32-team playoff bracket

Let me say this about that.

One of the favorite topics for bloggers is the political scene.  Bloggers seem to do a superior job of exposing the unjust, corrupt, ignorant, unethical, and wasteful output of our political system.  The more established print and broadcast media must be a lot more evasive in their coverage because they are compelled to consider the position of their paying advertisers.  Bloggers in general, get paid squat, so we have little or nothing to lose.  Plus, we have a better, faster, and cheaper distribution media – the internet. 

But, with all this power also comes responsibility.  In that I stand in that long line of bloggers ready to skewer the offending politican, I feel I must also report the good – what little there is – that our political process provides.  One such example is the passage of a bill in the House of Representatives Commmittee on Energy and Commerce - subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection - forbidding the Football Bowl Subdivision Championship Game winner to be advertised as the National Champion unless it results from a “Playoff System”.

Yes, all you football fans and political pundants, our Congress has FINALLY stumbled upon a topic that actually could use an injection of common sense.  And if you think that government involvement in the selection of a college football champion is stupid, then you obviously…    don’t know much about the BCS ranking system.

At the end of this college football season, there will be THIRTY-FOUR bowl games played!!!  34 !  That’s SIXTY-EIGHT teams playing in a post-season bowl game!!!  In that there are only 120 teams in Division 1, that means over HALF of all teams will go to a post season bowl.  Leave it to the politically correct Americans to find a way to reward mediocraty.

Of the sixty-eight teams playing in a bowl game, seven of the teams don’t even have a winning record (Wyoming, Marshall, Texas A&M, Temple, Iowa State, Florida State and Michigan).  Mediocre would be a promotion for these programs.  Plus there are an additional fourteen schools that won only a single game more than the schools without winning records.  That’s at least, twenty-one schools with football teams that should be washing bowls rather than playing in them.

There has got to be a better way.  Strangely there is.  Every other sport – I mean EVERY OTHER SPORT - has a playoff system, including the junior divisions of football.  The championship is determined on the field-of-play rather than in a popularity contest held by sports writers.  But, college football programs refuse to buck the bowl sponsers who own lucrative TV bowl contracts with the various conferences.  The bowl sponsers also argue that a playoff system would drag the season on too long and force a large number of schools to play an inordinate number of games.  My response is:

Cow Crap !  Horse Feces !  Donkey Dung !  Monkey Manure !  Bull Excrement !

 A 32 team, weekly single elimination playoff round could begin on December 19, just like it will this year, and be completed on Jan 16, barely a week longer than the current bowl system requires.  In addition, the bowl games could be used as the venues for the playoffs.

If college football were limited to a regular season schedule of eleven games, like it used to, then the 32 playoff teams would play no more games than they play now.  The 16 teams that made it into ’round #2′ would also play the same number of games as the major conferences do now.  Eight teams making it to ’round #3′  would play the same number of games as they do now if they have been invited to a  post season bowl.  Only 4 teams would be “burdened” with one extra game and the final two teams would play only 2 more games than major conferences schools currently play under the ‘bowl system’. 

Where’s the big deal?

So I say, screw the health care bill, screw the Iraq war, screw global warming legislation and screw big bank bailouts.  Let our Congress focus on the truely important issue of the day – College Football Playoffs.  YES WE CAN !!

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Shambo