Indiana Football, Notre Dame are examples of a broken bowl system

Indiana football should be playing in a New Year’s Six Bowl and Notre Dame shouldn’t be in the College Football Playoff, which shows this system is broken.

The College Football Playoff is probably better at determining the best team than March Madness, but outside of the that — the bowl system and the playoff is a total failure. Just ask Indiana football or College Football fans forced to watch Notre Dame get slaughtered again.

The Notre Dame situation, which some people thought was clear, is a reminder that this four-team playoff doesn’t work all that well, because how in the world could a team just trailing 34-3 to one of the participants, be deemed as worthy?

What happened to the eye test? Because there was nothing I or anyone else saw Saturday to think Notre Dame football deserved to be in the College Football Playoff.

What’s even worse than that though, is the fact that an Indiana football team that lost just one game (35-28 at Ohio State, a playoff team) didn’t even make a major bowl game. Instead, the Hoosiers will play a 4-5 Ole Miss team in the Outback Bowl.

Are you kidding me?

However, that actually wasn’t the most-cringe worthy part of the College Football bowl schedule. That distinction belongs to 2-8 South Carolina, which will play UAB instead of a team like Army, which won nine games but had the bowl it was accepted into canceled.

Although it shouldn’t be a shock that an SEC team made a bowl with a losing record, because the Gamecocks are one of six SEC teams to do so and one of 12 SEC teams to get a berth.

The fact 12 teams from one league made a bowl and that four of the 12 teams in the New Year’s Six bowl games are from the SEC is just another example of how broken the postseason is.

College football has one of the most exciting sports we have on the field, except for the extreme lack of parity that possibly only the NBA can rival, but it also has the dumbest postseason.

Why College Football needs an actual playoff

That’s why teams like Indiana, Northwestern, Texas A&M, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and others deserve a chance at an actual playoff, not some meaningless bowl.

Indiana football players might have wanted to play in a New Year’s Six game. More than anything they deserved that recognition, but outside of Indiana, do these big SEC schools really care about playing in the Peach or Fiesta or whatever — probably not.

Because bowl games aren’t about matching the best teams, otherwise Indiana football would be in the New Year’s Six and Army would be in a game. They are about money and TV ratings and that’s it.

Outside of three games, bowls are glorified exhibitions and even the people who schedule the exhibitions can’t get it right by pitting the best teams against each other.

It’s why we need a 16-team playoff in the worst way and getting there wouldn’t be hard.

Cut the season to 11 games (we don’t need more pay games) and get rid of conference championship games. Get rid of divisions in every conference and automatic bids.

Pick the top 16 teams and play the first round on campus. Play the quarterfinals the same weekend as the conference title games, then hold the playoffs and title game at the same time.

Mixed in can be bowl games between teams with at least a 6-5 record.  Hell, we could even have teams that lost in the first rounds of the playoff meet in bowls in late December in the Holiday-Who-Gives-A-Crap Bowl.

But wouldn’t it be nice to see Indiana actually get a chance to play a team from the SEC or ACC in a playoff game? Hell, it would be great to see the Hoosiers travel to South Bend for one.

And if the Irish won two games and got into the semifinals, no one would be able to say they didn’t earn it. We wouldn’t have to have the same pointless debate over and over again.

Yet, as Jay Bilas pointed out, for a sport that says every game matters, it’s clear very few actually do and until we fix this broken bowl/College Football Playoff system, the best sport in the world will continue to suffer because of the worst postseason system imaginable.