This was a very pleasant surprise:

What if fighting through the regular season and earning a win in the Big Ten championship game meant … hosting Alabama at the Horseshoe in December? Or bringing Oklahoma to the Big House after Christmas? Or making Les Miles and LSU drop into Madison, Wis., with the snowflakes?

That’s the idea the Big Ten is pondering, according to the Chicago Tribune, with one of the greatest roadblocks to an expanded college football playoff now thinking of ways to turn the postseason toward the Big Ten’s favor.

The specifics of one percolating Big Ten plan, according to the Tribune, are intriguing: the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the final BCS standings hosting semifinal games on their home campuses. But the general theme — the Big Ten is open to a playoff — is the greater consideration.

Like most other fans of college football, I’ve been agitating for a playoff system for years, and unfortunately the Big Ten has been one of the roadblocks to reforming the idiotic BCS system.

The best part of the proposal from my perspective is the home stadium proposal. I prefer an eight-team playoff, where we would have a home stadium advantage for the top four teams, with the semis being played in two of the bowls.

But this proposal is also a giant leap forward, and it doesn’t disrupt the bowls at all.

With the home stadium proposal, we would eliminate the massive advantage built into the current bowl and BCS system for the SEC and other southern teams like USC and Miami. Sure, the SEC is the best conference, but they can build their teams strictly for warm weather. Now there would at least be the possibility that a speed team from the south would have to prove they could beat and Ohio State or Wisconsin on the road.

The top two teams would have a huge advantage with home games, but that’s the point.

Here’s another quote:

“We have to listen to the fans; we cannot be tone-deaf,” Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips, the chair of the Big Ten’s Administrators Council, told the Tribune. “The Big Ten is open and curious.”

For the first time, I’m actually optimistic that college football is going to fix the BCS and create a playoff. The BCS was a huge improvement over the old system, as we got some epic matchups like Ohio State/Miami and USC/Texas for the National Championship. But there were too many years where the system fell short.

If we can go to four games, then moving to eight games in the future won’t be too difficult.

All of this scoring can be fun, but after a while it’s just not as impressive when it seems like everyone is doing it. After West Virginia dismantled Clemson 70-33 last night, the whole bowl system looks even more ridiculous. Perhaps if these games meant something we’d see some more defense.

I think it’s a joke that Alabama gets a rematch with LSU in the National Championship game, but at least those teams know something about how to play defense.

Has there ever been a worse year in college football? Even before the season started all we heard about were stupid scandals involving silly things like tattoos. Then we had the tragic events at Penn State. And now we have the annual joke called the BCS, though this year it’s worse than usual. While many of us will concede that the SEC has been producing the best teams in recent years, do we really need to watch two of them play for the national championship?

This system is so lame and corrupt that you have to be either a complete idiot or an overpaid hack on one of the BCS bowl committees to defend it.

Hopefully T. Boone Pickens will start throwing some money around and pull every political string he has to change this system. A real playoff system might be too much for the corrupt conference hacks to muster at this point, but at least we should get to a plus-one system. In the future a final four could easily be expanded to an 8-team playoff.

It didn’t take long today for the Bowl Championship Series to get a significant shake up. Sure, we already know who’s going to play in the national title game — because if we’ve learned nothing this year, it’s that every game matters … unless you play in the SEC — but the other games still were up for grabs today.

Houston, which had gone through the season unbeaten and found itself in the top 10, had the inside track to the Sugar Bowl as the top non-AQ school in the country with a ranking inside the top 12. I’m not sure if today’s loss to Southern Mississippi would knock the Cougars outside of the top 12 (it probably should), but it doesn’t matter, as they’re not Conference USA champions, meaning they’d have to get in as an at-large. Good luck with that.

So who gets the spot? Well, if Houston falls behind Michigan, it’s likely enough to get the Wolverines into the top 14, making them a shoe-in for an at-large spot. Then again, Michigan is likely to get there anyway, and most projections have them playing in the Sugar Bowl against Houston already. TCU would be the non-AQ school with the best chance, as it sits at No. 18 in the BCS standings right now, and only needs to get to No. 16 to earn an auto-bid. Head spinning yet? If a non-AQ school wins its conference and finishes in the top 16, it can get an automatic berth in a BCS game provided the champion from at least one AQ conference is ranked below it. Thank you, Big East.

If TCU doesn’t jump two spots (which is possible but not all that likely), then an at-large selection would fill the slot. The most likely choices are Boise State, Kansas State and, if it loses today, Oklahoma State.

As for the Big East, Cincinnati’s win against UConn leaves a three-way tie at the top of the league, so the final BCS standings will determine who gets the bid. Barring something crazy, that will be West Virginia, which is currently the only Big East team in the top 25, sitting at No. 23.

The Oklahoma State Cowboys had a clear shot at playing for the National Championship, but tonight they lost to the Iowa State Cyclones in overtime, 37-31.

The game was played in the aftermath of a tragic plane crash that claimed the lives of women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant Miranda Serna. This tragedy came shortly after Oklahoma State commemorated the 10-year anniversary of the deaths of 10 men affiliated with its men’s basketball team.

In this somber setting, Oklahoma State took a lead but then blew it in the fourth quarter. The Cyclones stormed back and tied the game, but OSU had a chance to win it late in the fourth quarter with a field goal. On television it looked liked the field goal might be good as the ball sailed above the upright but it was called no good.

In overtime, Iowa state stormed out with a quick touchdown, but then Oklahoma State matched them. The the Cowboys got the ball again, but this time Brandon Weeden hit star receiver Justin Blackmon in what seemed like a perfect spot with a pass, but it bounced off of Blackmon’s hands and was intercepted by Iowa State. The Cyclones then quickly took advantage, scored a touchdown, and ended OSU’s great run.

Again, Oklahoma State showed serious holes on defense. I don’t know what’s happened to the Big 12 over the past 10 years, but the league looks like a flag football league at times. You don’t see tough, physical defense, so maybe Oklahoma State wasn’t the team to take on mighty LSU. Brandon Weeden threw three interceptions and didn’t play very well thus hurting his chances for the Heisman Trophy.

The result is BCS chaos. For those of us who think the current system is a joke, the upcoming discussions about which one-loss team “deserves” to play LSU if LSU wins out will be annoying as hell. At the same time, this scenario provides further ammunition for all of us who want the system to change.

We’ll have to listen to countless debates over whether Alabama deserves to pay in the title game, pitting two SEC teams in the final game. While this will get the most discussion, it’s also not likely if Oregon wins out just because most people would hate to see an all-SEC title game.