An argument against an NCAA Football playoff

With the release of the BCS rankings, the fervor has returned, with many people, heck, most people (including Steve, who will have a post on the topic later this week) clamoring for some sort of post season tournament in college football. I, for one, am typically a big fan of tournaments, but in this instance, I am staunchly opposed, and I hope I can illustrate why clearly.
Playoffs and tournaments work in other sports for different reasons. In the two most logical comparable sports, NCAA basketball and the NFL, they work for two different reasons that wouldn’t work for NCAA football. In college basketball, the tournament field is so vast that they can include roughly 20% of all teams playing in Division 1, which would then include conference champions from all conferences as well as the elite teams that didn’t win their conference. To do this in college football, you would need to include at least 20 teams which, at best, means a tournament that would last around a month and a half.
In the NFL, the league is small enough that teams play 40% of the other teams in the league at least once, making their record a viable measure as to whether or not they should make the playoffs compared to another team. In order for simple record to work as a metric as far as putting an NCAA team in a tournament, following the NFL model, teams would have to play about 50 games a season, ensuring that they play 50 different teams. And again, the NFL uses all division champions, and the percentage of teams making the NFL playoffs is even greater than those that make an NCAA tournament, in terms of playoff teams to teams in the given league.
Which brings me to my main point. A tournament doesn’t serve to remove the arbitrariness that comes with the BCS. If you want to create, for example, a month long, 16 team tournament with the conference champions (there are 11 conferences in Division 1-A) and 5 at large teams, or a shorter, 8 team tournament with the most elite teams you have created a pair of new problems. With the first example, you have eliminated the chance at many premier matchups by infusing conference champions into the mix, which will lead to several anticlimactic games. Football (this season aside) tends to yield fewer major upsets than basketball, so Cinderellas are a lot less likely. With the 8 team tournament, how do you choose your 8 teams? Aren’t you beset with the same problems as the current 2 team championship game? The 9th team will have the same complaints as a 3rd ranked team today. And really, how would you feel about, say, Oklahoma, a team who lost to Colorado, having as much a chance at the national title as a number of undefeated teams? The present set up punishes teams severely for slip ups like that.
Another thing that’s nice about the bowls is that it gets conferences that aren’t typically in the media limelight their 15 seconds. The Motor City Bowl often is the validation for the MAC. What happens to the MAC champion in the event of a tournament? Do they get unceremoniously throttled every year, or do they get nothing, save for a spot in an archaic bowl that’s less important than the NIT? Additionally, by playing in the smaller conferences, several of these teams are eliminated from any hope of glory before the season starts, thanks to polling biases.
Now, I’m not just going to go out and spout off about why I think the tournament is a bad idea, but I will provide a couple of ideas to make the Bowl system work a little better. First, get rid of human polls until about week 8, until we’ve had a chance to watch everyone play. This should eliminate a lot of bias in the final poll, especially if the human polls are reduced in weight in the final computer standings. Secondly, to better gauge the talent of one team, one conference to the next, have one or two league mandated non conference game to supplement the cupcake games on the schedule. We learned a lot more about Ohio State last year when they beat Texas than when they beat Bowling Green, so why can’t we just have a couple more major conference games? I know the big programs are afraid of losing, but if you think your team is a title contender, shouldn’t these game be a non issue? I think randomly assigned non conference games would be informative and certainly helpful in deciding which teams should play the national championship.
Personally, I think with a tournament, you haven’t crowned a national champion, but rather a tournament champion, given the arbitrary nature that would be inherent in selecting teams to compete for a title. If we keep the Bowl system, we are left with 20some excellent matchups (if, granted, not always with the best teams) because Bowl organizers’ jobs are to put butts in seats. With a tournament, we may not see the number of unique or entertaining games as we would in a tournament, depending on the format. I know I’m in the minority on this topic, but I hope I made my argument clear. Let me know what you think in the comments, or if you would like me to clarify anything. I wrote this at 4 in the morning after all.