Sorry, but I've never understood the obsession with playoffs. When you have playoffs, you end up with...the team who won the playoffs, which may or may not be the best team. Why should the team who wins the playoffs be considered "#1" any more than the team who played the best ball throughout the season? They're often not the same. And maybe that means that some years there's no clear #1. Why is this such a problem?

There are two issues here, neither involving enforcement of the law. 1) Playoff vs one-game and 2) computer vs sportswriters/coaches polls. If you have the playoff, you merely switch the controversy from the 2 and 3 spots to the 8-9 spot or 16-17 seeds. And allowing an 8 or 16 team to win assumes we would rather reward the team that ends strong over the one that plays well all season.

If you choose them like NCAA basketball, there will be political vying between conferences. This creates controversy when a weaker Ohio State is selected over a Boise State or Utah. Using polls has the same effect, favoring teams with bigger markets or alumni bases (eg. Notre Dame) over smaller rural schools. At least the computer formula gives schools a chance to control their destiny.

I say enjoy the controversy and leave the gov't out of it.

I dream of a day when all newspapers spend the back 10 pages reporting on local and national science fairs, while there is a media desert for people interested in who best evidenced skills no longer relevant to civilized life...

Do I give a rats ass? Tell me if my business is going to survive another year.

You know, of course, that RW groups will be fundraising by this afternoon on the premise that the Dems want gubmint to takeover college athletics, don't you?

Just to put my own two cents in, I liked the traditional bowl schedule and the conflicting polls we argued over for eight months afterward better than the current fake championship.

you gotta be kidding me... with all of the friggin catastrophes obama has to deal with -- beginning yesterday, abercrombie suggests obama devote scarce doj resources to some stupid fucking college football rankings.

See Gregg Easterbrook, Tuesday Morning Quarterback (and Monthly alum!), at espn.com on why the BCS system sucks, but all the playoff alternatives suck even worse.

"No duh" to everything CB said.

As for the first comment from kishin, I think most sports fans live for that one moment when one team (or player in individual sports) can be declared the champion. Waiting around for a bunch of biased sportswriters and biased programmers to define the champion is a bit anti-climatic. Why does there have to be a champion, you ask? Um, because it's a competition you see, and people typically play games to win.

Just to put my own two cents in, I liked the traditional bowl schedule and the conflicting polls we argued over for eight months afterward better than the current fake championship.

Seconded. Also, if I may be permitted to be disingenuously naive for a moment, aren't these football teams just an extracurricular activity for college students? Are we going to insist upon a hortation-off to pick the best college debate club next? Shouldn't we be focusing on the real issue, which is the price and quality of college education?

The fact that I have to be disingenuous to claim that college football has anything to do with college education is proof, were any needed, that Division I college football has essentially become an unpaid minor league for the NFL. You could consolidate all the Division I schools who insist that all their football players get the same education as their other students into a single conference, and the resulting conference would be so small and weak that its champion wouldn't qualify for a BCS bid -- this year, I think the conference championship game would be a Notre Dame-Navy rematch, to give you an idea. If we're really serious about revamping college football, let's scrap the pretense that it's about college at all, and make it AAA professional football with paid players.

Hey! Utah is 12-0!! Should be in the chamionship game!!!!!!!!!

Ahem. As a Big Ten alumna who grew up before the BCS scheme was put into place, I agree with howie. Ain't never gonna make everybody happy, so might as well go with tradition.

I'd be interested to hear how all the free market nutters (or anyone else) defend the monopoly rights granted to major league sports. Until then, this should not be wasting our government's time (and probably not then either).

Whaddaya mean, leave the DOJ out of the BCS? I bet the DOJ could kick Texas' butt! Just because the DOJ isn't in one of the big football conferences...rank prejudice, I tell ya!

The BCS is a dumb system, but it's not illegal,

Oh yeah? Well if ______ doesn't go to the BCS this year, it would be a crime!

Can Obama declassify hockey as a sport, possibly downgrading it to something roughly equivilant to pedophilia or armed robbery? No charges for participating or watching, just your name entered in some sort of registry for deviants. You get shunned by polite society but otherwise allowed to lead a marginally normal life. Television networks paying for broadcast rights have to donate an equal amount of money to local libaries, museums and schools of fine arts.

