Wondering why, after all this time, the Bowl Championship Series is being nixed for a playoff format?

The mighty Southeastern Conference, that’s why.

The SEC has never lost a BCS title game since its inception in the 1998 season.

(LSU’s loss to Alabama last year has an asterisk because ‘Bama is an SEC school itself).

Its official record stands at 8 and 1 (with LSU’s ‘loss’).

All other conferences combined have only won five BCS titles.

These southern schools aren’t getting a piece of the pie, they’re snatching the whole thing off the table and stuffing it before other conferences can even smell it coming out of the oven.

National exposure, money, recruiting power and the religious feel of football in the South was becoming too overwhelming for conferences like the Big Ten, ACC, Big East and PAC-12, creating a need to level the playing field.

A playoff will allow one other team to fire a blow at an SEC squad before it can go full-steam into another national championship.

The bowl break between Thanksgiving and the New Years Bowls allows teams with pesky injuries to rejuvenate and come back onto the field just like the beginning of the year.

Healthy SEC schools with their superior athletes (yes, I said it, as much as it hurts being from the North myself) will take down other powerhouses most times.

Strategy is a huge factor, but it can only go so far in college sports.

It’s the difference between the pro ranks and the NCAA.

In college, if the guy across from you is bigger, stronger, faster and more talented, he’s probably going to light you up for most of the game.

Strategy can only save you from so many whippings in one contest.

By creating a semifinal, there’s a chance for injury to the superior team, further body breakdown and an entirely new set of game film for opposing coaches to analyze, which is huge.

The final straw was the ‘Second SEC Championship’ that was last year’s BCS title game.

Some of that money could’ve went to another conference, but it didn’t because the computers thought that two SEC schools would provide a better match-up.

Its all about money.

Did you think the commissioners from other conferences were going to let this happen again? Nope.

Now we’ll finally get to see what we’ve been waiting for.

A playoff, though not just like every other sport, will send ratings through the roof like you’ve never seen, and create stadium atmospheres as electric as anything we’ve seen.

The BCS as it stands lives on for one more season.

In 2013, four teams will begin to buckle up for a final stretch for the first time instead of being catapulted directly into a final game.

And that’s exactly what everyone outside of the SEC wanted.

I do believe that this playoff tactic can work for other schools and will wiggle into form even better once conference expansion is finished and the playoff field expands even further.

Still, don’t count on the power of the SEC to diminish anytime soon.

It’ll be up to one team to stand in front of the train and try to slow it down before it reaches its final opponent.

Yes, those schools are that good.

The SEC season itself is a gauntlet that no other conference team faces, which is another advantage.

But they aren’t invincible.

The right coaching staff and the right amount of healthy and focused players may be able to stop the SEC one of these days, if just for one season, to remind everyone that there are kids across the country that can still play this game and win.