He sat at home with his family, watching one of the best NCAA tournament title games of all-time unfold on his television.

As Duke and Butler engaged in a game which had unlimited emotion and energy almost pulsating through the screen, Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez took it for what it was.

A basketball game many will remember for a long time.

Rodriguez is a basketball fan, and perked up when asked about the national championship game following his Tuesday meeting with the media.

He enjoyed the emotion and appreciated the athleticism. But at no time during Duke’s 61-59 win over Butler did Rodriguez find himself longing to be in a similar position - a football playoff similar to the NCAA basketball tournament.

“You appreciate the basketball playoff because every sport is different,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think a Butler, so to speak in football terms, would make it to a championship game. You can find five guys, but can you find 22 guys? I don’t think that could happen, would happen in a football realm so to speak.

“Utah had a great team but they are in a pretty good conference. I don’t consider Utah like maybe a Butler was.”

Butler may play in the Horizon League, which the Bulldogs seem to dominate annually, but Butler is given an opportunity to win a national title.

Utah, Boise State, TCU and Hawaii, four schools which have played in Bowl Championship Series games the past five years, essentially are not. 

Due to a combination of human polls with voters who have vested interests in the outcome along with computer rankings that each specify different metrics, it appears to be close to impossible for a team from outside the BCS conferences to play for the national championship.

Which is part of the problem with college football.

This is an argument that has been made before, that the powers that run the NCAA and the BCS are foolish for keeping Division I in a bowl system instead of going to an eight-team playoff.

Why?

Money is one factor. The pressure of individual bowls is another. And then there are the coaches, like Rodriguez, who aren’t in favor of a full-blown playoff right now.

“Play ‘em all and then maybe a plus-one,” Rodriguez said Tuesday. “That’s the only possibility. I wouldn’t do anything that would affect the bowls right now. I think the way we’ve got it is not perfect, but I think it’s pretty good.”

Rodriguez holds the same opinion as many coaches, but it isn't the popular one among fans. For coaches, it seems to work because it keeps - or at least tries to - urgency high.

When Rodriguez was at West Virginia and his team was in the national title picture, used the ‘every game is a playoff’ message the BCS doled out to his team.

It is how he approached it, too. It gave more urgency to his team at the outset of each season, an urgency that grew throughout the year.

So in 2007, when West Virginia was undefeated and a win over Pittsburgh away from playing for the national championship, he said the same thing.

Pittsburgh beat West Virginia, 13-9. If there was a playoff, the Mountaineers would have still had a shot at a national title. Because they lost, they settled for a Fiesta Bowl appearance that Rodriguez didn’t coach because he was off to Michigan.

“When we got beat in the last game to cost us a chance to go,” Rodriguez said, “we in a sense lost our semifinal game.”

The sentiment is nice - and for a long time it worked in college football. But the sport has outgrown the bowl system even if the number of bowls inviting mediocre 6-6 teams seemingly grows by the year.

Too many teams from too many conferences can make a realistic claim for a chance at the  national championship in football these days for there to be anything but a playoff, even if it is the plus-one Rodriguez is sort of in favor of.

“I think maybe the basketball tournament has created its own niche,” Rodriguez said. “I just thought it was a great event and I just love how hard the teams were playing.

“They played with great passion.”

But it is a niche that can be copied and built upon.

Imagine if that happened in football, if there were something tangible at stake for the nation’s top eight teams. Imagine the passion then.

It might even top March Madness.

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com. Or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.