Clarion Content

Can we finally get a playoff? Is not college football in a big enough mess that the powers that be can see that there has to be a playoff? This, by the way, is what happens when one entrusts Myles Brand to run one's organization (as any Indiana alumnus can tell you.) Brand and his bunch at the NCAA were too busy renaming Division I-A and I-AA, the new ridiculously clumsy monikers are the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Division. All the while they and the college presidents are ignoring the much bigger mess on the field. The irony is that Division I-AA get to decide their championship with a playoff, while the bigger programs do not. This not too even mention the biggest silent elephant in the room, the fiscal drain put on the academic university as an institution by the football program at all but a few places.

However, the issue at hand is not the university system itself, but the playoff or lack their of, in the division formerly known as I-A. All season the Clarion had been thinking this might be the year that made the current lobbying/popularity contest so obviously asinine that a playoff had to be instituted, and that was before last night's losses of #1 Missiouri, the first time so ranked since 1960, and #2 West Virginia to a 4-7 Pitt team. Our original thought had been that it would be enough if the SEC were shut out again, which looked likely after LSU's loss to Arkansas. Now a two loss LSU squad will likely leapfrog a two loss #4 Georgia, and a one loss Big 12 team, Kansas. Could twice beaten Oklahoma hop over them all, having beaten #1 yesterday? What about the ACC Champs, Virginia Tech? And the team the Clarion thinks is the best on the field, USC? It is a trick question. There is no right answer. See here and here for some good explanations of the candidacies and likely match-ups.

In a very unscientific poll more than 200,00 people told SportsNation by a vote of 85% to 15% they that Division I-A needed a playoff. They were fairly well split on who should play one loss Ohio State, with LSU, Georgia, Hawaii and Oklahoma all receiving more than 10%, but less than 30% of the vote. The presumption of Ohio State makes no more sense than any of the rest of this, either. They didn't beat a single team in the top twenty this year, four wins versus mediocre Big Ten competition ranked between #21 and #25, and their best out of conference win was against a 4-9 Washington team that finished last in the PAC 10.

The Clarion's Division I-A recommended playoff would include the winners of the six major conferences and two at-large bids. At least the argument would be over #8 versus #9, so much preferable to this year's chaos and downright illegitimacy. Why shouldn't Stoops campaign for Oklahoma's shot, that is what the system has incentivized him to do. Why shouldn't Ohio State schedule pansies out of conference, the system rewards it. Kansas nearly got all the way to the championship game with their best win coming against Texas A&M, 7-5, 5th best in the Big 12. It isn't like the system broke this year, it has been broke. They have left legit teams out, and let stinkers in, they have tweaked the formula for the BCS nearly every year since they wrote it. Hint Myles, it isn't the formula, it is the theory itself, that the championship is decided on paper by microchips, in smoke filled rooms, behind closed doors with formulas. The honchos, they will likely offer up Ohio State versus LSU this year and the lame line that it is a good debate.

The Clarion's playoffs would have Ohio State, LSU, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech, USC, West Virginia, Missouri and Hawaii. Georgia and Kansas fans could get frustrated, but they would have had a chance to win their conference on the field and failed to so. Missouri gets the reward of having played, on the road, at out of conference foe and Ohio State slayer #15 Illinois. Hawaii gets the undefeated nod.

Labels: college football, sports