PITTSBURGH — Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is lobbying again for a Division I-A football playoff, calling the reasons against it "bogus" less than three weeks after the Bowl Championship Series decided to maintain its current format for the future.

The 81-year-old coach said Thursday he doubts if a playoff system would be enacted soon, particularly after a May 5 meeting of the 11 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and Notre Dame's athletic director ended with a decision to keep the current system and begin negotiations with the television networks.

"I don't think so right now, and I don't know why," said Paterno, who is entering his 43rd season as Penn State's head coach. "I'm only going to be a head coach another 10 or 15 years, and I don't think it will happen by then."

Paterno, whose contract runs through the upcoming season but has not been extended, laughed at his own joke.

Paterno's pro-playoff stance differs from that of the Big Ten, which has long opposed a playoff. At the May 5 meeting, only the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conference commissioners favored a system proposed by SEC commissioner Mike Slive that would have seeded the top four teams into two BCS bowls and had the two winners meet a week later for the BCS championship game. The BCS bowls are the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta.

Those opposing the playoff cited the sanctity of the regular season and the fact the players would be forced to miss too much class time. Paterno rejected those rationales, noting the highly profitable Division I men's basketball tournament is more disruptive to its players.

"To be frank with you, I don't know what the reasons are not to have a playoff," Paterno said during a speaking appearance in Pittsburgh. "You can talk about missing class and all that kind of stuff, (yet) you see basketball go on forever. You have a lot of bogus excuses, but obviously the majority of people who have the say don't want it."