One and Done? Not in Basketball...

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

Before the regular season starts, a collegiate team is absolutely stock-piled with talent and they appear untouchable like Elliot Ness and crew, preseason No. 1 or 2 with every analyst in America on their jock like a weird stain. A loss? Impossible. There's no way any team can even come close.

And then they go out and lose a really dumb game early in the season.

If it sounds familiar, that scenario actually played out twice this year. The first time was on Sept. 25th, 2008 when the USC football Trojans got shocked during a nationally televised game against the upstart Oregon State Beavers in Corvallis, 27-21. The second time took place this Sunday when the North Carolina basketball Tar Heels somehow lost to the BC Eagles, 85-78 in a game that wasn't even THAT close.

Despite the fact that USC rolled their remaining opponents by 70 points per game (hyperbole), that one eye sore of a loss made sure that no one would ever mention them again in terms of being contenders for a national championship, even after they handled Penn State in the Rose Bowl.

The Tar Heels, on the other hand, still have plenty of season to go, and chances of people forgetting about this early season slip-up come March and/or April are pretty good.

What's my point? Stop me if you've heard this one before: college football desperately needs a playoff system.

It's not just the whole USC thing. Maybe the Trojans really aren't the best team in college football and they really don't belong anywhere near a national title game. But, look at some of the other stories that came about this college football season:

• The Texas Longhorns beat the Oklahoma Sooners, who will be playing Thursday for the national championship, on a neutral field early in the season. Take away Michael Crabtree's miraculous reception in the waning moments of their battle with Texas Tech and the Longhorns would be undefeated. Yet, due to Oklahoma's scoreboard diffusing offensive performance in every game after that loss and weird computer rankings that people with college degrees can't explain, Texas had to settle for the No.3 spot in the BCS (as an aside, if you missed Colt McCoy tonight, he was his usual ridiculous self).
• The aforementioned Texas Tech Red Raiders got blown out by the Sooners later on in the season after being flawless 3/4 of the season, and everybody stopped talking about them.
• The poor Utah Utes went undefeated, and while no one would ever confuse the Mountain West for the SEC, they went out and flat-out destroyed the Alabama Crimson Tide, who in their own right were No.1 for the majority of the season only to be pushed out of the picture after losing to the Florida Gators.

Instead of waiting a month for kids to play in second rate bowl games, you take that month and you have a sixteen team playoff. Win four games and you've earned a national championship. That will kill all this talk about, "The BCS got it right this year", or, "I really think so and so deserved a shot at the title." If Utah can beat Alabama in a pro-SEC environment, who's to say that they can't beat Florida or Oklahoma? They did everything they were supposed to do, and the highest they'll finish is fourth in the polls.

People say I'm partial to basketball, and they're probably right, but at least in college basketball there's no controversy at the end of the year about who the best team is. True, the best team didn't win last year in my opinion, but at least everybody had the chance to play it out. Despite how great Carolina has looked this season (aside from Sunday), I still think that the field has a better chance than UNC of winning the national title. That's why they call it March Madness: crazy stuff happens!

New Year's resolution that probably won't come true: I'm going to try and get it in at least twice a week in terms of posting and blogging and what not. I feel like my brain cells are getting rusty, probably from inhaling all those bad fumes located in our aisles.