Remember when...

All the major bowl games were on Jan. 1? CBS would have the Cotton early in the day, ABC would have the Sugar at the end of the day, while NBC would have the tripleheader monster of the Fiesta, then Rose, then Orange.

Of course, the bowl system was a mess and only occassionally did we get the 1-2 matchup we wanted. The two that stick out are Miami-Penn State, when Penn State intercepted Testaverde to win the game. And West Virginia-Notre Dame where Major Harris could not pull out the win.

Now, we have the BCS. The positive is that we get something a little bit better than what we had before. At least we now have matchups not completely dictated by conference tie-ins.

The negative of course is that we still end up not having a true champion. Someone will have the courage to go to a playoff system. Will see who it is. They should revert to an 11 game regular season (although killing the 12th game will irk many schools since that is a direct revenue hit). And then a 16-team playoff. Takes four weeks. Would be a huge amount of excitement and the Cinderella stories would be magnificent.