[iggymcfly]

Pvn, what kind of playoff are you advocating? The basic reason for the bowl system is that with 16 or less teams making the playoffs, there are a lot of teams that have absolutely no shot at ever making the postseason. The chances of a Sun Belt team making an 8-team playoff for example would be worse than 1 in 100,000. Therefore, you give that team an intermediate carrot to strive for, in this case a bowl game. Under my system, they'd at least have a chance to make the playoffs, if they went undefeated or went 11-1 with a decent schedule, but I think we all know the talent level's just not there for that to be realistic right now.

In basketball, they play 30+ regular season games, and can play 3 games in a week, so a tournament like the NIT is feasible for second-tier teams. In football, it's just not. The game's physically bruising and no one wants to make weeks of travel plans to see which football team's #17 or something. With an 11-12 game regular season, the correct amount of postseason for teams outside the championship chase is one game, period. Enter the bowl system. I do feel that it's gotten overgrown, and if I ran college football, I'd eliminate at least 5 or 6 of the lower-tier bowls to make reaching a bowl more special again, but I do think it's the ideal system if you want a small enough playoff to make the regular season meaningful for the elite teams.