Every year there is debate among fans, media, coaches, athletic directors and college presidents about the need – or lack thereof – for a Division I college football playoff. It usually happens close to the end of the season, when Team A from the Big East or C-USA is still undefeated and lagging in the poles behind several teams from larger conferences. Should team A have the right to play for the championship? Of course they should. All they have done is win the games on their schedule, just like anyone else. Do they get the chance? Due to the convoluted ranking system and bias in human poles, rarely.

What then is the point of playing in a conference? If winning your conference does not ensure a chance at winning the national championship, why play in a conference? That has been Notre Dame’s argument all the way along. That, and the fact that they believe they are above the standards the rest of the Division I schools have to play along with.

Everyone argues about what format a college football playoff should take – how to select the teams so that the deserving teams have a chance to play, and on and on. Well, there’s already a mechanism in place to determine that, it’s just up until this point, the larger conferences have had such a stranglehold on the mythical “National Championship” that it has not been up for debate. The college presidents have clung to the “bowl games are traditional” argument and the “too many games are bad for our students” fallacy. Well, it is high time those elevated thinkers are enlightened and forced to finally adopt a solid plan that will not only put both of those excuses to bed, but re-energize and elevate major college football to a level their basketball playing brethren now enjoy.

Currently, there are eleven Division I football conferences, with four holdout independent institutions, totaling 120 Division I-A members. The conferences range in members from eight (Big East and Sun Belt) to thirteen (Mid American). Each team is allowed to play twelve regular season games, plus their conference championships, if applicable. And with 32 bowl games, that means that 64 teams – more that half of all eligible – are rewarded for their efforts in the regular season with a trip to another game to line the pockets of their school’s coffers.

My suggestions is simple, really, in the large scale. Let each of the eleven conference champions, plus the five next most deserving teams, complete in a four-round playoff using the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and Rose bowls as the quarterfinals, the semi-finals played the next week and the championship played during the off-week before the Super Bowl. Let the bowl games select from the rest of Division I-A.

This plan accomplishes several things:

1. Makes conference titles that much more important;
2. Gives all I-A schools a chance to be involved in how the national champion is decided;
3. Keeps the bowl game structure largely intact;
4. Adds just seven games to an already bloated schedule;
5. Extends the season of just eight teams;
6. Assures teams that one early-season loss will not necessarily keep them from playing for the championship.

The conferences are already established. This plan would force Army, Navy, Western Kentucky and Notre Dame into a conference, but it is for their own good. There will be plenty of distracters screaming that the MAC, WAC and Sun Belt champions do not deserve to compete for the National Championship. But I say, why, exactly, not? Isn’t a good deal of the charm of the NCAA basketball tournament that the smaller schools and “mid-majors” get to compete with the factory conferences? The popularity of the first two weekends of the NCAA basketball tournament rivals that of any event in sports. So why would it be a bad thing for football? In fact, allowing those conference winners a berth in the football National Championship tournament would be a tremendous boon to the entire sport and strengthen the game across the board.

Imagine the coach at North Texas going into a prize recruit’s living room and telling the young man, “Listen son, you can sign with Texas and sit on the bench with all their other high school All-Americans for a couple of years, or you can sign with us and lead us to the National Championship tournament this year!” Pretty enticing for a young man, wouldn’t you say? Instituting a playoff and opening it up to all the Division I conferences would be good for the game all the way around.

There would be plenty of other details that would have to be ironed out under this scenario, including number of conference games to play to be eligible, how to handle conferences that have playoffs, bowl tie-ins to conference teams, etc. But at least the main structure would be simple to put in place. All the rest could be easily sorted out once the biggest decision is made.

Presidents at the football factories cringe any time a football playoff is mentioned. The current BCS and bowl structure is lucrative, controlled and exclusive. They make the rules and they don’t have to let anyone in. College football is an extremely profitable business, and the presidents have every right to try to protect that business. But don’t they also have a responsibility to provide the best value and entertainment, along with a level playing field? The media has been awarding a mythical “National Champion” in college football since 1883, and they will keep on doing it until there is a better way to do it. It’s right in front of them. Let them play for it.