The Old School Plus One tackles 2009.

Last spring I tossed out my own solution to the BCS/playoff dilemma with an idea I called the "old-school plus one," which dispensed with both the arbitrariness and obscurantism of the current BCS system and the cumbersome dead weight of an overly extensive playoff setup. Basically, it'd work like this: The elite-level bowls, after sending out their automatic invites to the various conference champions, get to invite whichever other teams they want. Rather than the ridiculously arcane selection process mandated by present BCS rules, the bowls could invite whichever teams they thought would sell the most tickets and/or create the most exciting matchup; it'd basically be the same free-for-all we had before the Bowl Coalition got started in the mid-'90s, with some teams potentially being sought after by multiple bowls and getting to pick the invite they preferred. After all the bowl games were played, the teams would be re-ranked -- simply going by the AP poll, no coaches trying to game the system or computer rankings needlessly complicating matters -- and the top two teams face off in a national-championship game.

For the most part, I think this system would've worked well in sorting out some of the thornier controversies of the BCS era, but I thought I'd try applying it to the 2009 season -- in which we still have five undefeated teams as of mid-December, but only two of them getting to play for BCS title honors -- to see if we could get better matchups and a more definitive path to the championship.



THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Alabama (13-0) -- SEC champion
2. Texas (13-0) -- Big XII champion
3. Texas Christian (12-0) -- Mountain West champion
4. Cincinnati (12-0) -- Big East champion
5. Florida (12-1)
6. Boise State (13-0) -- WAC champion
7. Oregon (10-2) -- Pac-10 champion
8. Ohio State (10-2) -- Big 10 champion
9. Georgia Tech (11-2) -- ACC champion
10. Iowa (10-2)

THE BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #7 Oregon (10-2) vs. #8 Ohio State (10-2)
The Rose Bowl goes with its traditional matchup of Big 10 and Pac-10 champions -- and completely removes itself from the national-title picture in the process. But that's never stopped them before.

Sugar: #1 Alabama (13-0) vs. #3 Texas Christian (12-0)
Alabama goes to New Orleans as the SEC champion, and the Sugar jumps on undefeated TCU rather than taking a more geographically distant Boise State team or setting up a Bama-Florida rematch.

Fiesta: #2 Texas (13-0) vs. #6 Boise State (13-0)
This one's tricky, because the Fiesta probably would be very interested in the prospect of a Lone Star State showdown between undefeated Texas and TCU teams. But Boise State's fan base has been very good to the Fiesta Bowl in the past (not to mention this year -- more than 80 percent of BSU's ticket allotment for the 2010 Fiesta had been snapped up within four days of Selection Sunday), and the bowl would still get an undefeated team even if the Sugar Bowl snapped up TCU first. Plus, given what happened the last time an undefeated Boise team met up with a Big XII champion in Glendale, this matchup would almost certainly generate a ton of media buzz.

Orange: #4 Cincinnati (12-0) vs. #5 Florida (12-1)
The Orange Bowl has the option of picking either the Big East champ or the ACC champ for its automatic tie-in, and I think they'd go with the higher-ranked, undefeated Bearcats over Georgia Tech, given how loath ACC fans have been to even travel as far as Jacksonville or Tampa for a conference-title game (and how Cincy fans snapped up a much greater percentage of their ticket allotment than Virginia Tech fans did for last year's bowl).

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Oregon dispenses with Ohio State in an ultimately irrelevant game. In the shocker of the postseason, an Alabama team whose defensive coordinator signed a contract to become Georgia's DC two weeks prior feels a strong sense of deja vu as they walk into the Superdome, take another undefeated Mountain West squad for granted, and get upset by TCU, 24-20. Texas also does one of their usual early-game sleepwalks but manages to survive their mid-major opponent in a shootout. And Florida's defense powers them to a win over Cincinnati. (Subplot: Would Brian Kelly stick around to coach the Bearcats through the postseason, regardless of his intentions to take the Notre Dame job, if he thought UC still had a glimmer of hope for a national title?)

After the bowl games shake up the rankings, Texas is #1, followed by TCU, Alabama, Florida, and Oregon. The two Texas teams thus get sent to Pasadena (hey, the in-state battle ended up happening after all), where the Horned Frogs score the potential tying touchdown in the final 90 seconds of the national-title game, then eschew the extra-point kick for a shot at a two-point conversion and the win -- and make it, winning 29-28 and bringing home the national-championship trophy.