Let me just point out that who plays in the championship game is not totally decided by a computer. There are a couple of human polls involved in the formula.

The problem with the current system isn't that there's no true "champion" crowned, atlhough that's part of it.

It's that college and conference presidents (especially the Big Six -- the Big 12, Big 10(11), Pac 10, ACC, SEC, and Big East) go around crying "Tradition!" and "Student Atheletes!" for reasons not to have a playoff.

And they're full of s***.

It's all about money. Lots and lots of money.

But as stupid as their explanations and the current system are, having the DoJ look into it is even more stupid. Those folks have a few other things to worry about.

If fans stop supporting the current system, and if the money starts to dry up (a big IF) due to frustration, they'll make the change. Otherwise, it'll always be this way.

The fundamentally noncompetitive nature of the BCS doesn't strike me as totally kosher. It's a fact that any team not in the buddy buddy club of the BCS conference has absolutely ZERO chance of winning a BCS championship, even if they go undefeated all year and all the big BCS teams screw up. Look at last year. Hawaii went undefeated, and was still left out and the winner, LSU, was a team that lost 2 times - usually considered a fatal blow to winning a championship.

Do I think Hawaii would've won it all in a playoff? Absolutely not, their bowl performance proves that. But they had zero chance, and that is what is fishy. They should have had the opportunity to go into a playoff at a decent seed, like you have seen small-conference teams like Memphis and St. Joe's enter the men's hoops tournament at #1 in their division. At least under the old system if a small-fry team won it all they had a shot with the voters (BYU in 1984, I believe). As far as I know, the BCS doesn't have an antitrust exemption.

Of course, in light of what is going on, the President shouldn't spend time on this. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a fundamentally wrong and unfair system.

"...aren't these football teams just an extracurricular activity for college students?"

"Isn't it illegal to buy football players in a speakeasy?" - Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, President, Huxley College, 1932

Not only should Obama bring the full weight of the DOJ down on college football. He should use the FBI and the NSA wiretapping abilities of students teachers, coaches, administrators, and faculty. Just think of the amount of pillow talk we could all be listening to.(I am not serious.)

"I'd be interested to hear how all the free market nutters (or anyone else) defend the monopoly rights granted to major league sports."

That, it seems to me, would be the crux of any DOJ involvement in the BCS nonsense. Schools like Utah and Boise State are, under the rules, playing the same game at the same level as schools like Florida or Oklahoma. Yet the system is, in a legal sense, arbitrarily biased against the smaller schools. Those smaller institutions, however, have no other option than to participate in the system. Even if every other school had one loss, Utah and Boise State would never play each other for the national championship under the BCS. Heck, that wouldn't happen even if every other school had at least 2 losses.

Either have a real tournament like every other frickin' NCAA sport has or go back to just letting the polls decide. And can we get rid of these bowl-conference arangements where schools end up going to the same bowls year after year after year?

Mike

I believe in the separation of sports and state, first and foremost.

College football is the one sport I still pay some attention to. I'm torn between tradition, and a real playoff system, and like most, not so fond of this camel-like BCS system. But I think the controversy will rage until a playoff system is finally adopted, so they might as well get to it. Eight teams.

Incidentally, I live in Idaho, about 20 miles west of Boise, the home of BSU, one of the top twelve teams. But I really don't think they belong in a BCS bowl this year, despite an undefeated season. That's considered a sacrilege, but I've lived here only ten years, so I'm still capable of some objectivity.

1. There are far more important things for the new administration to pursue. (At this point, it just seems to be a hobby for Barack Obama; better to dream up college football championship ideas than fantasize about which country you want to attack next.) If members of Congress need to pursue this to satisfy the needs of their consituents, that's their problem.

2. The BCS is controlled by a cartel of certain conferences that represent a portion, not all, of the schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision formerly (Division IA). I have no idea what makes a cartel legal or illegal; historically Senators and Representatives from Utah and Hawaii have a different opinion on this issue than those from Florida and Texas. (This will be an interesting test to see how much political pull Ball State has; both times BYU was excluded from the big money games, Congressional hearings led to changes in the bowl systems of the time.)

