Think the BCS is broken? So do we. Most reasonable people would agree that a playoff system would be the fairest way to determine a true national champion in college football, instead of delegating the decisions to poorly programmed computers, or secret balloting with backroom or under-the-table agendas. As a purely academic exercise, Brian and I created a simple college football playoff using EA's NCAA Football 2005 to simulate the games. The results may surprise you.

　　We simply took the top eight teams in the final BCS standings: USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Texas, California, Utah, Georgia, and Virginia Tech, and seeded them according to their rankings. Virginia Tech played at USC in the first round, Georgia played at Oklahoma and so on. For simplicity's sake, the default, out-of-the-box rosters and ratings were used (although we took Mike Williams off the Trojan roster). So we didn't go through the trouble for example, of taking out Cal's Geoff McArthur, who will miss the post-season with a broken fibula. Nor did we bother tweaking any other aspect of the depth charts. Each game was simulated once, using 7 minute quarters and the All-American AI setting. Each game was started and played entirely by the computer, with no human interference. The game was only paused periodically to check stats.

　　And in the interest of full disclosure, I (Bob Colayco) am a Cal alumnus, class of 2002. Brian Ekberg is an Auburn graduate from the class of 1995. Enjoy the feature, and let us know what you think!