Now, all this is conjecture, and do I really think TCU would upset Alabama or Texas? I don't know; depends on what day you ask me. And you'll also notice that only two of the matchups are actually different from what we've ended up with in 2009 -- Alabama and Texas each have to face a mid-major before getting a shot at the national title, rather than just shunting TCU and Boise State to face each other at the BCS's "kids' table." But I threw the TCU upsets into my hypothetical situation to shed light on a couple of larger points -- first, with four of the five undefeated teams paired up against each other in bowl games, you'd really have to work hard to come up with a way to explain why the "plus-one" winner shouldn't be crowned the national champion. Second, with the mid-major "BCS busters" having an actual shot at the national title, rather than just being set off to the side to play a glorified exhibition game, you'd silence the Orrin Hatches of the world who, accurately or inaccurately, think their states' teams are being unfairly excluded from the process.

The only real possibility for a monkeywrench to get thrown into the works here is if Cincinnati upsets Florida, meaning that there'd still be one 13-0 BCS-conference team (which, like Alabama, had knocked off the Gators) still "on the outside looking in" with respect to the national-championship game. But I think my larger purpose still has been served: If the top bowls were freed from the strictures of computer rankings, automatic qualifiers, and the BCS's ridiculously convoluted rules for which bowls get to pick teams in which order, we'd not only get better, more meaningful games, but we'd also get an even more definitive national champion.

Your comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome in the comments, and that goes for any differences of opinion you might have on the bowl matchups themselves.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets its Kart on.

There's been a silver lining to getting laid off, and it is that I've had more time to devote to the things that I love -- writing, Georgia football, taking my dogs to the park, and, of course, Mario Kart. I don't like to brag, but I've gotten pretty good at it, enough that I'm starting to hunt for a way I can mention that particular skill on my résumé. And whenever they come out with a Mario Kart II or Super Mario Kart or whatever -- which I will almost certainly buy -- I've got some ideas for some new characters they could add. This week's +5 is Five New Characters That Would Be Awesome For Mario Kart, and I'm even offering them to Nintendo free of charge:



Baby Wario
I don't know why none of the evil characters have baby analogues. Lord knows I run across enough bratty-ass kids in Target or at the airport or whatever that there are models aplenty for such a character. Baby Wario's backstory is that after Wario captured Mario's castle and took all his coins in Super Mario Land, he went off to Vegas to celebrate and nailed a cocktail waitress at the Hard Rock Casino. Nine months later, she brought his bastard son to his door and said she refused to raise him. So Wario took his baby boy in and taught Baby Wario to be just as big a dick as he was. Now Baby Wario can throw things and throw tantrums in restaurants and never get in trouble, because, well, that appears to be how people are raising their kids these days.



Faggy Kong
The misfit cousin of Funky Kong (above) and Donkey Kong, who never quite fit in with the rest of the Kongs and went up to New York right after graduating from high school; currently working in a high-end hair salon in the Village. The funny thing is, with his cutoff shorts and wife-beater, Funky himself actually looks like a lot of the gay dudes you see rollerblading around Piedmont Park.



Wapeach
None of the female characters have "evil" versions like Wario or Waluigi. And Wapeach could be awesome -- you could basically take Princess Peach, dye her hair black (because in the world of cartoons or video games, any female who isn't blond is evil), give her a black leather biker/dominatrix outfit, stick a cigarette in her mouth, and there you go. And before long she's getting Mario to paint her apartment and make her car payments while she's getting with Wario on the side.



Bows-her
This was also Holly's brainchild: a female version of Bowser who nags him incessantly about his breath, his cleanliness, and his driving. I'd thinking she would be kind of like Ndnd, the wife of the emperor of Omicron Persei 8 on "Futurama." Well, maybe Ndnd crossed with Estelle Costanza.



Mouser
Mouser was an actual character from Super Mario Bros. 2, a giant mouse who threw cherry bombs at Mario, who would have to throw them right back. Pretty easy to beat and kind of a little bitch, but whatever.

If anyone can come up with character PhotoShops that are better than the random pictures I've thrown up here, by all means, send 'em along.

And the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "Sail Away"
2. KRS-One, "2nd Quarter -- Free Throws"
3. Radio 4, "The Movies"
4. The Beastie Boys, "Intergalactic"
5. R.E.M., "Parakeet"
6. Underworld, "Shout Twice"
7. Billy Idol, "Dancing With Myself"
8. Groove Armada, "Your Song"
9. Orbital, "Style" (single version)
10. U2, "Love Is Blindness"

Your own Mario character ideas and Random Tens are, as always, welcome in the comments.

The Friday Not-So-Random Ten+5 begins planning for its future.

