Can you hear me now? It's high time for a sweet 16 playoff

Dear NCAA, bowl officials, conference commissioners, school presidents and athletic directors:

You obviously haven't gotten my letter the past two seasons, so you are getting it again. And you will continue to get it until you fix this problem we have every year.

I've had enough of the BCS. It's time to change the bowl system to a 16-team playoff.

I mean, c'mon. Why are you all so stubborn? This would be the greatest three-week event in sports!

Here is the scenario I came up with many years ago to make everybody happy (including those smaller conferences, which you all have tried so desperately to keep out of the BCS):

• There are 11 conferences in Division I-A. Each team that wins its conference earns an automatic bid to the 16-team tournament. No ifs, ands or buts. We need to start treating the conferences equally. It's not Hawaii's fault it plays in the WAC.

• You know why the college basketball tournament is so successful? Because every team has a chance to make it to the Big Dance, and every team has a chance to win it all. So, if Florida Atlantic wins the Sun Belt, it has just as much right to play in the tournament as the winner of the Big 12.

• The BCS standings will be used to determine the seeds and select the final five at-large teams. No more "special rule" for Notre Dame being in the Top Eight. What makes it so special? Because the Irish are an independent? Too bad. Tell them to join a conference like everybody else.

• First-round games will be played at the higher-seeded school, then the rest of the games at bowl sites, which will bid each year to host one of the matchups.

I took the final BCS standings to show you what a playoff bracket would look like. And don't be fooled by that cable network that calls itself the Worldwide Leader in Sports, claming it came up with an idea of a bracket. Not only have I sent you this the past two seasons, but I've been pushing this idea since Florida State was in the Metro Conference. I'd show you the one I did in my ninth-grade math class, but I don't have the sheet of paper I drew it on.

And please, I don't want to hear the typical excuses, either:

"You can't compare the college basketball tournament to the college football tournament. They can allow automatic bids to every conference because they have 65 teams."

What's your point? There are about 330 Division I basketball teams. That means 19.6 percent of the teams make the tournament. In college football, there are 120 Division I-A teams (if you count Western Kentucky), meaning 13.3 percent make my tournament. Seems like the percentage is pretty close to me.

"We can't have the kids playing football all December, that's when they are taking exams."

Don't be dumb. Division I-AA, II and III are currently running a playoff. Do they not have exams in those divisions? And exams don't last all month either. I went to college; it's like a three-day period. Cut back that 12th game and get it done. No excuses.

"We don't want to eliminate the history of the bowl system."

Who said to eliminate the bowl system? I'm talking about making the top-tier bowls better. Nobody has ever said to do away with the Independence Bowl and the other games. They can still have their Big 12 No. 7 vs. SEC No. 8.

"But if we do that, nobody will care about the lesser bowls."

Have you seen the attendance and TV ratings? With all due respect to the New Mexico Bowl and the Papajohns.com Bowl, a playoff isn't going to hurt these bowl games. Their fans will still travel to watch.

"The regular season won't mean as much."

What?! It means more. The battle in the conferences would be huge -- you win the conference, you are in the playoff. If you lose a game, you really have to work to get one of the coveted at-large spots.

"We already have the game between the two best teams -- No. 1 and No. 2 in the BCS."

You aren't serious, right? Are you sure Ohio State and LSU are the two best teams? Maybe its Oklahoma, Southern California, Georgia or even Hawaii! We really don't know under the current system.

And how did that best two teams work out in 2004 with four undefeated teams before the bowl games? And 2003 when USC, Oklahoma and LSU all claimed they deserved to be in the title game. It's easy to say you have the two best teams when they are undefeated USC and Texas, but those years don't happen very often.

Plus, do we really want to rely on some computer formula to give us a national championship game? Just because beat writer Joe Blow in Columbus, Ohio, thinks the Buckeyes should be No. 1 doesn't mean they actually are! Let's settle this thing on the field the way football was meant to be.

This scenario eliminates all controversy. What's that you say? Illinois got left out of the bracket? That's the controversy? Gonna have to do better than telling me a 9-3 team should have made it over the two teams playing for the national title at 13-2 and 14-1. The Illini knew if they didn't win the conference they would be lucky to get into the tournament.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me. Maybe if you start paying attention to me, we can avoid the problems we had this year.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

J. Darin Darst

P.S. I filled in the locations of where the games should be played after the first round. I based it on bowl prestige and time zone. I'll be simulating the games with EA Sports' NCAA 2008 to show you how exciting this thing would be.