There is a remarkable difference in the playoff structures of Canadian and American university/college football. The American system is not a fair judge of the best team in the nation.

In Canada, for a team to be crowned the Vanier Cup Champions, they must qualify for playoffs in their region, go through elimination rounds and then play in a championship game.

This is a fair system and can correctly determine the proper national champion because it forces the best teams to play each other.

Like the States, Canada does rank their teams and this determines playoff seeding, but the teams still have to win every game.

It forces teams to play their best football against the best teams in the nations giving the top and lowest ranked team's equal chance at success.

In fact, last year the top ranked Laval football team did not even make the Vanier Cup final, as the University of Manitoba Bisons won the cup.

In the States, college teams do not have a playoff system in place. Rather, each week in the season the media, coaches and a computer rank the teams.

At the end of the season, the top two teams play for the national championship. This is not an adequate system for determining a national champion. It is flawed in many ways.

A team losing in the first several weeks of the season is almost completely written out of the championship game.

University of Southern California is a prime example this year. They won their first two games against high ranked opponents (Ohio State and Virginia), outscoring the two 87-10. The third game against an unranked opponent (Oregon State) they lost 27-21, dropping them from first to ninth in the polls.

This almost eliminates USC from playing in the national championship this year. The polls also take the severity of the schedule into play. It is harder for exceptional teams to get up for the small easy games and ultimately they do worse.

Several other top-five teams also lost this weekend, dropping them out of contention for the championship and allowing possibly less talented teams who happen to have a good week to rise in the polls and play in the national championship. Last year Hawaii went undefeated, playing a fairly tough schedule and was excluded from the national championship game, another flaw in the system. The top teams in the States should be given a fair chance to prove their worth.

Every team can have one bad week and this should not hurt them later in the season.

The American system needs to change so that a proper national champion can be crowned.

Let the teams decide who is best by adopting a playoff system.

The United States need to look to the north and adopt the Canadian system for crowning a champion.