Did you see the same game I saw last week? A lot of people saw Florida top Oklahoma, 24-14, in Miami in the FedEx BCS National Championship game. But I'm not so sure what you think happened, happened.

I watched the game, like millions of Americans did, on TV, and I thought Florida's win was convincing. The Gators looked dominant, ever more so as the game progressed. And they are, indeed, the "National Champions," according the Bowl Championship Series members and the Associated Press.

But I'm not sure I saw the best team in college football on Thursday night.

That may have been the Southern Cal team that beat up on Penn State in the Rose Bowl. It might have been Utah, the only BCS team that can say it beat every opponent it faced this season. There even those unhappy souls that are convinced that Texas is the real No. 1.

Of course, lots of pundits have said by now that "we'll never know."

And we won't.

Many of those same pundits will see this confusion, the very type of confusion that the BCS system was supposed to avoid, as further proof that college football needs a playoff system.

We won't see that, either.

Most people fail to understand who runs college football. It's the colleges.

Not the NCAA. Not Congress. Not the judiciary.

The reason there is no playoff is that colleges like things the way they are. And "things" are profitable.

Football is the engine that drives collegiate athletics. It dwarfs basketball and anything else in terms of dollars. Millions flow through football's turnstiles and TV sets into coffers of universities across America. And they don't have to share anything with the hundreds of smaller schools that comprise the majority of NCAA membership.

Basketball gets a ton of publicity, and "March Madness" is one of the greatest marketing phrases since "You deserve a break today." The NCAA would love to have a football tournament for what are now called BCS schools. The TV payoff would be staggering, with the NCAA taking a huge cut it fails to get from the bowls.

But the NCAA can't force it.

The NCAA sniffed around the corners of a football playoff in the late 1970s and early '80s. The result was the biggest schools forming the College Football Association, with the clearly implied threat they would secede from the NCAA before they'd give up the bowl system that pays off so many so well.

The NCAA can have its playoff if it really wants. With headliners like Northern Illinois and Georgia Southern battling it out in the Final Four. Meanwhile, Texas, USC, Florida and, yes, the Utahs of the next decade would be vying for a spot in the new AT&T FedEx Microsoft Premier Bowl.

The NCAA came into existence because President Theodore Roosevelt demanded in 1905 that top college presidents curb the sport's escalating violence. The NCAA could return to its roots and ask for government help. But that would be a bit like hiring Hell's Angels to police a mob. The cure would be worse than the problem.

President-elect Barack Obama already has gone full circle on this topic. "If I'm Utah, or if I'm USC or if I'm Texas, I might still have some quibbles," he told the Associated Press after Thursday's game. "... That's why we need a playoff."

Obama previously said on CBS television's 60 Minutes: "I don't know any serious fan of college football who disagrees with me on this, so I'm going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it's the right thing to do."

Those comments have been quoted, cited and recited by thousands of commentators, the vast majority of which go on to rah-rah for a tournament system.

Very few of them seemed to have noticed another comment Obama made earlier last week, when he made it clear he had other things on his agenda before getting to the new business of revamping football. Little matters like the economy and Al-Qaeda take precedence. If he starts tinkering with something like people's sports while the world is in its present shape, he'd bear a strong resemblance to Nero "fiddling while Rome burns."

Toss in the collegiate revenue at stake, plus the fact that the BCS bowls are set up through the next 4-5 years, and one might be more successful buying stock in AIG right now than betting on a playoff any time in the near future.

To comment on this article or to contact William Elliott Warnock, e-mail chnsports@nando.com or call (919) 932-8743.