Funny how University of Georgia president Michael Adams suddenly found his voice and lent it to the cause of college football reform.

Several months ago, at the Southeastern Conference meetings in Destin, Fla., Adams didn’t have very much to say when the subject of a college football playoff came up. Florida president Bernie Machen suggested one as an alternative to the deeply flawed Bowl Championship Series, but was greeted by the sound of chirping crickets.

Adams and his colleagues didn’t so much as raise a murmur of support for Machen’s proposal.

So what now to make of Adams and his all-out safety blitz on the structure of college football’s postseason?

It’s good old-fashioned presidential waffling and self-serving posturing. Adams had no real beef with the BCS until his Bulldogs finished their season in New Orleans one week before LSU wiped its cleats on Ohio State in the championship game at the Louisiana Superdome.

Before LSU players could put their fingerprint smudges on the Waterford crystal BCS trophy, Adams came charging in on his high horse and shouting for an NCAA-sponsored playoff.

“It’s a process that the closer you get to, the less you like it,” Adams said during a Tuesday press conference.

Welcome to the party, Dr. Adams.

Let’s ignore Adams’ motives for a moment and forget that he remained silent until after Georgia safely thumped Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. He may want us to drink a batch of Kool-Aid made from sour grapes, but that doesn’t mean his proposal lacks logic or overall merit.

Adams suggested an eight-team playoff in which the current BCS bowl games – the Orange, Rose, Sugar and Fiesta – would serve as quarterfinal sites. The semifinals and championship round would at most add three weeks to the bowl calendar, but Adams recommended a return to an 11-game regular season schedule to “answer concerns about the wear and tear on student-athletes.”

Better yet, start lopping off the love handles of a bloated 32-game bowl bonanza that rewards too many teams for finishing 7-5 and 6-6 by the grace of Division I-AA non-conference opponents.

The most ambitious aspect of Adams’ plan involves disbanding the BCS power structure and putting the whole national championship operation in the hands of the NCAA.

“I am confident the NCAA has and will have a better record of managing events of this type than the BCS has exhibited to date,” Adams, the chair of the NCAA executive committee, wrote in a statement outlining his concerns.

There haven’t been many complaints about March Madness, other than the fact that NCAA officials spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about whether a Dasani or an Aquafina bottle winds up in front of a basketball coach on the post-game interview dais.

The primary problem with the BCS, as Adams sees it, is that TV networks seem so determined to influence the pairings, whether it comes in the form of lisping Lou Holtz chastising a team for not winning by enough points or Kirk Herbstreit reporting that LSU Les Miles will ride off to Michigan on the back of a maize and blue unicorn. Oddly enough, Adams and his colleagues don’t seem so ready to boycott the national television exposure or broadcast rights revenue those networks provide.