3. If Gregg Easterbrook is against a college football playoff, then Barack Obama is likely correct to favor one.

It's kind of comforting that people are thinking about something so inconsequential. It's nice to have a "silly season" that is not simultaneously murderous, like Bush's invasions, etc.

Yet the system is, in a legal sense, arbitrarily biased against the smaller schools. Those smaller institutions, however, have no other option than to participate in the system.

Actually, there's nothing at all stopping any school from withdrawing from the NCAA.

Sure, they wouldn't be able to participate in NCAA events, and would lose out on the revenue distributed by the NCAA. But if enough schools broke away and formed their own association -- entirely within their means and rights, but not very probable -- they could do whatever the hell they wanted.

A local sports clown here in KC has suggested this for a while now, saying that if the smaller conferences like the MAC or WAC or Mountain West could agree to do it, it'd put enough pressure on the NCAA to change.

I don't see it ever happening, but it's an interesting idea.

3. If Gregg Easterbrook is against a college football playoff, then Barack Obama is likely correct to favor one.

Posted by: Aaron on December 3, 2008 at 11:03 AM

LOL! Touche.

Tradition? What tradition?

If you want tradition, then Texas Tech would be playing in the Cotton Bowl, having beaten Texas for the Southwest Conference title.

Oklahoma would be heading for Miami and the Orange Bowl having won the Oklahoma and the Seven Dwarfs, otherwise known as the Big Eight.

Even though the BCS let my beloved Jayhawks slip into the Orange Bowl, last year, (Mizzou should have gone) the BCS is a disaster. Yeah, let us go back to Tradition, without any governmental involvement.

"3. If Gregg Easterbrook is against a college football playoff, then Barack Obama is likely correct to favor one."

Can you get an "amen"?

Yes you can.

P.S. Conference champions go to bowl games. Winners advance to New Year's Day bowls. Rotating national championship game the week before the Super Bowl. Done.

And allowing an 8 or 16 team to win assumes we would rather reward the team that ends strong over the one that plays well all season. -Danp

I prefer the end strong choice for a couple reasons. Playoff games or bowl games may be the first time some of these teams have faced a significantly challenging opponent. Some conferences are weaker than others.

Secondly, you have to remember many of these kids haven't played a lot of games. Freshmen, even sophomores are going to look a hell of a lot different by game 11 than they did in game 1.

And honestly, who doesn't love when an underdog takes down a top dog? Well, I mean besides Patriots fans. Eighteen wins, one GIANT loss!

The number one reason why I cannot stand college football is the bowl system, and frankly, I know I'm not the only one. It's practically a given that viewership would dramatically increase with a playoff system.

If you accept that as a given, then there has to be something motivating them to avoid it, and of course there is only one thing more important than fans, and that's money.

As one of Abercrombie's constituents, I should warn everyone who takes him seriously that he's prone to outrageous statements which he then reconsiders upon reflection. He's a smart guy, but he likes to stir things up.

He may really feel that the current system is too much like an illegal cartel, though, and I'd be hard pressed to argue otherwise.

Let's get two things straight:

First, COMPUTERS don't pick anything. Someone programmed them with particular variables and equations. These all represent a human choice to value certain things over others. It is a bit more systematic than the "human" polls, but for the most part produces very similar results.

Second, a playoff will not eliminate controversy--it MAY reduce it. Every spring we are subjected to sports writers debating the 65 slot in the NCAA basketball playoffs and which bubble team got screwed over--as if they had a chance in hell of winning. So, 8 team playoff scenario this year?--Utah, in or out? ESPN and SI would blather on about this 24/7 and some Utah politico would chime in.

It's all fun and games, until someone gets indicted.

Yes, it is time for a playoff system, and if the "bully pulpit" can help bring that about, good.

If not, then the NCAA can be mocked and ridiculed without limit.

I thought it was a bit much for Congress to investigate Baseball players. I mean, really? Congress?