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They should have playoffs
for college football title
of TheColumnists.com
We call college a place of higher learning.
We see our university as a rumpus room of rumination. Wisdom. Sense.
Until we follow college football’s championship process. That’s when sense turns to cents. Or goes broke altogether.
Really, that title process is broken. And frustrating to real fans.
How maddening is it? College football basically votes for its champion.
That’s right. On a planet of World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals and the Final Four, college football goes this route:
Polls sportswriters and a computer to determine its top two teams. Those two teams play in a title game. Voila, your national champion.
What? Did someone flunk Theory of Logic?
Evidently. College football refuses to set up a system that would nail an A in Logic: a playoff.
A playoff would be so simple: Line up the top 16 teams, and in four weeks you count down to who’s No. 1.
You think the NCAA basketball tournament makes mega-money for universities? A football playoff would make college vaults look like Fort Knox.
Why doesn’t college football run to this daylight? It says it wants to preserve its bowl system. And that a month-long playoff would keep players out of the classroom.
Answers:
Make bowls part of the playoff system.
Classroom? For the few college players who care about studying, they’ll find a way just as hoopsters do during March Madness.
Sometime this decade, college football will ace Theory of Logic and embrace a playoff.
Finally, the sport will see its potential bloom. It will grow beyond its provincial roots. Fans who never went to college will plant themselves in front of the TV throughout the playoffs and watch a title game the Saturday before Super Sunday.
And they’ll wonder why they had to miss out on January Jam all those years.
Top Team, Flop House: The No. 1 college football team down the stretch was the Trojans of the University of Southern California. During their reign over Notre Dame at the end of November, I saw why the voters held them in awe. The Trojans are men against boys. All of their players will make the National Football League. They simply took the Fightin’ out of the Irish.
Too bad the Trojans play in a stadium that hardly matches their flash. The L.A. Coliseum has to be the No. 1 dump among major college teams.
Let’s count the reasons:
It’s in a crummy part
of the city.
If the Trojans were organized like the parking system, they’d
never get a first down.
When you finally reach the stadium, you wait forever to get in,
no thanks to tiny entrances.
Moral of this story: Forget the Coliseum as a future NFL venue. Won’t ever happen. It’s too old. And has those depressing problems.
Run For Glory: Whom would you pick as the two greatest college football players in history?
Let’s go with these parameters: played three seasons, won a Heisman Trophy, won a national championship.
Two running backs rush to mind: Herschel Walker of Georgia and Tony Dorsett of Pittsburgh.
Walker turned the Bulldogs into a national power immediately. They finished No. 1 his freshman season of 1980 and stayed near the top through his Heisman season of 1982.
Dorsett did the same with the Panthers, only he saved his best for his senior season: 1976, when his Heisman performance pushed them to No. 1.
Walker and Dorsett. Both were stars who turned their teams into fleeting champions. Neither Georgia nor Pittsburgh has won a national title since they left.
And where did they go? Dorsett straight to Dallas, where Walker eventually joined him as a Cowboy.
©2004 by Bucky Fox.
The cartoon illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection,
1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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