I argued against a playoff and many on this board agreed with me. My primary argument was that when something is really, really good, you don't do a major overhaul unless you are certain of what you'll get. Didn't Gandalf say something about not breaking something to figure out how it works?

Before, we had a myriad of bowls in which every big conference had something to play for: New Year's Day Bowls. The Sugar, Orange, Rose, and Fiesta were all big deals, but they gave us a kickass New Year's Day. With that system came endless arguments over a true champion, but I always thought that with 100+ schools, you can't wrap it up cleanly as you can in a small professional league. I never lost a minute of sleep worrying about that but it apparently drove some people crazy. Well, in a week there won't be anybody arguing so I guess that's settled. Yay.

Somebody here also raised the issue of the playoff's effects on recruiting, and how star players were consolidating at certain playoff-bound schools. I'm not sure if that is valid, but I do know that in the bowl era, recruiting was more regional and Midwest kids wanted to play in the Rose, etc. etc. When we had four major bowls, and few others (Cotton, Gator) that mattered, kids from every region had a local school that had a shot at a big game. Is that a factor in recruiting, or is it that now every kid has a Rivals account? Who knows?

I do know that New Year's Day is now filled with afterthought bowls and the truly important games involve fan bases that represent less than 1/4 of the population of the US. We now have ironclad certainty of our true champion, in a playoff that is as electric as the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs.