Don't get too excited about playoff

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Despite winding up with some humdrum major bowl games, the 2007 season had a certain charm that can best be described as "Anything Can Happen."Nothing seemed to follow logic, giving rise to one major question: Was this season an anomaly or the beginning of an era in which upsets no longer exist?It might be easier to attack some of the smaller points:-- Will there ever be a playoff in major college football?Any hint of a playoff is big news. This time it's University of Georgia president Michael Adams who is saying an eight-team playoff for the Football Bowl Subdivision (previously called Division I-A) could happen in "a year or two," based on an Atlanta Journal Constitution interview with him. Adams' notion carries some weight because he is chairman of the NCAA executive committee. He has written a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand about his proposal, and Brand said he plans to form a discussion group to debate the issue.But the NCAA has little power over the BCS system, and it's difficult to find support for the playoff idea from other college presidents, who would have to give final approval. The Pac-10 and Big Ten have been particularly opposed to a playoff system, because they treasure their relationship with the Rose Bowl.Serious renegotiating would have to be done with the networks. Fox, which will televise four of the five BCS games through 2010, might be willing to make adjustments, but ABC, which has a contract with the Rose Bowl until 2014, would be less agreeable.There has been more sentiment for a plus-one format in which four teams would compete for the title, with the winner of two games meeting for a national championship. But the Pac-10 and Big Ten oppose that idea too.In short, don't hold your breath.-- Will it be commonplace for a team with two losses to win a national championship? Could a three-loss team do it?Princeton was named the first national champion in 1869 with a 1-1 record. Since then every team that won a national title had one or fewer losses until LSU with two losses did it this season.Well, technically that's not quite correct. In 1935, 11 organizations named a national champion, and seven picked Minnesota, which was undefeated. But Paul Williamson, a New Orleans geologist who was a member of the Sugar Bowl committee, had a ranking system with some credibility at the time, and in 1935, he just happened to name the home-state team, LSU, as national champ with a 9-2 record.A three-loss team? Maybe. A three-loss team finished No. 6 in 2003, and LSU jumped from No. 7 to the title game in the final week this season.More telling is the fact the top six teams in the final rankings all had two losses, and nothing resembling that had happened before. In 2004, for example, none of the top six had two losses.-- What constitutes an upset any longer?The top three teams all lost at home to teams that finished unranked, and both losses by national champion LSU were to unranked teams.No. 6 West Virginia, No. 8 Oklahoma, and Texas and Boston College, who shared the No. 10 ranking, all lost to teams that finished with losing records.Among the few teams to escape the upset bug were No. 4 Missouri and No. 7 Kansas, which were the only teams in the final top 10 to begin the season unranked.-- Which of the following is the most surprising?That Temple wound up with a better record than Notre Dame.That Connecticut (1-6 in the conference in 2006) shared the Big East title with West Virginia.That Stanford and Cal finished tied in the Pac-10 standings.That North Carolina finished ahead of Miami in the Atlantic Coast ConferenceThat Kansas finished five games ahead of Nebraska in the Big 12 standings.That teams ranked third and seventh in the next-to-last BCS standings met in the national title game.That three teams ranked No. 2 after Oct. 1 failed to finish in the top 20.That, after all the upsets, the two teams expected to be Nos. 1 and 2 in preseason -- LSU and USC -- wound up in the top two spots in the coaches poll.-- Who will be the favorites next season?Here is our 2008 top 10: 1, Georgia; 2, USC; 3, Oklahoma; 4, Ohio State; 5, West Virginia; 6, LSU; 7, Virginia Tech; 8, Florida; 9, Missouri; 10, Kansas.(E-mail Jake Curtis at jcurtis@sfchronicle.com..)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)