Ray Glier

ATLANTA - BCS vs. a playoff format. I can end this argument with two words. But, first, go look at the list of national champions since 1998. Pick out the team that doesn’t belong.

Who did you come up with? None. The best team, by all accounts, was left standing.

Now look at the 20 teams that have played for the title? How many don’t belong? Two, that’s it. Nebraska getting in the title game in 2001 and Oklahoma getting in over Auburn in 2004.

So here is my two-word answer to why the BCS makes sense over a playoff.

It works.

It will work again this year because Oklahoma will beat Kansas in the Big 12 championship game, or Kansas will lose to Missouri, or LSU will get surprised in the SEC championship game, or something. There is always something.

I can give you a lot of emotional reasons why we don’t need a playoff, but I can give you one rational reason why a playoff isn’t necessary.

The BCS works, mostly.

I can put up with the one, or two years in 10 when it doesn’t work because I have gotten really used to a regular season with one terrific weekend after another of games. Once upon a time, I was a playoff proponent, but the process, not the end-result, is something to behold.

Illinois beating Ohio State was huge for the rest of the country. With a playoff it would have been huge merely in Illinois because the Buckeyes would still be alive for a title shot. There are games like that nearly every weekend: Colorado over Oklahoma; South Florida over West Virginia; Cal over Oregon and on and on.

The playoff proponents love winner-take-all. What’s more winner-take-all than your first loss coming in November and you’re gone from the title picture?

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If you don’t like my first argument, here’s another, and the caretakers of the college game have thought carefully about it.

College basketball’s regular season has been dwarfed by March Madness. If the kids suddenly want to go outside and shoot baskets, it is easy to get up and walk away from the TV during college basketball’s regular season (unless it is Louisville vs. Kentucky). There is always another big game, another time when Carolina has its back to the wall, or UCLA is in a do-or-die situation. March Madness makes the regular season less relevant.

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In football, it all counts. If Kansas wins out, LSU’s loss to Kentucky — in October! — was major, a playoff-type game if the Jayhawks can sneak by the Tigers in the ratings. The networks understand, which is why college basketball coverage doesn’t start in earnest until February. Why bother until then?

Nearly half of the college basketball season — 13 or 14 games — is over by the end of December. Nobody notices outside the campus.

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