Monday, November 17, 2008

Obama transition: the sucking begins

Two problems today. We'll dispense with the easy one first: there's no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog. You would think a nerdy, Mister Science, I-can-pronounce-nuclear smartypants would have known that already.

The second one is more complicated. An eight team playoff? That would leave out a 12-0 Ball State, who is around the mid-teens in the polls now and would probably be around 12th by the end of the year if they stay undefeated. Can you really leave out the undefeated champion of a Division 1-A conference? Wouldn't that sort of defeat the point of a playoff?

There are 11 Division 1-A (or FBS or whatever-the-phokk they're calling it now) conferences. A fair playoff would have to take them all, and would still leave room for five at-large whiners. Of course, you still have the controversy between the fifth at-large whiner and the sixth at-large whiner, just like you have controversies among the 64th-65th-66th-67th teams in basketball. No getting around that.

With a 16-team field, you could play the eight first-round games on January 1st to preserve some of the tradition of New Year's Day. If everyone who feels entitled to a payout is feeling cooperative enough, they might even preserve some of the Bowl names and sponsorships. Over the rest of January, play rounds two and three, and set up the championship game for the Saturday of Super Bowl weekend for a two-day football and snack food frenzy. What could possibly go wrong?

1 comment:

Fungster said...

The K-Madder makes some good points. I would, however, have either the QF or the SF on Jan 1 and not the first round. There are other bowls you can put on Jan 1 too that aren't part of this playoff thingimajig. The only issue really is too many games. Perhaps you cut back to 10 games (conf champs games not included) but it still ends with maybe too many games being played. And don't we all get that part of this whole thing is arguing about who should be playing? The years when it's obvious suck. The years when it's not are way more fun.