A college football playoff system is sort of like world peace – it’ll never truly come to fruition, no matter how many people spend countless hours fighting for it. Just won’t. Just can’t.In a fantasy world, there’d be a March Madness-like playoff bracket for college football. But, of course, that would take forever and shorten the regular season. Unlike basketball, playing two games in three days is inconceivable. It would take weeks to get it all done. No thanks.I personally like the mission of the BCS. The goal is to get the nation’s best teams on board to duke it out not only in a true National Championship game, but also in four other marquee matchups.There’s just too many cop-outs, though, keeping the latter part of that from truly happening.**-There’s the fact that bowls can draw from any of the nation’s top-14 teams in the BCS standings**. Why 14? What makes that such a fair number?**-There’s a limit on BCS conferences getting no more than two teams into the five headlining games**. What’s the point? Isn’t that brutally unfair to the Big 12, which had three teams in the final top-10 rankings?**-There’s the Rose Bowl and its traditional Pac-10 vs. Big Ten ideals**. This was all well and good before the BCS, but since its inception, the Rose Bowl is like the aging starlet hanging on by a thread before fading into oblivion. Now, by sticking to those principles, its completely unjust. In this day and age, with all the money thrown around with BCS games, ‘tradition’ is becoming a hollower term by the year.If I ran the BCS selection process, here’s how it’d go…You would still have the No. 1 and No. 2 teams play for the title. Can’t argue that.Then, it’s so simple that it could be drawn up in a classroom at Hawthorn Elementary: No. 3 vs. No. 4, No. 5 vs. No. 6, No. 7 vs. No. 8 and No. 9 vs. No. 10. No whining from bowl officials, and no limits on how many teams from each conference.Wow. How hard was that? Forget making champs of BCS conferences making it automatically. If they deserve it, they’ll be in the top-10 (like all six champs are this year). It’s that rule that has set up the duds of BCS past, such as Louisville vs. Wake Forest in last year’s Orange Bowl, or Pitt vs. Utah in the Fiesta Bowl a few years back. And if the Rose Bowl doesn’t want to comply, screw ’em…make the final game the Cotton Bowl and let the Rose Bowl head off on its own to keep with ‘tradition.’Now with that system, here’s what you would have had this year…**BCS Championship game: No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 LSU** -No arguments here, right? LSU won the nation’s toughest conference, and Ohio State is the nation’s only BCS conference team to have won its league outright while maintaining a one-loss record. Lets move on…**Rose Bowl: No. 3 Virginia Tech vs. No. 4 Oklahoma** No way this one could be a flop. Two good defensive teams with sometimes-explosive offenses. Fun to watch, and both fan bases travel ridiculously well. Everyone wins.**Sugar Bowl: No. 5 Georgia vs. No. 6 Missouri** You can’t say Missouri didn’t earn itself a BCS bid. If you’re the nation’s No. 1 team going into December, how you get hosed I have not the slightest clue. This would be a good game between two of college football’s hottest teams down the stretch. Also, don’t forget that Missouri is the _nation’s only team_ that can claim wins over two of this year’s BCS teams (Illinois and Kansas).**Orange Bowl: No. 7 USC vs. No. 8 Kansas** This isn’t much different from what KU already has – a chance to prove itself against an opponent from another major conference with a storied past. Trust me, the Jayhawks deserve a BCS game, I’m not refuting that. It’s just that there’s that rare case where three teams from one conference truly have earned it. Here’s KU’s shot to further prove that.**Fiesta Bowl: No. 9 West Virginia vs. No. 10 Hawaii** Kinda the same for West Virginia as it is for MU – the Mountaineers were No. 2 before collapsing against Pitt. They deserve the big money bowl. So does Hawaii – and after watching him Saturday night, Colt Brennan deserves the Heisman in my mind.There. No complaints. MU gets in as it deserves to, and Illinois doesn’t – as it deserves not to, having lost to Iowa (yeah, didn’t anyone remember that).**Of course, what I just drew up ain’t happenin’ anytime in the immediate future, so why not talk about KU’s actual opponent – Virginia Tech.**I was talking for a bit Sunday night with [my buddy Jared Soares][1], a former Journal-World photographer who now works for the [Roanoke Times][2] out in Virginia. He’s shot his fair share of Va. Tech football this year, and has already taken tons of crap from Hokie co-workers about his Crimson and Blue roots (he also just recently won our current bet on who would cave and cut their hair first. Congrats, sir).But he admits that Virginia Tech is pretty good.What the Hokies have hung their hats on in recent years is defense. That’s followed by defense and a dash of – you guessed it – defense. True, the VT program has produced some pretty good NFL players in the past decade – such as Falcons quarterback Mike Vick, Lions running back Kevin Jones and Jags receiver Ernest Wilford.But when looking at Va. Tech’s [current list of alumni in the NFL][3], the defensive names stand out.Certainly, they’ve got a few current guys who will probably join those ranks in the near future. Most notably, a couple are senior linebackers [Vince Hall][4] (92 tackles in nine games) and [Xavier Adibi][5] (108 tackles in 13 games).You’ll read about them plenty in the next month, plenty about VT’s signature [Lunch Pail Defense][6] and even more about the two-headed quarterback of junior [Sean Glennon][7] and freshman [Tyrod Taylor][8] – a [rivals.com superstar][9] a year ago.There’s two guys I’m looking forward to watching, though – junior cornerback [Brandon Flowers][10] and junior running back [Branden Ore][11].Both of those positions are ones in which VT has rich recent tradition in being strong at. Flowers is a statistical monster. He’s third on the team with 79 tackles, has seven tackles for loss, five picks and 13 passes defended.Ore has been much quieter as a junior than he was as a sophomore. This season, he’s averaging under four yards per carry, having totaled 876 yards rushing despite starting all 13 Hokie games so far. He’s done so on 244 carries. A year ago he had 241 carries, but managed 1,137 yards and 16 touchdowns (compared to just eight scores this year). Then again, Tyrod Taylor rushing for 559 yards and 6 TDs in a part-time QB role this year may have been taking some of the workload away from Ore to relieve him a bit. He’s still got the potential to take over big games. That was seen two weeks ago against Virginia – the first time this season Ore has taken the ball more than 30 times. On 31 carries in the win over Virginia, he had 147 yards – the only 100-yard game of his 2007 campaign.In all, they’re good, yes. But this is a game KU can win. Anyone should believe that.**Final Note:** Virginia Tech has appeared in a bowl game to cap off [14 straight seasons][12]. Though the Hokies are 0-2 in BCS play, which means a win on Jan. 3 will be a first for either team. Can’t wait. [1]: http://www.jaredsoares.com [2]: http://www.roanoke.com [3]: http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/alumni-tracker/school/5859 [4]: http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/2007/hall.html [5]: http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/2007/adibi.html [6]: http://www.lunchpaildefense.com/ [7]: http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/2007/glennon.html [8]: http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/2007/taylor.t.html [9]: http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/viewprospect.asp?pr_key=39099 [10]: http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/2007/flowers.html [11]: http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/2007/ore.html [12]: http://www.vt-football.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=1
