Terry Bowden is coming to the Triangle. And he wants a playoff in college football, too.

"Should there be a playoff in major college football? Absolutely. And I think there will be one some day," Bowden said Wednesday. "You look around. Playoffs are a part of the fabric of sports. It's the best way to decide a championship. Everybody knows that. Every other sport, at every level, probably in every other country, decides things with a playoff. Why not major college football?

"Even in football, at every other level, there's some kind of playoff or tournament at the end of the season. When you recruit, you see kids play in their high school playoffs. You look at the NFL, and their playoffs are tremendously successful. It's even at the Division I-AA and lower levels of college football. It's everywhere you look, and at some point you'll see it in Division I-A, too."

Bowden's playoff proposal includes eight teams and seven bowl games. The seven bowls would rotate as hosts of quarterfinal, semifinal and championship games, so that each would host the title contest once in a seven-year rotation. There would be four games on or around Christmas, two games on Jan. 1, and the national championship game on Jan. 8.

"We don't have to throw out the history and tradition of the bowls," Bowden said. "You still have all the other bowls, just like you still have the NIT in basketball, and just like it is now in college football. Right now, some of the bowls outside the BCS are very successful, and some are not.

"It would be the same way with an eight-team playoff. Some of the bowls outside the playoff would be successful, and some would not. That part really wouldn't change much, if at all. Nothing needs to change except the way it's done at the top."

Bowden, formerly the coach at Auburn, will be in Raleigh on Thursday and Friday as a guest of the Business Club of the Triangle (BCA Triangle), formerly known as the Breakfast Club of the Triangle. He will be the organization's speaker at its monthly breakfast Friday (7-9 a.m.) at Brier Creek Country Club. His topic: How To Build A Winner.

"It's about having confidence and having a plan," Bowden said. "That's the key to everything."

A motivational speaker and college football analyst since leaving the coaching ranks in 1998, Bowden said many of the same principles that helped him lead Auburn to a 47-16-1 record from 1993-98 are applicable in the business world. He said he misses coaching sometimes and inquired about some job openings in recent years but hasn't yet found the right fit for a return to the sidelines.

So Bowden enjoys the game in other ways, while rooting for two other well-known head coaches: his father Bobby Bowden at Florida State and his brother Tommy Bowden at Clemson.

"It's hard to be the second- or third-winningest coach in your own family," Terry Bowden said, laughing. "You try to find your niche."

Bowden said one thing in college football that has changed dramatically since his father's start as a head coach in the late 1950s is the money factor — television contracts, rights fees, stadium costs and coaches' salaries. The big money has brought big pressure, too.

"My brother (Tommy) just signed a seven-year contract worth $15 or $20 million," Bowden said. "But they don't want him to go 9-4. They want a national championship. Every single coach there has to figure out a way to win as much as Charley Pell and Danny Ford. There have been coaches at Clemson who won a lot of games but got fired anyway, because they didn't win championships.

"In defense of all those Clemson people who want to win, Tommy needs to win a conference championship. He's been there for a long time now, and that's not an unreasonable expectation at this point. I love my brother to death, and I want him to be there forever and win every game. But I'm an analyst, too, and I understand the realities of college football."

BCA is a national business development organization that focuses on building relationships, increasing sales and promoting member businesses within each locally managed market.