I love college football. It is by far my favorite sport to watch and cover.

There is absolutely nothing I don’t like about it. Well, almost nothing.

There does seem to be a lot of whining that goes along with it.

And no, I’m not talking about coaches and players of teams vying to get into the national championship game.

I’m talking about the so-called talking heads on the television networks that constantly whine about the need of a playoff in major college football.

I have just two words for all of them. Shut up!

Every single year beginning in about the middle of the season it starts. You can’t turn on a television without seeing one “expert” or another complaining about the BCS and lack of a playoff.

Guys, I’ve got news for you. There’s not going to be a playoff. And guess what. It’s not such a bad thing.

There is no surefire way to determine a true champion, even when there is a playoff.

I mean, look at this past college baseball season.

Fresno State barely slipped into a regional as a No. 4 seed with a 33-27 record.

They got crazy hot during the postseason and rolled all the way to a national championship.

Now, was Fresno State the best team in college baseball last year? Of course not.

They just happened to get hot at the right time and used that momentum to get a national championship.

When a sport ends a season with a playoff, often the best team during the regular season doesn’t win the championship.

Take last year’s NFL season. The New England Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season while the New York Giants finished with a 10-6 record.

But for one game, the Giants played better than the Patriots. It just so happened that game was the Super Bowl.

The BCS does have its flaws, but its real beauty is that it doesn’t reward a team for just getting hot in the final few games of the year the way a playoff system would do.

The BCS looks at a team’s entire body of work and then selects what it considers the best one. And most of the time it gets it right.

Just look at last year.

Southern Cal and Georgia were the two “hot” teams at the end of the season and many people were stumping for them to make the championship game.

But look at their entire body of work. USC lost to 41-point underdog Stanford at home and also had a road loss to Oregon while Georgia lost at home to a mediocre South Carolina team and was hammered, 35-14 by Tennessee.

LSU on the other hand, lost two games in triple overtime to teams that won eight games each, including an Arkansas team that went to the Cotton Bowl and had the Heisman Trophy runner-up in Darren McFadden.

And LSU proved the BCS right by pummeling Ohio State in the championship game to win the title.

The lack of a playoff also makes the season much more exciting overall.

The college football regular season is the most exciting in all of sports because it is the most relevant.

Every week is like a playoff. In every other sport, one loss doesn’t mean that much, but in college football, all it takes is one loss to knock you out of championship contention.

That’s why college football is the greatest sport in the country. Every game truly matters.

So while many people, including the president-elect, are calling for a playoff, I say lets all back off and just enjoy the sport.

After all, major college football has survived for over 100 years without a playoff and I think it has done OK.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor for The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3632 or jeff.edwards@natchezdemocrat.com