A very interesting thing happened over on ESPN the night before the 2008 election. During halftime of the Monday Night Football broadcast, the sports network aired interviews of John McCain and Barack Obama. A softball question was posed to each candidate: What's the one thing they would change about sports?

McCain gave the I'm-a-candidate-for-president answer: Crack down on performance-enhancing drugs. Steroids hurt both the abusers and the athletes who stay clean. Yeah, yeah. Other than a few rogue chemists, I don't think he alienated too many voters with that one.

Obama, on the other hand, answered the question like a fan: He wants to see a playoff in college football. No more computers and second guessing. Get the eight best teams and let them fight it out in a single-elimination tournament.

Wait a second. We're in two wars, unemployment is rising every week and our retirement investments (if we're fortunate enough to have any) lost a third of their value in 2008. With all of this, Obama is talking about college football?

I happen to think it was another genius move in what was a superb campaign. And that's not just because I agree with him.

Outside of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), every college sport determines its champion through some sort of playoff system. If your team makes it to the playoffs, then they have a chance to win the national title.

But big time college football is different. Instead of whittling all playoff participants down to the last team standing, sportswriters, coaches and a bunch of computers determine who the top two teams are and pair them up for the BCS National Championship game, which is sponsored by some multi-national conglomerate that moves boxes around for money. This year, the game pits Florida against Oklahoma. (The FBS, which was recently known as Division I-A, comprises of the larger conferences and teams and are allowed to give scholarships to as many as 85 football players, allowing the schools to attract top talent.)

The problem with this system is that it only allows two teams to compete for the national title. All of the lower football divisions employ a playoff of at least sixteen teams. But the 119 schools in the FBS must fight hard and hope for one of those two slots to the national championship game. Even an undefeated season does not guarantee a team a shot at the championship. If you have a good year but are not considered worthy by the poll voters and computers, you get to go to a lesser bowl. The barely winning teams can go to games like the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, or some other meaningless contest conceived as a way to get fans to spend money on hotel rooms and wings at the local Hooters.

There are several teams from big conferences that have gripes about not being able to compete for a national championship. Look at the University of Southern California Trojans. They only lost one game all year long, but they aren’t in the national championship game. They play nines games every year in a major conference (the PAC-10) and this year scheduled three non-conference games against big schools. They beat Ohio State when it was ranked no. 1. Just like Florida, USC was upset early in the year by a lower-ranked team in conference play. But Florida has a shot, and USC does not.

There are other one-loss teams that won’t have a shot at the championship. Penn State, Texas, Alabama and Texas Tech all suffered just one loss this year, but will be on the outside looking in.

And don’t forget the Utah Utes, who enter their game January 02 game against Alabama undefeated. Is it fair that Utah not be given an opportunity to compete for the championship? Sure, they might not have played the toughest schedule due in large part to their membership in the Mountain West Conference, which forces them to play eight games against schools that aren’t typically on the national football stage.

But Utah went out and scheduled their opener with Michigan, a traditional football powerhouse. (These non-conference games are often scheduled years in advance so it’s not foreseeable that Utah would catch Michigan in such a down year.) They also beat Oregon State, a team that knocked off a no. 1 team on their way to eight wins. The Utes are the last remaining team without a loss. If they can’t have a shot at a national title after posting 12 wins and zero losses, why should they even bother?

This is the second time Utah has gone undefeated and did not have an opportunity to compete in the national championship game. Back in 2004, the Utes were one of five teams without losses heading into the bowl season, including three from major conferences. USC, Oklahoma and Auburn were all 12-0, while Boise State and Utah were both 11-0.

But unlike track meets, football games only allow two teams to compete against each other at once. So the divine hand of the BCS selected USC and Oklahoma to play against each other. This is on par for teams from smaller conferences, but Auburn had a real gripe. They were undefeated in the SEC, one of the toughest conferences in the country.

But because Division I football is the only NCAA sport without a playoff, Auburn had no shot at competing for the national title. A simple four- or eight-team playoff would have allowed them an opportunity to put up or shut up, which is all any fan can ask for his or her team.

So why do we have such a goofy system for the top college teams?

There are several reasons. To begin, the biggest of the big schools like it because it practically guarantees that a team from one of the smaller conferences won’t play in the national championship game. Only schools from the six major conferences have competed in the national championship game under the BCS. The schools in the remaining five FBS conferences are always left out.

Also, the TV networks and corporate sponsors (especially those of the five official BCS bowl games) have a lot of money invested in the current system. A portion of this trickles down to schools and conferences, who are scared of disrupting that revenue stream through any sort of change. As a smokescreen, college presidents feign concern for students being out of the classroom. (Uhh, yeah. I don’t hear anyone complaining about a lack of class time for players involved in the 65-team NCAA men’s basketball tournament.)

But with an eight-game playoff, only the four teams that advance past the first round will play more games than they would under the current system. And no more whining from nos. 3 and 4 teams because they’ll be in. Sure, the no. 9 team might complain, but they should have played well enough to be in the top eight, just like Utah did this year. It would be a lot easier to bear the moaning and groaning of a team that loses two or three times than turning a blind eye to an undefeated team left out in the cold.

Playoff games can still be sponsored by large companies and revenues can still go to the conferences. Seven games in a playoff would generate more dollars than the current five BCS games. What corporate sponsor wouldn’t want to have their name all over a win-or-die game in the playoff bracket? (Don’t get your dough in a wad, Papa John. You can still sponsor your meaningless bowl game between two mediocre teams.)

Without a doubt, the fans want a playoff. Obama knew that when he endorsed such a plan and by doing, so he perked up the ears of legions of guys who couldn’t give a crap about politics. All of the sudden, for the first time ever, one of the candidates was speaking to them on something that they feel passionate about.
 
Tune in to some sports talk radio or check out some of the comments left on sports Web sites. People yell. They use all caps. They’re crazy about their teams and their leagues. Obama reached out to them on Monday Night Football by talking about something that resonates with them.

The powers that be have shown that they are not going to change the system. If there is going to be real change then the fans need a goliath on their team. (How about the President, will that do?) I’m glad Obama is talking about college football. My audacious hope is that it leads to change.