It's a 16 part series for crying out loud.

Yet another installment from the CFN roundtable.

You may not know who all these guys are, but trust me, as much as Chris, Kirk and Lee, these guys help shape opinion in the world of college football. What they have to say about critical subjects is worth checking out.

This time it's the age old question.

Make your case why the BCS is better than a playoff (without using the “every week is a playoff” cliché).

Again, edited excerpts from the panel...

Stewart Mandel : Because a playoff would turn the sport into a facsimile of the NFL, where, instead of rewarding greatness over the course of an entire season, it's about whoever gets hot over a three-game stretch. See: the New York Giants.

Teddy Greenstein: I've written about 73 columns on this subject. Cliché or not, the No. 1 reason is that from the first snap of the first game, every moment counts.

Also, fairness. People say a playoff would bring fairness to the system. Really? In 2005, only USC and Texas finished the regular season undefeated. Would it have been fair to them to include 9-2 Notre Dame or 9-2 Ohio State in an eight-team playoff? And if you have an eight-team playoff with six conference champs, how do you fairly select the two at-larges? The cluster of teams ranked between 6-12 every year makes it nearly impossible.

Fiu: The fluke factor is diminished. If the goal is to have the two best teams playing for the championship, then college football gets it right more than any other sport.

If Boston and Los Angeles were the No. 1 teams in their respective conferences after the regular season, then why the need for the NBA playoffs? The New York Giants didn’t even win their own division and lost, at home, to New England, so all of a sudden they’re the champions because they went on a hot run at the end of the year?

Are we supposed to throw out what happened in the regular season? More often than not, college football has the best two teams in the title game after they earned their way in.

Richard Cirminiello: Although a plus-one system would be tailor-made for my taste, I’ve never been a proponent of a full-blown, 16-team playoff. It’s unnecessary for determining a national champion and would diminish the importance of some regular season games. Who wants LSU getting routed by Arkansas the day after Thanksgiving, yet still qualifying as the No. 12 seed?

Charles Davis: Ambivalent about the BCS vs. Playoff…no case to be made…my only passionate argument is against the Plus One game. I believe that some years it will get it right, while others will penalize a clear cut top team…right now that argument can be made against the current system, but if the idea is to improve things I don’t believe a plus one model does it at all.

Dennis Dodd: I'm not sure it is. Better to call it a steppingstone -- though a flawed one -- from the traditional bowl system to A national championship game. Prior to 1998 we never had one unless it was by fluke in a bowl game. The BCS title game might not be the game you want to see but it's a hell of a lot better than what we had.

There are as many problems with even a modest four-team playoff as there are with the current BCS system. I'm starting to fall in line with this so-called Plus-One Play-In that was proposed a few years ago. If it all changed tomorrow I'd be OK with it. But last season was the best ever, in my opinion. It would not have been possible if NOT for the BCS.

Any playoff raises the ugly possibility of a coach playing it safe -- i.e. playoff position -- instead of going balls out to win the game. I can foresee a day when, say, Jim Tressel rests his quarterback against Michigan because a playoff spot is clinched.


Echoing Dodd's comments, I too have started to think that a plus-one might be ideal. And this is after staunchly opposing anything outside the one game playoff (BCS title game) we have had now for years. The plus-one would remove some of the ambiguity while still maintaining the integrity of the regular season.

For example, if Michigan and Ohio State face each other undefeated at the end of the season, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the loser will remain in the top four. Therefore, the game retains it's national importance.

The fact that Michigan stayed two after they lost to Ohio State two years ago was a testament to the greatness of that contest, nothing more. Had Ohio State blown the Wolverines out of the water, no way would Michigan have remained two in the polls. And in fact, they didn't as some time passed.

The problem of course, and I apologize for belaboring this subject which has been covered ad nauseum for years and years now, is that once you go to a plus one, additional rounds of playoffs are not far behind.

Before you know it you've got a diminished regular season. You want to know how much fun a diminished regular season is? Check out a meaningless regular season college basketball game some time.