Through December, I'll be comparing the bowl season in all it's excitement to an alternate football universe with a sensible playoff system every Friday. This is the first of such comparisons.

It's pretty much exam week at every univerisity, and since the NCAA still pays lip service to academics, no one's going to schedule football. Of course, football practice doesn't actually stop - all the sportswrites constantly enthuse about the advantage an extra month of practice a team gets as a bowl reward. Now if there was a playoff system, football would start again in a week, but we get to wait another 31 days until Ohio State next takes the field. I'm reasonably certain every other sport decides their national championship in that time span, and they do it by actually playing the sport.

In other news:

• Other alternate universes are springing up all over the place. Addicted to Quack has a sixteen team playoff, Rakes of Mallow an eight team one, as does Sack the BCS. Only one of those last two includes Notre Dame. Corn Nation reveals my warm-weather bias and Dawg Sports hates all playoffs. All there ideas lack an essential, um, me-ness factor that makes mine brilliant, naturally, but you folks who like "other opinions" may be interested.
• I've successfully, begged, bribed and browbeaten a couple of other blogs into running my playoffs so in the next few weeks I'll send you to Burnt Orange Nation, Black Shoe Diaires, Rakes of Mallow, and Conquest Chronicles for all your imaginary football recaps. But you're already reading them anyway, right?