It is the last major sport with a meaningful regular season. Between September and December, every game matters. If you are an Ohio State football fan, how much more compelling was it last Saturday, watching the Buckeyes overcome Illinois, knowing if they didn't, their national title dreams were as dead as the leaves in the yard?

You want a playoff? Every week is a playoff. If Miami doesn't beat Pitt Thursday night, are the Hurricanes playing in Tempe Jan.3? If Ohio State loses to Michigan today, chances are good nobody here is making Fiesta Bowl reservations.

College football has the last pure regular season. And you want to corrupt that with a playoff?

OK. Tell me how. Show me how it might work. Convince me it would be better than things are now. Because now, with the heathen Bowl Championship Series, hated by everyone but me, things have never been better in college football.

The BCS has done exactly what was intended. It has, with very little debate, determined the two best teams in the country in each of its first four years. It has jacked interest in college football to new heights. Without the BCS, who around here would care about Washington State?

Controversy sells. Sports are a good argument at the bar. BCS talk crops up halfway through every season. It's peaking now. Fans are involved. This is bad for the game?

Yes? OK. Make it better.

A playoff? A 16-team event is unwieldy. A four-team event isn't worth the bother. A 12-team bracket means byes, which wouldn't be fair. That leaves eight teams.

Great. Who's going to go to these games?

"Use existing bowls for the first two rounds," you say.

OK. Say you're an Ohio State fan. Your first-round game is the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. Your best airfare from Cincinnati is $380 with a Saturday-night stayover, according to Mary Ann Kroth, a travel consultant at AAA Cincinnati.

You'll need a place to stay unless you plan on sleeping in your rental car ($64 for two days, mid-size, Kroth says). Two nights at the Mission Valley Holiday Inn, before taxes, is $218. You'll need to eat, unless you can live on your love for the Buckeyes: Six meals, give or take: $100.

Game ticket: $40.

Need a memento from your team's first game in the new college playoffs? Program: $8.

Your total for two nights at the Holiday Bowl: $810 before the first beer or soda, snack or in-room movie, hot dog or hat.

Then the Buckeyes win. They play in the Orange Bowl in Miami the following week. Flight, car or taxi, hotel, meals, etc. They win again. Fiesta Bowl, here we come.

One small problem: We're broke.

Tell me I'm crazy.

"Doc, you're crazy."

There's a better way, you say: "Give the top four seeds a first-round home game."

Fine. What happens in a year when Penn State has a first-round home game? Or Kansas State? What if you're seeded fifth? Who's the lucky guy who gets to tell fans their reward for loyalty is a trip to Manhattan, Kan., for New Year's?

Baby, break out the bubbly. We're going to State College, Pa.

(Nothing against the town or the school. But have you ever been to State College? You're leaving a trail of bread crumbs all the way from Pittsburgh, for when you get lost on the way back.)

Whether you like the bowls or not, many of them are in desirable spots. The weather is better than it is where you are. So is the entertainment. Even if neither is true, with bowls around, you're guaranteed never to go to Stillwater, Okla.; Lubbock, Texas, or Syracuse, N.Y., in January.

So, go ahead. Tell me how a playoff will work. There is a very good chance you will sound like the people who yap annually - usually during March Madness - that college players need to be paid. They can't come up with a realistic, workable solution for that, either. They just pontificate.

Stumped? OK. This is what will happen: Miami will beat Syracuse and Virginia Tech. Ohio State will beat Michigan today. Even if the Bucks lose, will anyone argue that Oklahoma would be a better one-loss team than the Buckeyes?

The two best teams will play in Tempe on Friday, Jan. 3. Just like they always do. Some team might have a gripe. Tough. No one will have a better system.