In a sign that the Obama health care bill was the only productive thing that Congress has to do in 2009, a House of Representatives subcommittee has approved a piece of legislation designed to force NCAA Division 1 FBS (formerly 1-A) football to determine a national champion through a playoff instead of the current BCS format. Is this really the most important crisis facing the United States of America?

Technically, the legislation does not force the NCAA or BCS to use a playoff to determine a national football champion. It states that the BCS’s National Championship Game cannot be promoted at a national championship game unless the two teams competing in it are selected through a playoff rather than the current series of computer algorithms currently used to determine the BCS #1 and #2.

The bill is expected to face steep opposition when it actually reaches the floors of the House and the Senate. The main reason is that elected officials want to avoid the perception that they’re wasting their time on trivial sports matters rather than the pressing economic, environmental, and foreign relations issues facing the USA.

Interestingly, the bill’s sponsor is a Republican Congressman from Texas. It almost seems counter-intuitive that a representative from a state who has a team in the BCS championship game would fight the current system. However, Texas Christian University was denied a chance at the championship despite going undefeated during the regular season. In total, five teams went undefeated this year (Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State) but only Alabama and Texas have the opportunity to play for the national title.

Meanwhile, else where in the intercollegiate sporting world, there’s is a country that plays football and has a playoff. Canada’s CIS runs a 17 team playoff system that starts as a conference playoff in each of the four conferences across Canada. Each conference champ plays in a national semi-final before the national championship Vanier Cup game. This takes four weeks everywhere except Ontario which has three rounds in its playoff.

Given that the NCAA’s D1 FBS doesn’t have such a convenient number of conferences, they can’t carbon copy the CIS system. But it still can’t be that hard to implement a playoff. There are 11 conferences (and the unattached Independent schools). The quick way would be to have the 11 conference champs earn births into a 16 team playoff. The only fault with that system is that not all conferences would have a national championship contender otherwise. Picking teams for a playoff simply for where they play wouldn’t be an entirely fair system.

Selecting teams has been the biggest hangups of the playoff system. While the BCS computer system has been criticized for its selection of only two teams, it should be okay for selecting eight. The margin for error is so much smaller with two teams and the faults and biases of the BCS would be better hidden as the playoff pool expands. And why only eight? Because it’s easier to make a case for expansion than contraction. Besides, the debate over teams that should get into the big game comes down to only a few by the end of the year. Having a sixteen team play down would just slow things down.

The other question that’s dogged a playoff system is when it would be done. The BCS games are all in early January so there’s no reason why the semi-finals could be on January 1st and the final about a week later similar to the current setup. Then you put the national quarterfinals on what is currently the conference championship weekend. How hard can it be to move things up a week. Remember that the NCAA and BCS are really concerned about the kids and don’t want them missing classes so they might not like that idea.

Of course, the diatribe about how easy it can be to setup a college football playoff misses the point that Congress is wasting its time entirely. Well, I think that Congress’ bill misses the point entirely. Saying that the BCS can’t advertise its #1 vs. #2 game as a national championship game doesn’t actually change a thing. Instead of calling it a “national championship,” they could phrase it in any one of a number of different ways to skirt that piece of legislation. They could call the winner the BCS Champion or the NCAA Champion or the College Football Champion but a rose by any other name would mean the same thing… Or something like that.