College basketball fans love March Madness. So why not December Delirium? By that we mean it's time for a college football playoff to crown a national champion.

The Bowl Championship Series is no way to decide the title, mostly because it's not definitive. The case of the University of Utah demonstrates why.

The Utes swamped the Alabama Crimson Tide in Friday's Sugar Bowl, 31-17. As the only undefeated team among BCS contenders this season, the Utes claim they deserve the national title.

But under the BCS system, that title will go instead to either Florida or Oklahoma, who will play in the so-called national championship game Thursday night. Neither of those teams has a perfect record, and neither of them has played the Utes. So who is to say which of these teams is best?

If there were a playoff, the team that came unscathed through the championship tournament could claim legitimacy. That's the way to settle a championship.

We understand, by the way, that no system is perfect. A consensus top team can get knocked out in preliminary rounds of a tournament, so there is never a guarantee that the best two teams will meet in the dream matchup in the final. But a tournament is the traditional way to determine a champion, and we think it would end much of the carping that accompanies the BCS championship every year.

A 16-team tournament could be played over roughly four weeks. Essentially, that would be the equivalent of 15 bowl games (eight for the first round, four for the second, etc.). The two semifinal games could be played on New Year's Day and the championship could follow a week later.

A 16-team field would end the controversy that now exists because six conferences get automatic bowl berths for their champions and the other five conferences (including the Mountain West and Western Athletic conferences) don't. Under a tournament system, all 11 conference champions could get automatic berths, and that still would leave room for five other teams, either second-place teams from some of the 11 conferences or Notre Dame, depending upon how those teams were ranked.

That wouldn't eliminate the BCS reliance on polls, computer rankings and chicken auguries to determine rankings, but it would reduce their importance.

When a team wins a national championship by surviving a tournament, it has earned the title. That can't be said today.