New Football Playoff Is More Of The Same

After 14 years of the BCS getting it mostly right or almost right, college football officially has a "playoff system" in place, pitting the top four teams selected by a committee in a bracketed system to determine the National Champion.

So what?

It's great that the set-in-their ways college football presidents listened to what the fans of one of the most popular sports in the country were clamoring for, but is it really that much different? Instead of the No. 3 and No. 4 team complaining that they deserve a shot at the title, now No. 5 and No.6 will make their case.

Yes, now the national championship will be decided on the field, partially, but still a committee will get to decide what teams get to battle it out on the gridiron.

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There will be standards that the committee will have to follow, which is a step above a computer deciding one-third of the equation, but the fact remains that in many years a deserving team will be left on the outside looking in.

What conferences will take precedence in the pecking order of the committee? Will a one-loss team from a power conference  trump an undefeated Mountain West (read Boise State) team because their one loss came against another top team? On top of all of that, the National Championship game will be played more than a month after the final game of the season.

These are the same flaws that exist currently with the BCS system, although now it can masquerade as a playoff system simply because there's an extra game in the scenario.

It's impossible to argue that the new system is not better than what we had before. The BCS was terrible and now we have something that is a bit better but still shares many of the same issues. That's like being happy about losing an arm because you just beat cancer.

When push comes to shove, you're still going to have to spend a ton of time in the hospital.

The Presidents Oversight committee clearly recognizes this issue, with the 12-year commitment to the new plan. They know fans are going to complain, but they'll be locked in until 2026, so what can they do about it but hit the message boards?

It's almost certain that at some point the system will take enough pressure, forcing it to expand again, so for now fans should just be happy that they got something at all.

However, the worst part about this whole deal is for the next two seasons, No. 3 and No. 4 in the final BCS rankings will have even more to complain about.