I do not know why the talking heads dwell on picking the "best" teams. No sport unduly focuses on who is "best" more than college football.

There's an argument that the almost undefeated Patriots team was the "best" ever, but they lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl after the Giants had a relatively ordinary season. The Giants were a deserving champion. Many here in Pittsburgh insist that the best Steelers team ever was the one that lost the AFC championship game to Oakland in 1976 after Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier got hurt in the divisional round against the Colts. But the Raiders (as much as I loathed them) were very deserving champions - maybe moreso because they got stuck behind all of those great Steelers and Dolphins teams of the 1970s.

I think the Major League Baseball season is too long, but there is no doubt that 162 games generally allows the "best" team to reveal itself. But the two team that won the most regular season games of all time - the 2001 Mariners and the 1906 Cubs - did not win a world championship. In fact, the Mariners did not even make the World Series. But the teams that won the series those years - the White Sox in 1906 and Diamondbacks in 2001- deserved the trophy because they won it on the field.

How many times has a great college basketball team gotten knocked off in the NCAA tournament? Were Valvano's N.C. State team or Massimino's Villanova team not deserving champions? Clearly, the opponents they defeated in the championship games were objectively "better" teams.

Even the "best" horse fails to win the Kentucky Derby sometimes.

All I want is a system that rewards teams that are deserving of a shot at the championship. That includes teams like the Auburn team that beat us in the Sugar Bowl, and really good, unbeaten G5 teams. The third place team in any conference has no business getting in a playoff over an unbeaten UCF or Cincinnati or Boise State, even if they are "better." Reward the "deserving" teams, not the subjectively "best" teams.