Give me a college football playoff

College football's bowl games have lost their luster.

As a Baby Boomer, I'm old enough to remember a Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl.

No gimmickry. No marketing hype. No Citibank, no Papa John's Pizza, no Tostitos, no Meineke Car Care.

The bowl games were as pure as their name, meant to feature the best teams in the country on a New Year's Day extravaganza for fans eager to know who was the best of the best.

With so many bowl games today, we just don't know who's the best of the best when it comes to the top tier of college football. The Bowl Championship Series -- the arbiter of the chaos -- dilutes the importance and dulls the shine on the significance of bowl games.

There were 33 BCS bowl games to cap the 2009 college football season. They started with the New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 19 and they finished with the Citi National Championship Bowl on Jan. 7.

Sure, there were bowl games that attracted a lot of attention. But there were some stinkers too. Was it really bowl-worthy to have 3.5 million people watching the Dec. 22 MAACO Las Vegas Bowl between BYU and Oregon State?

My problem is that I'm left with the sense each year that we don't know who the national champion really is because there is no playoff system at the highest level of college football.

There is for college basketball, and sports fans love it. We dive into March Madness head first.

There is for the second tier of college football -- Division I. My University of New Hampshire Wildcats made it as far as the quarter finals before losing in the snow to Villanova, which ultimately became the Division I champs.

And there is for Division I college hockey. And it's great.

Unfortunately for the BCS, it's less about a true playoff and a true champion and more about money. The BCS is a $116 million business for the top tier schools, which is why Congress is so interested. There's an air of anti-trust that reeks among the BCS colleges.

But this isn't Congress's place. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue. It's not a White House issue.

The colleges and universities should fix their own house.

For the 2008 season, 108 million fans watched at least one bowl game. But many then -- as they are today -- were conflicted, according to a Neilsen survey at the time.

It found:

• 51 percent of all respondents agreed that “college football needs a tournament system like that which is used in college basketball”;
• 20 percent disagreed with the idea of a playoff;
• 9 percent were undecided;
• The most passionate college football fans (indicated by their responses) held stronger opinions: 62 percent want a playoff.

The men and women at these colleges and universities should be smart enough to figure this out. They are in college, after all.