When people discuss turning the college football postseason into a playoff, there are a few issues that come up.  The first is the number of teams involved, which I think ends up settling around "Top Eight" pretty nicely.  Just like the current situation, if you lose one game, you still have a shot, but two losses will most likely knock you from contention/to the point you're playing one of the best teams in the country to start.

The second issue is where you play the games.  I think it makes sense to play them at campus sites the first weekend of December, before finals and Christmas break comes along, but that's definitely debatable.  By having the games at campus sites, you only have to worry about filling three neutral stadiums as opposed to seven.  Would the home team have an advantage?  Absolutely.  Don't we want to continue to reward undefeated, successful regular season campaigns?  Obviously.

The third issue, and one on which I will not waver, is whether or not to include conference champions into the mix.  If you're only going to have eight teams in the tournament, why in the world would you waste spots on teams that may or may not be worthy of the tournament?  It's easy to say "Well, we'll give automatic bids to the BCS conference champions", but I think over the past few years, there's been times when the BCS conference champs wouldn't deserve to go over the MAC, WAC or Mountain West champions.  By arbitrarily saying "These conferences get an automatic bid and these don't", you're not being fair to teams like Michigan or LSU, who ended up finishing second/third in a conference that was extremely top heavy.  Michigan would win the ACC going away, and I'd imagine they'd have some great success in the Big XII as well.  Just because the best team in the country plays in their conference doesn't mean they shouldn't be guaranteed a spot in the tournament.

Carolina March put together what a bracket would look like with conference champions, and this is what they came up with:

That's not bad, but what if we just took the top eight teams as decided by the BCS computers?  

(I'm done with the humans after the shenanigans of this past weekend.  I'm all in favor for what Brian and SMQ have been calling for all season: give the computers all the information they want.  Margin of victories, statistics within the game, what the score was at halftime/going into the 4th quarter, statistics from past seasons so they can pick what makes a championship team.  Humans are biased, they move teams from the positions they were ranked at the beginning of the season and frankly, don't deserve to vote at this point under the current system.)

First Round:

Ohio State vs. Auburn
Florida vs. Boise State
Michigan vs. Louisville
Southern Cal vs. LSU

That's much better.  Yes, we lose Oklahoma and Wake Forest, but in return gain LSU and Michigan, who have considerably better resumes then the champions of two down conferences.  Somehow Auburn slips in there to make three SEC teams, including one that was blown out at home twice, but the alternative is Notre Dame at number nine, and I know none of you want to see that.  You could also strike the Oregon loss from Oklahoma's record and put them in place of the Tigers, which also would appeal to a lot of people, I think.

I realize the problem conference commissioners will have with not giving their champion a shot at the title, but there are only eight slots available, not sixty-four.  I'd rather have the best eight teams competing for the championship rather than five or six great teams and a couple of squads that "survived" a crappy conference.  Plus, it's not like this tournament is devoid of conference champs: the best of the Big Ten, SEC, Big East, PAC-10 and WAC are all represented.  

I think the best way to conclude my side of the argument is this: Do you want to see a national title tournament this year that doesn't consist of LSU or Michigan?  I rest my case.