It’s over now. #1 played #2 and #1 was victorious.

It was a great game, with a little of everything in it for college football fans – interceptions, injuries, trick plays, and heartwarming stories of players who faced adversity and kept going.

However, there was something just not right about it.  This is not the game we should have had.

It has been over a month since the BCS, aided by computers (what would we do without them?), decided which two teams would face each other in its don’t-call-it-a-national-championship game. There were four more Saturdays of college football in which the fans could have had the playoff that included all of the best teams in football, not just those ordained by a group of insiders deadset on protecting their million dollar paychecks.

Joe Paterno said it best in a recent interview with ESPN. “We must have a championship game. We get forgotten after we finish the season. I don’t like the BCS. I think we need a playoff.”

The team with even one loss gets forgotten because their fate is decided immediately upon the regular season’s end. And what’s worse for teams that are not in an elite conference such as Penn State, even with a perfect season, a mid-major will be similarly exiled. Just ask Boise State how they felt after beating TCU in the anticlimactic Fiesta Bowl.

As responsible sports fans, we want the college football season to last with an eye toward keeping our school’s athletes healthy – but with meaningful games leading up to the crowning of a true champion.

Without a playoff in the month of December, we will never know. If that means Alabama doesn’t play Jack State in September, so be it. We’d rather see an Alabama-Florida playoff rematch then the Florida-Charleston Southern blowout in Week 1.

Picking the final two teams for NCAA Football’s top prize  shouldn’t include a debate of what clique they hang out in. In this new decade, let the champion be decided on the field.