Well, the BCS is no more, replaced this year with a long-demanded playoff system. We haven’t even started the playoffs yet or even chosen the teams that will be in the playoff, but I already think we say this effort, while a good forward step, falls short of the mark.

But don’t despair! As always, I have the answer.

To justify my position, let’s get back to why we are having a playoff in the first place. At the end of the day, we are trying to determine which is the best NCAA football team. How well a team has played all year should matter, but I’d argue that how well a team is playing at the end of the year should matter even more. In that light, a season-end tournament is clearly the way to go. High quality play all year long is required to earn a spot in the tournament, and playing well at the end of the year is required to win the tournament.

You also want the champion to be undisputed, if possible. A part of “undisputed” is that the opportunity to win the championship is available to as many teams as possible that year, in a way that is fully under their control. We’ve mostly achieved this with the NCAA basketball tournament. I don’t care if you are Duke or Utah State or Bob’s Technical Institute of Vacuum Cleaner Repair, if you go undefeated you are going to the NCAA basketball tournament, and if you continue undefeated you will win the championship. It is fully within your control.

In NCAA football, it is not quite so simple. The logistics of a football tournament at the scale of the NCAA basketball tournament make it really hard to pull off. Remember the math: In order to conduct a single-elimination tournament of N participants, you must play N-1 games. Every year we have on the order of 30 bowl games. Rounding that up to 31 could make a nice 32-team playoff, but that would also mean that 30 other teams that otherwise could have played in a bowl game end up staying home. Is that really what you want?

Additionally, football games are twice as long as basketball games, and in the NCAA basketball tournament the teams get only one day to rest in between games, which clearly won’t work for football.

So a large tournament is really not going to work. Which I think is why we ended up with a four-team tournament instead.

The problem with four teams is that it is too small. Even a 16-team tournament is too big (it would take 4 weekends to complete it), but four is just not enough. First off, it isn’t big enough to be undisputed. With only four spots, that means at least one major conference champion is going to get left out. This year it will almost surely be either the best team in the Big 10 or the best team in the Big 12. It will always be this way every year with only four teams. Second, there needs to be a rule that says only the conference champion can go to the tournament. A lot of talk this year is that perhaps the SEC will send two teams, probably leaving out both the Big 10 and the Big 12. I’m a big-time SEC fan, but with only four available spots I don’t like that idea.

Here’s what we need to do instead.

First, we expand the tournament. Just a bit. Just to six teams. The top two seeds get a bye the first week. This is exactly like the NFL playoffs.

Second, we institute a rule that says every major conference champion gets invited to the tournament. That would take up five spots. But it also has the effect of essentially making the tournament bigger. Assuming the Big 12 gets their act together and starts holding a championship game, then in effect you’ve added five more games to the championship, because you win the conference championship game to advance to the finals.

Finally, you have one at-large bid. This gives you a spot for a high-performing team outside the major conferences, whether it is an independent like Notre Dame or an undefeated mid-major conference team a la Boise State of years past. Or, if the committee really feels like a second SEC team is the best at-large team, they can add them.

I think this solves the problem well. The main thing it addresses is that feeling where your ability to win the championship is out of your hands. If you are TCU, you win the Big 12 and you make the tournament and get a chance to prove you are actually the best in the country. You don’t have to hope that you somehow can convince voters that you are better than Mississippi State when it is almost impossible to compare you with each other. It also gives a harsher, but fair, message to Mississippi State: If you think you are the best in the country and deserve to play for the championship, why did you fail to win your conference? How can you say you are the best in the country if you are not the best in your conference?

Unfortunately, nobody in the NCAA is asking me what we should do. Yet.