If you've been paying attention, you're likely aware that the BCS commissioners overwhelmingly voted against a playoff system in college football. The question of why has already been addressed in a lot of places, and boils down to two answers:

1. Tradition - We've had bowl games for decades now, and there's all sorts of history there. Why blow it up?
2. Money - Schools make a ton of money on the BCS. You think they'll make as much when their teams have to travel to neutral sites for several weeks to play playoff games?

Now, I'm in the minority here, but I'm with the (non-SEC) commissioners on this one. And I have Gordon Gee on my side, which means I'm right.

Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee calls the issue of a college football playoff his Maginot Line -- a final, heels-in-the-dirt resistance to what he views as the ruination of the sport.

The reference is to the line of fortifications France built on its border with Germany in the 1930s.

"We will not cross that line and get onto the slippery slope -- the professional-ization of college football and a furthering of the arms race," he said. "We simply have to say no. If we don't say no to this, the horse has left the barn totally. I will vote against it under any circumstance."

A bit later in the article:

Gee has proved he's not afraid to be a maverick, to blow up a system he views as broken. Look at his radical restructuring of the athletic department when he was chancellor at Vanderbilt.

So a case can be made that Tressel and Gee might be more open than most to the playoff possibilities.

Instead, they shoot down the idea, for the following reasons:

• Adding more games is bad for the players' welfare, particularly those who plan to try their hand at pro football.
• Shortening the regular season to make room for playoff games in December won't work, because schools need all the home-game revenue they can get.
• You can't ask fans to travel to neutral-site playoff games two or three weeks in a row.
• If you have home-site playoff hosts, you crush the bowl system. And bowls are worth preserving.

The easy hole to poke in Gee's argument against playoffs is that the game has already been professionalized. Bob Hunter makes that very argument in the Dispatch, matter of fact. Hunter argues, essentially, that "hey, the game is already commercialized, and that's not going away. Why not at least get a playoff out of it?" But then, there are two arguments against that:

1. Just because the games is commercialized, doesn't mean it should be. True, it's somewhat hypocritical for the president of a school boasting one of the highest-revenue athletic departments in the country to argue against commercialization, but if we believe this is a game that should be played by amateurs and not run primarily for profit, then any action taken toward those goals is a step in the right direction, even if there's a long way to go. Look at it this way: if you want a PB&J sandwich, but you have no peanut butter, you don't have to say, "Screw it, then, I'm going hungry." You can hop in your car and drive to the store, even if it's a long drive. Or you could at least crush up peanuts, sprinkle them over some butter bread, and hope for the best. That doesn't represent any part of the playoff argument, I just wanted to work in the chance to warn you all: peanut butter is not peanuts + butter.
2. The rest of Gee's points remain valid: the current system places fewer demands on players and maintains at least some semblance of tradition.

It's that second point that fits better with my view of playoffs. For starters, I don't think playoffs will solve all the problems with crowning a national champ. I mean, how often can you say you're sure the team that wins the NCAA tournament in men's basketball was the best in the country that year? If they get hot at the right time and catch a few lucky breaks, a pretty mediocre team can make a run through the playoffs and win it all, while a team that crushed the competition throughout the year can fall victim to a bad call and be out in the first round. True, those are the extreme cases, but c'mon, we're all college football fans here: I have argued extensively, with a complete disregard for logic, that Archie Griffin is the best athlete ever, simply because he won two Heismans. You think the Buckeyes losing a close game in the semi-finals is going to stop me from arguing that they're the best team in the country? A playoff won't settle these arguments. It'll give the fans of the winners some pretty good evidence, but then the little crystal balls the BCS hands out are also pretty good evidence.

Of course, this assumes we can even get the best teams in the playoffs. A four-team playoff will definitely leave out a potentially deserving team from time to time. An eight-team playoff (or Brian's six-team playoff, my favorite of the playoff proposals I've read) is better, but will still leave out some deserving teams (e.g., is the #3 SEC team that barely won its last few games more deserving than the #2 ACC team that finished strong?). We'd have to expand to quite a few teams to be sure of capturing all the teams with legit shots at winning a national championship, at which point we're adding considerably to the length of the season, which is not in the best interest of the players (again, stipulating we're still buying into the myth that college football players are and should be amateur student-athletes).

And who says crowning a national champion is something worth trying to do anyway? Can we really take one team from 119 and say, "Okay, we are absolutely certain this is the best team in the country"? It seems like an exercise in futility, designed to drive us all crazy. So why even try? Let's go back to the old system. Every year, the Big Ten champ plays the Pac-10 champ in the Rose Bowl, the 2nd place Big Ten team plays in the Citrus Capital One Bowl, and so on. It won't give us the best team in the country, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there's no way we can conclusively determine that. So instead, we get the tradition back, and a system that at least makes college football less of a blatant cash-grab.

Plus, one potential side-benefit: better non-conference games. Right now, losing a non-conference game seriously impacts a team's chance at a national championship shot. If OSU loses to USC this season, for example, perfection the rest of the way might not be enough to get them into the national championship game. It's a high-risk, moderate-reward situation. But if the conference championship was all that mattered, losing a non-conference game wouldn't mean near as much, just the cost of a tie-breaker or two. In that case, why not play big opponents? More exposure, higher attendance, more revenue - all good things. True, I'm not sure how often it happened in the pre-BCS days, or how changes to the college football landscape since then would impact things, but it seems that if non-conference games were relatively insignificant games designed to bring in revenue and prepare the team for the conference schedule, then a game against a quality opponent would seem to make sense.

Of course, a return to the pre-BCS system is even less likely than a playoff, so this all is probably irrelevant. But one last thing: Stewart Mandel recently remarked that most polls seem to have about 70% of the nation in favor of a playoff. He thought, though, that the split among die-hard college football fans, not sports fandom in general, would be closer to 50-50. Well, we're all die-hards, right? Which side of the debate do you come down on? Vote in the poll, leave a comment, and let me know. I'm kinda curious myself.