By JEFF MILLER

College football doesn’t need a playoff because it already has a playoff, right? The glorious regular season!

Every game counts. Every Saturday matters. Every matchup is do-or-die.

September to January. The whole thing is one magnificent tournament of gridiron love!

Fudge bars!!!

If college football’s regular season is a playoff, it’s the most poorly conceived one in the history of sports, which, as we understand it, started several years ago.

How can anything be sold as an acceptable format when it’s single-elimination for some schools, double-elimination for others?

Florida lost to Ole Miss and yet has survived. The instant Texas Tech loses, the Red Raiders will be as done as Amos Alonzo Stagg.

And how about the teams that don’t lose at all and still are eliminated from BCS finals consideration? If these are the playoffs, Ball State should be alive until someone defeats the Cardinals. Period.

You know how people mock baseball because the American and National leagues can’t even play by the same rules concerning the designated hitter?

How about if the American League’s best regular-season team advanced directly to the World Series, while the National League required its top two teams to play each other for the right to advance?

Laughable, huh?

Well, that’s exactly what happens in college football, where the Pac-10 and Big Ten continue to identify champions every fall without staging a championship game?

You do realize how much of an advantage this has been for USC and Ohio State in recent years, correct?

Not having to play in the Pac-10 Championship Game Presented By Geico probably has saved the Trojans at least once.

But no one wants to hear that. Not at this point. The final weeks of the regular season are upon us, and we can’t wait to see who wins these crucial games.

Even more, we can’t wait to see how the victories are interpreted and which teams are picked to play for the next bogus title.