Mike has a great post up about the history of the college football national championship. The history seems to me to be dead on, but I disagree with the final analysis for two basic reasons.
1. Mike mentions that every NCAA sport determines its champion in a way of its choosing. That's true. And every one of them except 1-A football does it on the field (or court, or ice, or what have you). Every pro league has knockout playoffs. Every high school league I've ever heard of has playoffs. It's not as if playoffs are some outlandish concept--in fact playoffs aren't just the norm, they're the way of determining a championship team. I know there are historical or traditional reasons, but I have never heard one competitive or intrinsic reason why major college football should be different. If you're going to argue against playoffs, tell me why this case should be the exception--not just why it is or why it has been.
2. Mike's argument makes a change in terms that a lot of people try to make but that never works--"best team" vs. "champion". USC may have been the best team in 2002, but I'm fine with the fact that they weren't the champion because they had two losses, and everyone understands that you can't have two losses and be the champion. Crowning a champion does not have to be about deciding who in the abstract is the best team. (In fact, for quiz-bowl types, I'd suggest that this confusion has fueled obsessive searching for "perfect" formats over convenient and fun formats. Yes, I'm looking at you NAQT. Among others.) Competition always includes elements of luck, momentum, and other factors outside of pure skill or proficiency. We crown champions--and do it using playoffs--not in order to crown the best team but because it's fun, because competition suits itself to building to a final showdown, and because not doing so is anti-climactic.

To play a four-month-long season and not crown a champion feels hollow. NC State in 1983 and Villanova in 1985 were not the best teams, but their championships (and the champion-crowning process) are not sullied for it, and no one would claim that the 1982-83 and 1984-85 college basketball seasons were anti-climactic. That is not true of the 2003 college football season.

Maybe the NCAA and the networks' main concern is $$$, but that's not why so many college football fans want playoffs. Sports provide their fans many things, and one of the things a sports season provides fans is an epic narrative. College football is especially good for this, but not having playoffs makes a lot of us feel as if the last chapter has been torn out.