Evil Contrarian: Abolish College Football’s Regular Season! Nothing But Bowl Games!

So you want a college football playoff system, do you? Were you aware that such a system is already present in the NFL, the NBA, college basketball, soccer, and nearly every single other name for “falling down a bunch and occasionally throwing or catching an inflatable token”?

Calm down, I know I have flustered you. I also know that you’re in favor of a playoff system in college football because it makes the most sense, or it would earn more revenue, or it’s the most fair, or some such. Consider this, though: college football is a national treasure. Not because it’s fair or sane, but because it is unfair and insane.

Suppose the San Francisco Giants were barred from playoff contention in 2010 because Barry Bonds was found to have used steroids four years prior. Suppose the Giants self-imposed sanctions because someone failed to properly file paperwork. That would be stupid, of course. Even I would concede that delightful, chaotic stupidity of this nature should not be present everywhere.

Rather, it should be cordoned off and preserved as we would preserve a rainforest. (In theory, at least. Smell you later, species!) How did this bird evolve in a manner that made its wings look like a face? Who knows?

Similarly, how did college football evolve into a weird bowl system while every other sport adopted a playoff system? It’s a natural wonder. Let it alone.

Better yet, let’s modify college football in order to allow this anomaly to flourish. Cancel the regular season. No more regular season games, ever. Yes, I’m sorry? Am I moving in the wrong direction?

Oh, I see, you’re still making noise about a playoff system, asking that lame old dog to hunt. This again? You know, in the long, long ago, a friend of mine had a three-year-old sibling who wanted ketchup on everything. Ketchup on turkey sandwiches. Ketchup on waffles. Ketchup on steamed vegetables, pizza rolls (!), and pasta. Look at you, all grown up.

Here’s the plan: any private party who wants to host a bowl game can do so, and they can invite whichever teams they please. There will be, by my estimation, around a hundred bowls. If you’re Oregon, you’ll receive a lot of bowl invitations, and should you be up for it, you’ll be allowed to play 35 games. But if you’re, say, Rutgers or Memphis, you are not a very good team, and you’ll be lucky to play any bowl games at all.

This might not be your piss-poor idea of fairness, but believe, this is fairness in its purist form. Teams will get exactly what they deserve. Bad teams don’t deserve to play. Good teams deserve to play more. It’s the code of nature that transformed us from single-celled organisms, to fish, to land-based quadrupeds, to apes, to humans, to the sort of creatures who would think to put mayonnaise on a cheeseburger. (Listen, if I ever need to illustrate anything stupid or wretched, the contemporary understanding and application of condiments is the only prop I will ever need.)

If watching football is your cup of tea, you’ll be in luck. The best teams will play more often, and the games will be better. But if you’re in the business, this is good for you, too. The advertisement/sponsorship potential will shoot through the roof. We’re already comfortable with calling something the “Meineke Car Care Bowl.” As is our culture’s wont, we will race toward the brick wall of good taste and smash through it without as much of a wince.

Here are but a few of the bowl sponsorship possibilities. Some will be for advertising/business-oriented purposes, others for the simple purpose of broadcasting a message.

The iodized table salt industry has eroded into a cruel monopoly, and advertising is but one way of busting it up. I have a 7,500-word report on the matter which I will make public at my convenience and not yours.

College football is broken, and I believe it’s possible for something to be so fundamentally broken that it isn’t broken at all -- in other words, the chair isn’t a misshapen table, it’s a chair. It is what it is, and how it is, by design.

You still argue that it isn’t fair for a team to languish in a mediocre conference and get only a chance or two per year to reach the upper echelon? You still believe it to be against the game’s interest for teams to end their seasons with isolated, glorified exhibitions?

Those are rhetorical questions. You stopped disagreeing with me once you realized I was right. Nothing but bowl games from here forth. I wish you a financially spectacular 2011, especially if you are employed in the football, confetti, garish-looking trophy, meaningless plaque, nondescript bowl logo, or novelty coin industries.

I would thank you for your time, but I will not accept it as I have no use for it. On the next Evil Contrarian, I intend to successfully argue that in order to ensure long-term survival, the NBA must either contract to a three-team lead or re-design the basketball so that there’s a foot-long peg sticking out of the side.