FanHouse College Football Playoff

Quote the Penn State coach last week:

"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.

Now, far be it from me to lay into one of college football's most decorated coaches, but Joe Paterno's argument itself is bogus. First of all, he cites exactly one argument against a playoff here, that of the game becoming a two-semester event and taking student-athletes away from the classroom.

I don't personally buy into that argument either, since there are much better ones against a playoff. But it isn't "bogus". I hate to bring up that childhood example but it fits so we'll run it: if your friends go and jump off a bridge, do you jump as well? The answer is of course not. Just because college basketball's jumped off that bridge doesn't justify college football doing the same.

Furthermore, Paterno's being patently dishonest. Most of the time I see public arguments against a playoff, they have little to do with the academics. Even the conference commissioners are starting to cite other quite solid reasons besides the academics charge.

Examples? After the jump.

Hey, you know what college football doesn't have enough of? Government sticking its nose in. But the great state of Georgia is trying to fix all that. The Georgia state House of Representatives recently passed a resolution calling for the NCAA to implement a playoff system in college football. The bill states:

WHEREAS, the greatest disappointment of the 2007 college football season was the dysfunctional system, known as the Bowl Championship Series or BCS, the NCAA has implemented in order to determine a national champion; and

WHEREAS, the teams chosen to play in the various BCS bowl games are selected through mathematical computations, politics, and corporate and television influences that rarely relate to determining the best football team on the field;

The resolution is on its way to the state Senate, where somebody might want to work on the wording; because like the computers or not, mathematical computations used in the BCS rankings are, in fact, directly related to determining the best football team on the field. Also, the irony of politicians complaining about politics in sports is open to second-guessing, eye-rolling, and conjecture.

As a resident of the state of Georgia, my initial indignation that my tax dollars are being spent on passing such an inane resolution while the state grapples with a water crisis and overcrowded roadways has passed. Now I'm just amused at the thought of this legislation being a part of Georgia's (and not the state's, but UGA's) growing inferiority complex.

The New York Post says a playoff is "coming" to college football -- scare quotes because college football already has a playoff even if it is a two-team one that happens to be the world's stupidest -- around about when the current BCS contract expires:

Sources in several conference offices, athletic directors and television networks told The Post that support is steadily growing for a "Plus-1," format in which there will be a national championship game following the playing of two "semifinal games."

Now, the Post makes this sound all very official, tabbing it exclusive and leading with this...

The question has changed from, "Will There Ever Be a College Football National Championship Game?" to "How Soon Will It Happen?"

...which is weird because, um, we just had a national championship thing (calling it a "game" may not be accurate since "game" implies, like, competitiveness) in January and have been having them for like ten years. It is also way premature, because, like:

"There haven't been any official discussions among conference commissioners, but the overwhelming sense is that that's where we're headed," one conference source said. "There's simply too much money at stake and there's been too much debate with the current system."

(Emphasis mine.) Ah. I see. I have a hunch the Big Ten and Pac-10 might not traipse along happily with this, and not just because of the Rose Bowl. Bowls, as currently constructed, are already slanted in favor of teams in the south and California. I went to the Rose Bowl for the first time this year and Michigan fans comprised about a quarter of the crowd. That's a good showing.