when no leadership
there are no rules, no rules there
are no boundaries
When I was a kid there were college athletic conferences that were set up regionally across America.
They had to be regional as the teams would travel to wherever the colleges were located for games.
In the early part of a college football season, you might see a team from up north play a team from down south or out west but once the season got underway, the focus was on your team and your conference and those other teams in your conference.
At the end of the season, the best teams were invited to holiday bowl games that were the highpoint of local festivals.
And when it was all over, sports writers would get together and select a mythical best team in the nation or ‘National Champion’.
This provided the fans with a chance to argue out the selection the entire off season.
This allowed fans to exult or complain.
This allowed for some really great football in the late fall.
But the grown ups got involved.
The idea of a mythical national champion was horrific to some folks when it was so obvious that it could all be settled on the field.
It worked for the NFL.
With its 32 teams, 2 conferences, and its 4 divisions and set schedule.
And it worked for state high school playoffs with, in the state of Michigan, its 8 classes, and 8 divisions (and the fact that schools started playing a week before labor day so a nine game schedule and 5 game playoff led to championship games on Thanksgiving weekend).
So why not college?
Why not?
The plan that worked in the NFL and in High School would only work if the existing college platform was blown up.
But you can’t do that as the fans won’t like it.
So why let’s just have the final top two teams selected by the sports writers play a game and be done with it?
But you can’t do that as the fans won’t like it.
So why let’s just have the final top four teams selected by the sports writers play a game and be done with it?
But you can’t do that as the fans won’t like it.
So why let’s just have the final top twelve teams selected by the sports writers play a game and be done with it?
Okay lets try this, how do you select that top 12?
That’s were we are.
And this is what sports writer, Matt Hayes wrote in his USA Today Article, It’s blowout city in mid-November. And I blame the CFP anarchy:
“... because no one knows what in the world the College Football Playoff selection committee wants. Or how it works. Or what it takes to earn one of the coveted seven at-large spots in the 12-team field.
The committee chairman (whoever it is this week) says things like strength of schedule, game control, efficiency, net rate success and any of the many other nonsensical metric garbage it feeds the breathless looking for answers.
The whole point of this selection committee exercise was to eliminate decades-old crutches used to pick the national champion, or the teams who play for the national championship.
Yet here we are, stuck in the past, with the same tired process shrouded in something called game control. And net YPP (yards per play).
And any other nonsense they can shovel at us to avoid admitting there’s no leadership. No rules, no boundaries.
And apparently, no need for the head-to-head metric. Or the one metric that should be used, but isn’t: Who have you beaten?
With one week to go in the season and teams fighting to for their win lost records we got watch games that included:
Georgia 35, Charlotte 3
Texas A&M 48, Samford 0
Alabama 56, Eastern Illinois 0
Auburn 62, Mercer 17
South Carolina 51, Coastal Carolina 7
Oh boy!
Did anybody ask if the fans would like it?
I am told I am old or older and not with it with what the young football fan’s want.
Did they enjoy this weekend?
Do they enjoy an endless chatter of talking heads offering up as many opinions as any political talking head offers up about the current state of affairs.
Do they enjoy the clouds of data and numbers thrown up in a gray fog.
This has all made the sport MORE enjoyable, watchable, embraceable by the fan?
I am reminded of the quote of General Patton in the movie where the actor George C. Scott says the line, “God, how I hate the 20th century.”
I am also reminded of an old quote about Little League Baseball attributed to Hall of Fame Pticher and Manager, Bob Lemon, when he said, Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.
No Haiku For You 