Whereas in my opinion, the 2009 BCS champion Florida Gators were a more legitimate champion than any cinderella story 4th-seeded team that ever won an NCAA tournament.

that I think most tournaments end with illegitimate champions.

but I’ll keep it short:

1) I actually would prefer the old system of crowning a champion after the regular season, and simply using the bowls for what they were designed to be, which was icing on the cake or a celebration game after the season. I’m too young to have experienced much of that, but I do remember a bit of the pre-BCS days in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and college football was more distinct form the NFL then than it is today. Plus, again, I think a champion is really abstract, and the sport itself, the season, and the teams are all bigger to me than the concept of a champion. The pursuit of a champion has become an obsession which has been hoisted above all other aspects of the game and is in danger of corroding the nature and the traditions of the sport.

2) I still don’t see why you would even have them play a season at all, as I still interpret your view to mean that you would throw three months away, simply to highlight 2-3 weeks. Qualification for a tournament, to me, is not early proper justification to throw away the importance of conference play, rivalries, Autumn football, and the dramatic week-to-week development of the teams.

3) If you’re going to have champions, then the more exclusive, the better. Several reasons: first, it maintains that the worst a champion will likely ever be, is a top 3 or 4 team (which I can live with, as most top 3 teams in college football are what I would consider great). Second, if you do buy into such competition, it seems more likely to me that in one single, hyped game, for which each team can prepare for several weeks, the better team is liklier to win than in a tournament setting, which throws the teams into a blender and the team that comes out the other side is either the luckiest or the one that best deals with tournament dynamics, not the team that plays football best. Third, the more exclusive the system, the more we culturally are aware that Champions are subjective, which I deem to be a good thing – I detest the illusion of objective measurement that our culture associates with a tournament, and I resent the talking heads who speak in absolutes after Super Bowls and NCAA finals: “well, they settled it on the field, they must be the better team,” meanwhile the opposition may have beat them solidly one month earlier, in a game that now counts for nothing.

I value truthfulness over an easy loophole that removes all argument, yet speaks in no way toward actuality. Most people, I suspect, prefer the removal of all argument above truth because they want things simple, and in black and white. So why not just flip a coin? The results are simple and completely unarguable, which is what most people seem to be clamoring for. But the reason most people wouldn’t accept a coin flip is the reason I don’t want a playoff.