I'm talking to you, the guy who watches the conference or program he represents from the skybox week after week, the guy who cares more about bettering his own situation than the well-being of the game he's supposed to be serving. I'm talking to you, the fans of traditional powers who support the current way of doing things only because you know it provides an unfair advantage to the team you cheer for. I'm talking to you, the talking heads on national television who allow all this to happen year after year without raising hell about the undeniable absurdity of it all.

This is what you get.

Regardless of what happens over the next 24 hours, we already know exactly how this college football season will end. On Jan. 7, two teams who may or may not be be the best two in the country will play, and one of them will win. People will argue, nothing will be decided, babies will cry.

It's been ten years and I'm still mystified as to how that can satisfy anyone who follows this sport.

What's going on right now, the politicking on ESPN, the "local team deserves shot at national title" columns in six states, the fact that this is even an issue, this is why I can't fully give my heart to college football.

Sport is about competition. There are winners, and there are losers. You prove you're the best on the field, not on a computer, not on a piece of paper, and not on ESPN at 1:30 in the morning.

And this "a playoff would have made today's games meaningless" argument is every bit as preposterous as the "the regular season is a playoff" talking point (tell me one playoff where you can lose two games in the second half of the season to mediocre teams and receive an automatic bye to the championship game).

If an eight team playoff were in place (16 is my dream, but I'll be reasonable for the sake of the "damn kids, get off my lawn" crowd), Oklahoma and LSU would have taken the field Saturday looking to play themselves into the tournament, and Missouri and West Virginia would have been playing to avoid ending the season squarely on the bubble. If the first round games of said tournament were played at the sites of the top four seeds, then championship Saturday becomes even more important.

There's no way to prove this, but there is not a doubt in my mind that "December Delirium" would prove to be every bit as exciting as "March Madness." You'd have the hype, the Cinderella stories, the dramatic finishes, and all the unparalleled emotion that's inherent in college football, only revved up with each game bringing one team a step closer to the sport's ultimate prize.

It'd be so wonderful that I almost hate thinking about it. I mean can you imagine a quarterfinal game between USC and Michigan at the Big House in mid-December? Or what if our beloved Cardinals snatched a seven seed and finally had the chance to prove ourselves once and for all at The Horseshoe in Columbus or in The Swamp in Gainesville?

I truly believe that one day this dream is going to become a reality, and we're going to look back at these years with the same sense of disbelief that we have when we try to make sense of a time when the game's final rankings were released before the bowl games were played.

The rivalries would still exist. The importance of winning a conference championship would still exist. The meaningless late-December games between average teams that serve as the perfect background for holiday get-togethers would still exist. Everything would still be the same, except the postseason would be a bazillion (math major) times better.

The printing press worked, the airplane worked, television worked, a college football playoff would work.

Please, for the love of God, get together, make this happen, and take this sport to the next level where it belongs.