BCS Rankings Week 14: LSU vs. Alabama Rematch Sets Up College Football Playoff

If there's any silver lining to be garnered from the dark cloud hanging over college football, known otherwise as a rematch between LSU and Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game, it's that there's never been more reason to believe that the sport needs a playoff system.

The old argument against a playoff has always been that such would devalue the most meaningful regular season in all of American sports, that every week in college football amounts to a playoff, with losers being eliminated from national title contention.

Of course, if that were the case, the Crimson Tide would've been knocked out of the race back on November 5th, when they lost to the top-ranked Tigers at home. If that were the case, Oklahoma State, the champion of the Big 12 with four wins over currently ranked opponents and seven over teams with records of .500 or better, would get its shot.

Clearly, that's not the case. Instead, we'll just have to spend the next month or so listening to talking heads defend 'Bama getting another shot, as though college football were now employing a double-elimination playoff system.

There will be plenty of banter about how great the Tide's defense is, how Nick Saban's squad is the only one that can hang with Les Miles and company and, in some cases, how this is the right matchup according to the system even if it doesn't produce the best or most entertaining game possible.

Because, apparently, football isn't about entertainment, right?

Now, if you believe it's time for the powers-that-be in college football to institute a playoff system, you should be pulling for two things to happen:

1) For LSU to whoop the stuffing out of Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game.

2) For Oklahoma State to annihilate Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl.

That way, we can all relive the same debate about who should've gotten that shot to play LSU for the national title and, hopefully, bug the BCS to the point where the folks at the top feel it in their own best interest to blow up the current system and start anew with a playoff of some sort.

Of course, by "their own best interest", I mean the best interest of their fat wallets. The BCS isn't about to change unless there's more money in a new system and/or dwindling profits from the one that exists at present.

So, patrons of pigskin, if you really want to see a playoff, you'll just have to avoid the BCS like the plague. Call it "Occupy Your Time With Something Else in Early January."

Granted, that's not going to happen, so we'll all just have to watch LSU and Alabama slug it out again and listen to all the analysts talk about what a great game it was and then go back to thinking that football should be boring and hoping the only rule change the BCS entertains is one that would mandate that the SEC fill all of its spots.

And if the thought of a playoff ever comes around? Well, I s'pose we'll just have to squash that right away.