As I'm pretty sure all of you know by now, I got laid off a couple weeks ago, and after a back surgery, a few days' recovery, and a visit from some out-of-town guests for SEC Media Days, it's probably about time for me to start hunting for the next place at which I will (hopefully) be gainfully employed. There's just one thing, though: I don't like working. I realize that doesn't exactly make me anyone's unique little flower, but there are very few things I like enough to be jazzed about the prospect of doing them for a mandatory eight hours each day. Even some things I like when I'm just doing them on my own become dreary and unappealing when I think about having to spend five days a week in a cubicle doing them so that I'll get to eat that month.

What do I like to do? That's a question a lot of people have asked me over the past couple weeks, in an attempt to begin honing in on something I might like to seek out for my next job, and I can actually think of a few things. The +5 below is where I reckon I'll be starting my job search: My Five Ideal Jobs. Following that is a Not-So-Random Ten that will basically constitute the bulk of my job-searching, future-planning soundtrack over the next few weeks, but let's get to the jobs first, just in case any of you helpful readers might know of some openings for any of these:



Freelance Lego sculptor
I would hope that my Lego design/construction chops have already been well established on this site. "Freelance Lego sculptor" is actually the alter ego I use for myself when I'm in a new and unfamiliar city and roaming bars to pick up chicks. Sure, it probably sounds dorky at first blush, but there's a lot you can do with it. For instance, I tell girls I just got back from spending a month in Switzerland, where I earned $15,000 for building a 2:1-scale version of the Peugeot 5008 for a display at the Geneva Auto Show. Laugh all you want, but that story earned me a night of passion with Katherine Heigl last month. OK, not Katherine Heigl, but her personal assistant, which is practically the same thing.



Rick Neuheisel's sweater-vest coordinator
My fandom of Rick Neuheisel is also well established at this point. After maybe Jim Tressel, Neuheisel is also one of the sharpest-dressed coaches in Division I-A, with a wide variety of wondrous sweater vests at his disposal for any given game. As something of a sweater-vest aficionado myself, I feel I would be highly qualified to select the most appropriate vest for each situation, helping to ensure that Neu's reputation as one of the slickest ladykillers in college football remains intact.



Lucy Pinder's personal hand bra
Being an internationally famous, 32G-equipped glamour model means you spend a lot of time with your hands posed coyly in front of your boobs. Only problem is, that doesn't leave you with any free hands to do things like play video games, shift a manual transmission, cook flapjacks, or what have you. I would be happy to offer my services as someone who could handle the boob-covering while she tends to those other important activities, and I think she'd find that she was now able to handle her daily chores more quickly and efficiently than ever before.



Proprietor of the world's first human petting zoo
I don't see how someone hasn't come up with this idea already. A hygienic, safely monitored place where people can pet the kind of beautiful women or men they might never get to come into contact with otherwise? Way better than a lap dance, and way better than some regular old petting zoo with farm animals. Which would you rather pet, a supermodel or a billy goat? You shouldn't have to think too hard about your answer to that question.



James Bond supervillain
Living in the lap of luxury in a concealed mega-hideout, extorting billions from the world's governments -- heck, I could do that. Only I'd have two advantages over the supervillains Bond faced in movies like "You Only Live Twice" or "On Her Majesty's Secret Service": One, I wouldn't actually have to tangle with anyone as clever or capable as James Bond, since he's a fictional character. Two, I'd have the advantage of watching all the mistakes those villains made and knowing better than to repeat them. As satisfying as it might be to trap an enemy spy in an elaborate, slow, excruciatingly torturous (but theoretically escapable) trap, I would resist the temptation to leave him in something like that; as Bond has proven time and time again, you're really better off just shooting him right away and getting it over with. So I think I've demonstrated that I have the cunning and foresight to be quite a nefarious villain -- all I need now is a hefty infusion of venture capital so that I can build my secret lair and city-destroying laser and what have you. Anybody looking around for sound investments in a troubled economy? Let me show you my prospectus.

And now the Ten, which, as explained, is Not-So-Random this week:

1. Mo' Horizons, "Hit the Road Jack"
2. The Farm, "Hard Times"
3. The Beatmasters, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
4. Underworld, "Two Months Off"
5. Beck, "Deadweight"
6. Miles Davis, "Freddie Freeloader"
7. Public Enemy, "Brother's Gonna Work It Out"
8. Pet Shop Boys, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)"
9. The Smiths, "Stretch Out and Wait"
10. Avenue Q cast, "I Wish I Could Go Back to College"

Your turn, folks. Help me out! Let me hear your job suggestions, and/or random or not-so-random tens, in the comments.