Best thing about new football playoff? Bigger, better controversies

Many a college football fan and sportswriter celebrated Tuesday's official announcement that there will be a four-team major-college playoff starting in the 2014-15 season.

I'm one of them, but probably not for the same reasons. I like it because the potential for bitterness and accusations is even greater with a four-team system than there has been with the two-team BCS title-game format. Controversy equals copy in my racket.

Most years, it hasn't been all that hard to see which two teams should have been in the BCS Championship. Sure, there have been plenty of arguments and disgust during the BCS years, but Nos. 1 and 2 have often been fairly clear.

When it comes to picking a fourth team, however, the fur will really fly.

That's because seldom are four truly great teams in one season. The fourth team will absolutely have one loss, and maybe two. The fourth team will frequently be a runner-up from a power conference. The fifth team could sometimes be an unbeaten team from outside such a league.

The power conference will get the nod every time, because there won't be a rock-hard criteria or a wacky computer formula. It will be decided by human beings, a selection committee of possibly 15 people.

And there's no way this committee gets assembled without it tilting toward the big boys. Which is fine with the majority of the public, but minorities can always make a lot of noise. And valid points.

More years, though, you'll have two or three teams from power conferences jostling for that final playoff spot. Then, no matter how the committee rules, charges of fraud will blare from the corners of those who are excluded from the mini-tournament. It will be wonderful.

There will be no computer formula to hide behind. It will be human beings with their built-in biases controlling the fortunes - literally, the fortunes - of the teams and their conferences.

Oh, the humanity!

But to me, the most newsworthy and predictable nugget from Tuesday's proclamation was that six bowl games are expected to be used for the semifinal games, on a rotating basis.

No, the universities won't take control over this cash cow and run it themselves, unlike every other championship they oversee. They remain, amazingly, happy to outsource their product to the bowls. At least the bowls are located in the U.S.

I have yet to cover a bowl where coaches at press conferences didn't fawn over the hospitality shown by their hosts. You would swear you were in a magical place with the friendliest people on earth.

Of course, it's been documented how some of these big bowls have given conference and university people free cruises and golf trips. Not long ago, the Fiesta Bowl was exposed as a cesspool of corruption.

But with a chance to own and operate the national semifinals, the universities are happily handing them off to the bowls. Amazing.

Wouldn't it be good business sense to say if you have a lucrative event, you operate it yourself rather than cut into the stacks of potential cash it could make for you? Cities and stadium-owners will move mountains just to be the site of the national-title game. They would have done the same for the semis.

Why share that with fat cats in Pasadena or Coral Gables or Scottsdale? Why keep propping up a system that has gouged schools for so long with their mandatory ticket-purchases?

The University of Connecticut lost almost $1.7 million when it played in the Fiesta Bowl 18 months ago. It couldn't sell 14,729 of the 17,500 tickets it was forced to buy. The other participant, Oklahoma, didn't sell 10,403 of its 17,500.

Fine for Phoenix. Not so good for the schools.

Oh, but the bowl-experiences are such great rewards for the student-athletes, we get told repeatedly.

Must you need the bowl system to take the players to a steak-eating contest or an amusement park before they perform on a national stage for free?

By making it a three-game championship event instead of just one game, a nation rejoices. Cynical snickering might be the more logical response.