I don't know how college football fans can possibly be downcast about the rejection of a plan to turn the Bowl Championship Series into a four-team playoff.

After all, on the same day, the NCAA approved two new bowl games for next season.

What more could people ask for?

Who hasn't wondered why the Washington, D.C., area doesn't have a bowl to call its own?

The Congressional Bowl will most likely feature Navy against an ACC opponent. But not just any ACC opponent. It will be an ACC team that probably will end its regular season on life support.

Reflecting on the bowl's name, I wonder if Congress is responsible for this game.

Has a president ever vetoed a bowl? Maybe President Bush should try.

The other newbie is the St. Petersburg Bowl, which will be introduced in December at Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Nobody will want to miss that one. After all, it matches middling teams from the Big East and Conference USA. Better still, it will be held indoors. Nothing reflects the charms of football in Florida better than a game played under a dreary roof.

Sarcasm aside, I'm more annoyed by the addition of unnecessary bowls than I am by the failure of the BCS to adopt the plus-one format so many fans and media desire.

I'm behind the curve. I'm out of touch. You might say this qualifies me to be a BCS commissioner.

But it doesn't bother me in the least that, at their meeting in Florida, mega-conference officials stuck with the same flawed system.

Naturally, sports pundits are leaping at the throats of the commissioners, accusing them of standing in the way of the public's desire for a real Division I-A playoff. To hear the critics sound off, you'd think a college football playoff was higher on every American's wish list than cheap gas and free HBO.

But the commissioners stood firm.

"The BCS is in an unprecedented state of health," the ACC's John Swofford said.

A comment like that really fires up the dissidents. Some people are quite disgruntled over the way the BCS does business, but not me. I'm relatively gruntled.

A change to the one-plus format would give four teams a chance at the national

championship, but if my calculations are correct, in most cases, the title-game contenders would play 15 games.

That seems excessive for college players.

I understand that as a member of the media I'm sworn to despise the BCS, but there are things about college football I like a lot less.

Take weeknight regular-season games. If I ran the world, they would disappear. College football is meant to be played on weekends.

Also, I'd tweak the BCS rankings system by eliminating the coaches' poll. Too many of the coaches are clueless, playing politics or both.

The majority of playoff proponents argue that a plus-one plan would help remedy injustices. Georgia believes it was unfairly denied a shot at the title last season in favor of LSU and Ohio State.

As has been said many times before, though, college football's regular season is a week-to-week playoff.

It's a compelling one, too, judging from interest in the game, which has never been higher.

I don't believe that, in general, most playoff advocates really care about the Georgias of the world or some sort of playoff equity; they just want more tournament-style games on TV. It's all about building bigger spectacles.

But despite charges that the BCS is impeding progress, college football is plenty spectacular as it is, even without the bread and circuses a four-team playoff would create.

Critics of the BCS system are stuck with it at least until 2014.

Any predictions on whether the Congressional Bowl will be voted out of office by then?

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373, bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com