B(C)S at 7:28 PM

I wasn't going to post today, but I'm still at work with not much to do, so here we go. With all the talk about college football and coaches lately, I feel I should weigh in on a different aspect of the same subject. Namely, the BCS. I know many have voiced opinions before, but I've got all this pent up hostility that I need to let loose, and if my wife hears me talk about the subject any more, I think she might lose it.
It goes without saying that the BCS is an unfair way of determining a national champion. All you have to do is look at the basic format, which disqualifies schools based solely on the conference in which they play. If you want to see who the best team is, you let everybody play. Maybe they get trounced in the first round. Big deal. It works for the basketball tournament, doesn't it? That reminds me of another aspect where the BCS doesn't make sense. Money. It's obvious that the big time BCS schools make out like bandits under the current system, because the BCS bowls pay a lot more to the conferences that can actually participate in them than the "other" bowl berths pay. Take a look at March Madness. It's a money-making machine! Can't the powers-that-be see the potential in having a playoff system? With the popularity of college football right now, how much more excitement would there be in a format where more than two teams had a chance at the national championship? How about a football Final Four? Are you kidding me? It would be awesome! Even for college hockey, which is mired in obscurity for the entire season, the "Frozen Four" and the championship game get coverage on ESPN. And don't tell me there's no time for a playoff. Every division that I'm aware of outside of Division I-A has a playoff format (the Fightin' Blue Hens of Delaware were national champs last year in Division I-AA, by the way). Sure, there's way more teams in Division I-A, but consider the novel idea of having everyone play (gasp) the same amount of games! Maybe the season could start and end at the same time for all of the teams! There's at least four weeks every year that could be used as playoff space where some teams have either started or ended their seasons and other teams are not yet or still playing. And get rid of these conference championship games, for Pete's sake. Make the conferences equal sizes and everyone in the conference can play everyone else in the conference. Why don't they do this right now? Because the big schools need about five games against schools no one has heard of in order to blow them out and gain some edge in the computer polls. It's insane. Doesn't this seem like common sense to anyone else? Let me lay it out for you:

-Equal size conferences where everyone plays each other and there's a regular season champion
-All conference champions make it to the playoffs with a few wild card bids (it's possible to lay down numbers here, but I'm not gonna do it right now. Perhaps in a later post)
-You mix traditionally stronger teams in with traditionally weaker teams for the conferences. That way you don't have a conference full of strong teams that only gets two bids.
-At the end of the regular season, let the brackets begin!

Of course, I realize this will never ever happen. It's not realistic to think that the guys with all the money want to risk losing a small piece of it (even though chances are the big guys would still come out on top in the long run--again see college hoops). My point here is that there is a better way than what's being used now, and it's not that hard to implement it.