Playoffs won’t halt arguments

“And if you don’t seed, you don’t find out anything more [about rankings]. Seeding breaks up the traditional bowl games, which is antithetical to the BCS concept.”

Those are the words of Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen. He was responding to the annual howl to replace the current Bowl Championship Series method of determining the mythical college football national champion with a playoff.

Here is this column’s seasonal response.

Hansen’s point about the seeding is well taken. The BCS folks continue to say there will not be a playoff system. What they will consider is the “plus-one” option.

That option would create a final game after the bowls are completed. Four teams would be seeded and play in two of the current bowl games. The winners of those games would meet in the “plus-one” game.

Hansen’s point is that such a seeding process would be just as difficult to accomplish, and just as fractious, as the current never-ending arguments about who should be in the BCS championship game.

How would this year’s teams be seeded under a “plus-one” format?

There are a dozen teams that could make a strong argument for being one of the four. That debate would be just a caustic as the current tirades to replace the BCS system.

The Pac-10 and the Big Ten continue to oppose any system other than the current bowl arrangement. That is because those conferences send teams to play in the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl is a big deal and worth millions to the teams and conferences.

Any “plus-one” format could conceivable take the teams that would play in the Rose Bowl and move them to another bowl as one of the seeded four. Those conferences want none of that.

There will probably never be a system that creates other than a mythical national champion. Half the fun is the argument.

The biggest problem in trying to figure out a No. 1 team is the regular-season schedules.

The top teams are scattered all over the country, they don’t play one another and they have schedules that vary dramatically in terms of the quality of opponents. Arguments about conference strengths only add to the problem.

The playoff hype comes from the media, especially television that would stand to make much money under a playoff system.

BCS officials are so beaten over the head in the media that they may wear down and move to the “plus-one” option in the next decade. They should not.

The idea of the BCS was to bring the best teams into the BCS bowls in this age of watered down bowl games everywhere. The teams get their shot in those BCS games to lay claim to being No. 1.

Everyone gets to argue about No. 1, post bowls, just as they would post playoff. Close enough.

Gary Thorne, an Old Town native, is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.