“Silliman, read this! I’m not the only one calling for a college football play-off.”

        It’s Lyle again, former neighbor, this time laying a Washington Post story in front of me about a homeless guy who spent 13 weeks in D.C. lobbying for a playoff. The fanatic, Brandon Kennedy, drafted a paper “The Kennedy Proposal” and by his own estimate has sent 15,000 emails to conference officials, athletic directors and NCAA personal. Kennedy’s paper may be one of 300 proposals BCS officials may mull over. Aside from the 300, there are about eleventy-hundred-dozen other proposals obsessed fans like Brandon have authored on the internet.

       “Lyle,” I say. “College football already has a playoff. It’s called the college football season. Every game counts now.”
    “You don’t get it, Silliman. Fans want to know the TRUE champion. They want the top teams to eliminate each other. They don’t want no guesswork.”
    “You’ll see Michael Jackson moon-walking at the Rose Bowl before we’ll have an 8-team play-off.”
    “I beg to differ. Guys like this Kennedy kid, who is willing to live on the street and do research every day in the Georgetown library, are going to force a change.”
    “Two things, Lyle: money and passion. The bowls and the schools under the current system make tons of money. The reason being is that fans plan the bowls around vacations and you have a month to plan and transport 50-60,000 into a locale. You could never do that in a week’s notice.”
    “Sure they can, Silliman.  They do it in college basketball.”
    “Apples and oranges! 3 to 5000 fans from a school meet other fans in a 20,000 seat arena. One bowl game brings in more money than four playoff sites in basketball. Logistically it would be a huge fail to expect fans to travel with one week’s notice.”
    “They do it in the NFL! So there!”
    “NFL? Home field advantage? Five thousand at the most will travel with the visiting team? You kill the bowls to replace it with more home games. Nobody wants that!”
    “Well, how about Division II or the NAIA? Their fans travel with a weeks notice.”

    “Yeah, about enough to fill two or three busses. And they don’t stay a week or vacation or provide anywhere near the hotel revenue bowl games do. Sheesh, Lyle, why are resorting to these wimpy arguments?”
    “Because it’s what the fans want. Orrin Hatch is all for it.”
    “Great. Senator Hatch doesn’t have time to fix health care but if can help the Utah teams get into a playoff…”
    “Silliman, you’re just a fuddy and you can’t see the writing on the wall.”
    “Sure I can. A Plus-1 system might work at two weeks past the bowls. But anything else weakens the regular season. Right now, every game means something. Every game COUNTS! You not only have to win, you have to impress. In the NFL, many games don’t matter. If an NFL team cinches a playoff, they sometimes slack off. You can’t do that with the computers and the BCS.”
    “Well, something has got to change.”
    “Here’s what needs to happen. To make things even every conference needs at least 12 teams, and needs a conference championship and every conference needs to have at least half their teams play non-conference games against teams from BCS conferences. In other words the computers would have an accurate gage going into the season and no team gets an advantage, either injuries or otherwise, by skipping a conference championship game. That levels the field.”
    “So this Kennedy guy just wasted 13 weeks of his life?”
    “Not entirely. He did make it into a Silliman on Sports column.”