Minding Your Own Business

Many of you may have seen President-elect Barack Obama's interview on 60 minutes Sunday. Many of you also know that I voted for John McCain. Still, I truly wish our future President the best. Interestingly, the topic of the BCS system arose during Sunday's conversation and surprisingly the future President dived right into an answer.

I will be one of the first to advocate a playoff system in college football, and I agree with President-elect Obama that it would be the ideal situation. But respectfully, isn't that what conference commissioners and school presidents are supposed to decide. I was 100% supportive of the Mitchell Report to clean up baseball, but the BCS system is hardly ruining the entire game of college football as steroids were ruining America's favorite pastime.

I was irritated that the future President said in regards to a playoff system"That [he] would throw [his] weight around a little bit." to make it happen. Why?! What possible need does the President have in addressing a controversial, but functional system for college athletics when the country he is about to govern is in two wars, has a multiple trillion dollar deficit, and is facing one of the worst economic crises in recent history. I just can't comprehend why the President feels that he should get involved in the system.

Furthermore, the eight team playoff system would not be perfect either. What if there are three undefeated teams and six one loss teams at the end of the season? Is there any difference in slighting the number 3 ranked team a chance at a National Championship under the current system than slighting the number 9 team a chance at a playoff? The simple fact is that no system is going to be perfect. Even the College Basketball 65 team bracket has controversy about who gets in and how the teams are seeded, but that doesn't make it reasonable for the federal government to intrude on the process.

President-elect Obama also mentioned shortening the regular season by a game or two. In a lot of cases, certainly last year and most likely this year, the teams playing for the National Championship will most likely be decided in the last two weeks of the season. Why would you shorten the regular season when every game is already important? Furthermore, many of the proposed playoff systems still include most of the lesser bowls, and only change the five BCS bowls. Shortening the regular season would hurt many of the middle-of-the-road teams who are barely bowl-eligible with 6 wins. Many of the teams playing in the lesser bowls (which also bring money to college football) may win their 6th game during the last week of the current season. It only hurts the system to take out games from the season.

While I agree that the primary reason that conference commissioners want to keep the bowl system is because of the revenue generated by the events, why not use that money more productively, perhaps to pay the athletes who earn these schools so much money? Why not give them a cut of jersey profits? Why not come up with a base salary instead of not allowing them to have anything other than a free ride to school? To me these are much more constructive ways of dealing with college football, because they deal with the broader issues with college athletics as a whole. But the people that should be making these decisions are the conference commissioners and the NCAA, not the country's President or Congress.