Saban's Comments and BCS Both Prove Baffling

Answer: nowhere.

Most people are already saying the media is making too much of this and, if Saban turns Alabama around next year or the year after, there will probably be people who will say his analogy was right on target. Sure it was. Because football really is life and death, right?

On to happier topics. Everyone now knows that if Missouri beats Oklahoma on Saturday and West Virginia beats Pittsburgh that they will play for the national championship on January 7th in New Orleans. Okay, fine. It still says here that any system that allows a team to go undefeated (Boise State last year; Hawaii, at the moment, this year) and not have a chance to play for a championship, it should be blown up. Plus, it really gets old hearing the network apologists for the BCS conferences shrugging off Hawaii as having not beaten anybody. One of those apologists was heard to say last weekend in a dismissing, condescending tone, "Please don't tell me Hawaii belongs in the top twenty-five."

Question: how does he know where Hawaii belongs? None of his -- or his network's -- beloved power teams will play Hawaii or Boise State in the regular season. How'd Boise State do against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl last January? Hawaii might be a fraud or it might be George Mason. The problem is, under the current system, we'll never know.

Here's what else is wrong with the system: If Missouri or West Virginia loses Saturday, Ohio State will be in the championship game. Why? Ohio State's one loss was at home to a three loss Illinois team. Kansas lost on a neutral field to the current No. 1 team in the country. Neither team beat anyone out of conference and Kansas played in a better conference.

So why is Ohio State automatically better than Kansas? Because it lost sooner than Kansas? Because the BCS poll says so? Why is Ohio State's 11-1 better than Kansas's 11-1? Who exactly did Ohio State beat in a Big Ten that might have been as mediocre as the incredibly mediocre ACC? Does anyone think Ohio State is as good as USC now that the Trojans are healthy?

But it doesn't matter. The Buckeyes will go if either team loses and, if BOTH should somehow lose all hell will break loose picking the second team.

More from the silly people who run the bowls: After Maryland crushed North Carolina State on Saturday to become "bowl-eligible," bowl officials were falling all over themselves to talk about what an attractive team Maryland was. The Terrapins have six wins. Two of them are over Villanova (a mediocre 1-AA team) and Florida International. They beat Rutgers -- exposed as overrated as the season wore on -- and went 3-5 in a down ACC. Wow, what an attractive team.

That's not so much a knock on Maryland, which was riddled with injuries all season, as the ridiculous system and ridiculous people who allow the system to exist.

Here's how college football's postseason should be put together every year: One committee chooses 12 teams to play for the national championship and seeds them -- top four get byes; next four home field for the first round.

Then, a separate committee selects the teams that play in the secondary bowls. There are no conference tie-ins, no eighth place teams with 6-6 records guaranteed spots. The bowls with the highest payout get top priority down to the bowls with the lowest payout getting the final selections. Of course the bowl people will say the following: "if we can't pick teams based on how many tickets they will buy or on potential TV ratings we may not survive."

Fine. There are too many bowls and too many 6-6 teams getting there by playing lousy non-conference schedules. If a bowl can't draw then it should go away. The guess here is the college football world will continue to spin on its axis if the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl or the Chick-fil-A Bowl were to go away. Not to mention the GMAC Bowl or the always unforgettable Papajohns.com Bowl.

Doing all this would, unfortunately take some leadership. There's none in the NCAA where Myles Brand hides under his desk every time talk of a playoff comes up. There's certainly none among the college presidents. So, this lousy unfair system will continue -- sort of like the war in Iraq -- with no end in sight.

What's most frustrating is that everyone always has excuses; everyone has reasons why change won't work. Nothing is perfect in the world but just because you can't achieve perfection doesn't mean you don't try to get better. The other day during a discussion of the war someone said, "Well, if you started today, it would take a year to get our troops safely home," as if that was a reason the war can't end, instead of saying, "let's start today."

The same is true, on a FAR less important level, of college football. A playoff system won't be exactly right and maybe some bowls would go away. It would still be much better for everyone -- most important it would be better for the players and it would be better for the fans.

But why should anyone care about them? What's really important is filling those coffers and making sure the University of Alabama can keep paying Nick Saban to be a leader of young men.