Full Circle

So a year ago today I started messing around with this "other" blog, which I tell people is my "running my mouth" blog. The other one is for sermons (and it's missing its most recent update -- better check on that).

One my earliest posts was about football, and since we've just concluded the collegiate football season, some thoughts:

1. Why the Utah Utes never got the chance to play in the Bowl Championship Series title game is a mystery that has no solution. Oh, I know, they didn't play in any of the power conferences, but they did beat four teams that wound up in the AP Top 25 and they thumped Alabama convincingly in the Sugar Bowl. And considering the Big 12 record in bowl games over the last few years, the phrase "power conference" might have become a little too elastic. Would they have beaten Florida or Oklahoma? Dunno, but there is no serious reason they shouldn't have had the chance. I'm sure both Gator and Sooner fans could provide plenty of silly reasons why it was OK to leave Utah looking, unless you told them you were planning on replacing the other team with Utah, but "fan reasoning" should be treated like hearsay testimony in the courts -- stricken from the record.

2. The system that put Oklahoma in that game instead of a team to which it had lost is dorky. Again, of course, all the Big 12 teams signed on to the tiebreak alchemy system that was used, which is about one step above reading chicken entrails when it comes to making sense. So Texas fans have nobody to blame but their own AD, who agreed to it. But I suspect a CAT scan of the brains of those who devised a tiebreak that doesn't give overwhelming weight to the results of head-to-head matchups would discover some low brain activity levels on the days they were setting up that system.

3. The idea that Oklahoma's Bob Stoops is somehow a lousy football coach simply because he's lost three of his four shots at whatever national title is at stake is itself not too bright. I don't know Mr. Stoops at all. He offers a pretty arrogant vibe dealing with the local media as if unaware that its their worship of all things Soonerrific that allows him to be the crimson-and-cream demigod the faithful think he is. He's ridiculously overpaid, considering that most of the nuts and bolts work of playing football games is done by unpaid volunteers -- excuse me, student athletes. But this is the system as it is, and he has managed to succeed within it to a remarkable degree. Maybe he is on his way to being the Marv Levy of college football. But almost all of the people who made fun of Levy for losing four Super Bowls were fans of teams that weren't in the Super Bowl. I'll still say stupid stuff like, "Well, it's obvious Stoops can't win a big one without John Blake's players," but that's just to get Sooner Nation devotees to go crimson with rage and then creamy-white with a stroke.

4. No, a playoff won't solve the "Who's no. 1?" problems. The knock on the current system is that, forced to pick two teams to contend for a title, the system overlooks other teams that also deserve a shot, based on their performance on the field. Too many non-field factors, like which conference a team is from or how much fame its program has, have been figured into the selection process. Create a formula to pick eight teams to compete amongst each other so that the winner of a tournament can be a "real" national champion and you have exactly the same problem in the eyes of the teams that rank ninth or tenth in the selection system you devise. Should some conference champions get an automatic entry? Which ones? Big 12 teams have a lot of history and a lot of flash, but they have a folding tendency that shows up after the Big 12 season is over. Do you ignore "new" conferences like the Mountain West, with their undefeated Utah Utes? How about "mid-major" conferences like the Western Athletic, with member Boise State that dealt its Big 12 opponent in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl a mid-major shocker.

5. Bipartisanship is good, and having the federal government do things that don't involve taking about a trillion dollars from some of us to give to the rest of us is even better. But the fact that GOP Texas Representative Joe Barton and Democratic President-elect Barack Obama agree the current system is nuts doesn't mean they should be talking about laws to fix it. Is there very much about the feds' track record in the last 25 or 30 years that gives any indication they'd be able to do anything other than muck this mess up even more?