The time before the BCS was just fine. Everybody had the offseason to argue who was best without artificially picking a couple of contenders for a shot to prove it. People tend to forget that "on any given Saturday ..."; play the same game more than once and the outcome may vary. We should just enjoy each football season as a journey and not a destination, and not ruin it with a fictitious championship. Bowls were better; they were fewer; and they had names rather than rattling off sponsors. In driving speed may kill; in sports money will kill.
TL;DR
Saban reset the standard and caused the playoffs. everyone got so tired of seeing him win year after year they had to get in other teams "to make it fair", or just to see someone different. and after seeing his run of success every other blue blood school, and some others, think they should have that level of success, or else fire their coach. No more keeping a coach for 10 years until he wins a title, have to show progress in 2, and success in 4. and thats all while playing against the best coach in the history of the sport.
and I don't want to get away from a championship game, otherwise the media would just go back to naming one of the Midwest schools champions for no real reason while the SEC beat each other up.
and I KNOW this would never happen, but I think the Bowls could easily be relevant again with some tweaks.
1. Bring in a relegation system like some pro soccer leagues have to the mega conferences. The top "division" is playoff eligible, the bottom division is bowl eligible. take the most consistent top teams from the bottom division, and the bottom teams of the top division over 5 years and have them play round robin in a bowl game format. you could even expand this to include all conferences. this gives some reason to watch the lower schools and the bowl games count towards your record of becoming playoff eligible.
2. have the "major" non-playoff bowl games host their own 4 team tournaments. with the semi-finals as some of the minor bowl games.
3. allow/encourage pro-scouting, even if its just 1 team, as part of the bowl games. have each bowl game hold "pro days" for any player that is active for the game, even for freshman. This should hopefully cut back on the drop outs, it gives the smaller schools at the bowl games more exposure to the pros so hopefully players are less likely to leave. and it doesn't effect eligibility for the players. have those same scouts at the game, so the players can put on a consistent show for the scouts, and the players know they are getting to work more directly with the scouts and thus have a reason to play.
4. you could even take it a step farther for the playoffs. pair the playoffs with some group of NFL teams to do the same thing, but with even more teams. Like all four teams from a division will have scouts at the practices and bowl-pro-days. or even the whole conference or something, however the numbers split up.
*both 3 & 4 would likely require cutting back on the number of bowl games, and you could even pair the bowl games with the NFL draft rankings. So that the best NFL team is going to the worst bowl game, and the team theoretically with the first pick is going to the biggest bowl games. again theoretically this should pair bowl players with the teams more likely to have draft picks relevant to them giving the players a reason to play. and it cuts down on the number of bowls to have a better product on the field. and if you do the tournament bowl games this would doubly increase the exposure for the players who make it to those finals, as there would be at least 2 NFL teams there directly taking part.
