the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame's AD over the edge.  (Either that or they realized there's even more money to be made with a playoff in place, which I think is actually more likely.)

There are a lot of details that still need to be worked out, but it'll be four teams that are selected by a committee and seeded 1-4.  The two semifinals will be played on New Year's Day at existing bowl games, with the championship game a week later on a Monday night.  Six bowls (you'd figure probably the Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton and Champions) will alternate hosting the semifinals, and the championship game, like the Super Bowl, is open to the highest bidder.  The rest of the bowls will continue to be the meaningless exhibition games they are now.  They still have to figure out which bowls will be the semifinals and how the conference tie-ins are going to work, but the Rose Bowl will probably remain Big Ten vs. Pac-12, provided those teams aren't in the playoff.

When news of this playoff broke last week, I was asked if this means I'll start following college football now.  This playoff certainly helps, but the answer is "Probably Not."  (There are a number of reasons why I don't watch college football.  The BCS is just one of them.)  But that doesn't change the fact I think this is an important milestone.  And I give the commissioners and presidents credit for realizing that change was needed before even more people become disillusioned.

So what do I actually think of the new playoff model?  If they were trying to "preserve the integrity of the regular season" (one of the biggest loads of crap I've ever heard), they succeeded in doing that.  If they were trying to make sure the Continental Tire Bowl and Humanitarian Bowl survived, they succeeded in doing that, as well.  ('Cause God knows December wouldn't be the same without 30 meaningless crappy bowl games between two 7-5 teams.)  Most importantly, they figured out a way to do all that and still have a playoff.

Personally, I would've liked to see them go with an eight-team playoff (or, better yet, a 16-team tournament like all other levels of NCAA football), but the reasoning for going with four seems to make sense.  This way, the only game that's actually being eliminated is the BCS Championship Game.  (Sorry to the ninth-place team in the ACC who won't get that football CBI bid anymore.)

And if they're only going to have four teams, it makes sense to not have any automatic bids and (theoretically, at least) make everybody eligible for the tournament.  (Who are we kidding?  The four teams are still only going to come out of the same four conferences, but they're at least pretending that everyone has an equal chance.)  With only four teams, it would be impossible to decide which conference champions got to go to the tournament and which ones didn't.  It's also entirely possible that two of the four best teams are from the same conference. 

Probably the only good thing about last year's "championship" game between Alabama and LSU is that it exposed this major flaw within the old system.  When you only have two teams and you have a championship game between two schools from the same league, that's a problem.  But if two teams from the same league win their semifinal games and play for the championship, no problem.  They both earned their spot.  When it happens in the Final Four, it's simply validation that said conference is the best one.

The other aspect of the college football playoff that I like is that the teams will be selected by a committee.  Let's face it, the BCS is stupid.  The polls are completely arbitrary, and the computer formula doesn't make any sense.  Now they've got a committee that will pick the four best teams and determine the matchups.  What a concept!  Whether you jump five spots in the polls by running up the score at home against Youngstown State in September will have no bearing on whether or not you end up playing for the championship anymore.  And it shouldn't.

One of the reasons college basketball is so successful is precisely because of the NCAA Tournament.  I understand that basketball's never going to challenge football's status at the top of the mountain.  But, in this case, football wisely took a page out of basketball's book: a seeded playoff, with the teams chosen by a committee.  It's still not perfect.  But it's a very, very, very good (and very important) first step.  And for that, I can actually tip my cap to the college football establishment.