Waiting for flying cars, robots ... and college playoff

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For those of you that were sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear the verdict from the Bowl Championship Series meetings in Hollywood, Fla. earlier this week, I'm guessing you didn't fall in the floor.To no one's surprise, the athletic directors, conference commissioners and television network bigwigs decided now was not the time to amend the current system for any type of college football playoff.They never really wanted change, despite a bit of hoopla and window dressing that only encouraged the die-hard playoff supporters made up of jilted fans and school presidents.SEC commissioner Mike Slive proposed a plus-one format on Wednesday that would have had the No. 1 team play the No. 4 with the victor facing the winner between No. 2 and No. 3 a week later.It's no NFL, 12-team face-off, but it would have been a start.The problem is Slive's system, which appeared to only be supported by the ACC and SEC, constitutes a "playoff," something that received little momentum throughout the week.It turned out to be only talk, which apparently is cheap, unless your school was footing the bill for these "powers" to meet.So, I am about to do something I rarely do: make a prediction. This is going to be a bold, hard-core, lead-pipe lock that you can take to the bank.There will be a playoff in college football. Count on it.There, it's been decreed. No more speculation, no more controversy.In fact, I will also guarantee flying automobiles, alternate fuel resources and robots that clean your house.Surely, our society and technology will advance to the point of those things some day, right? I mean we now have computers that talk, tiny little phones that can call all over the world and hybrid cars -- that's right, hybrid cars, people.But, what about the powers of college football, will they advance as well?I buy all their arguments now. The bowl system helps everyone, the season is like a sudden-death playoff in its own right and TV deals are as complicated as the Pythagorean Theorum. But, by the time this thing gets talked about again, there will be at least six more schools and fan bases clamoring at the gates.The window of opportunity is closed until 2014 when the Rose Bowl's contract with the Big Ten and Pac-10 runs out. Then, and only then, a likely new set of powers will show up at some hotel in some town to discuss this topic all over again.By that time, though, we will probably be on our third president, Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden will finally be retired and Clemson and South Carolina will have completely different coaches. And we may even have those cleaning robots.So, I fully believe we will advance as a college football society and find a way to have a real title-deciding playoff, way in the future.We did, after all, learn to write on paper instead of caves.(Contact Brad Senkiw at senkiwb(at)independentmail.com)(Brad Senkiw writes for the Anderson Independent-Mail in Anderson, S.C.)