Fictional playoff ...

It's my yearly rite to post what a 16-team college football playoff would look like instead of the fiasco that is the Bowl Championship Series.

Here is how it works: seven conferences get automatic bids and another bid goes to the highest-ranked team (in the BCS standings) from the other Division I-A leagues. That gives us these automatic qualifiers:

Big East: Connecticut
ACC : Virginia Tech
SEC: Auburn
Big Ten: Wisconsin
Big 12: Oklahoma
Mountain West: TCU
Pac-10: Oregon
Others: Boise State

Now, we use the BCS rankings to give us eight at-large teams: Stanford, Ohio State, Arkansas, Michigan State, LSU, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Nevada

Very interesting is the omission of Alabama, the defending national champion. For the life of me, I can't fathom a system that says Alabama isn't one of the top 15 teams in the country, but the BCS rankings have the Crimson Tide at No. 16. As it turns out, Nevada — thanks to its win over Boise State — edged out the Tide for the last spot.

That gives us these first-round games, in bracket order:

Ohio State vs. Boise State
TCU vs. Oklahoma State
Oklahoma vs. LSU
Oregon vs. Nevada
Wisconsin vs. Missouri
Stanford vs. Virginia Tech
Arkansas vs. Michigan State
Auburn vs. Connecticut

Personally, I love the Ohio State-Boise State matchup, given the comments of Ohio State president Gordon Gee a couple of weeks ago. Just imagine that if Alabama had gotten in as the lowest seed, the Tide would meet Oregon in the first round.

My solution is this: Use the top six bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Fiesta and whichever other one is your preference) to host the quarterfinals and semifinals on a rotating basis. Use eight other bowl sites to host first-round games on a rotation basis.

Then let the other 21 bowl games invite teams as they wish, and schedule those during the week where they won't conflict with the NCAA tournament games. That still lets fans of the participating teams and college football junkies to watch them — and let's face it, those are the only people who care for those games anyway.

Play out the bracket for yourself and see what later-round match-ups you get. Wouldn't this be much better than the system we have now?