Much to the dismay of those charged up and ready to make changes to the BCS system in college football, I don’t think we’ll have a playoff next year or the year after. Due to foot dragging, conference shenanigans, and entrenched moneymaking bigwigs, fans may have to wait till 2011 or later to have a logical system in place.

In the fastest scenario I can think of, a group spends all of 2008 deciding how to implement the playoff system, spends 2009 getting the conferences to agree to the system, then says before the 2010 season that it will go into effect for the 2011 season. That’s if the Adams proclamation makes the BCS people and the conferences jump to their feet today. I doubt this will happen – but if it did, I would never be more happy to be proved wrong.

If it takes a couple more indecisive years before the conferences finally hit the “okay, let’s change stuff” button, then we could be looking at 2013. If the deciding process or the convincing process takes a couple of years each, we could be looking at 2015 before we get the playoff system we so dearly covet.

If this timetable seems ridiculous, consider that the Big 10 announced in December 2007 that they’d be adding a bye week to their schedule in 2009, long after other conferences did. Also note that the NCAA adding the twelfth game to the schedule was decided before the 2005 season to take effect in the 2006 season. Due to long-range schedule planning (games tentatively planned for 2016? Really?) and stubbornness from the powers that be, things take a really long time to change in college football.

The worst case scenario also concerns the powers that be. The Rose Bowl currently enjoys a $30 million ABC contract that extends until 2014. That equals big bucks for the Pac-10 and the Big Ten, and big bucks always means slow change. If the rest of the conferences can’t coax, wheedle, beg or force those two conferences into a playoff and don’t have the guts to go it without the holdouts, we could be looking at a very long wait.