By JOHN P. WISEOne Great Season
I listened to Stewart Mandel's excellent podcast interview with BCS chief Bill Hancock the other day.
Hancock sounds like a reasonable man and portions of his argument do seem logical if not convincing. Unfortunately, the-rich-white-men-in-suits lawyerspeak and PR puffery prevent NCAA honchos from conceding that the current system is largely flawed. Money and logistics certainly are critical concerns here, but I wish there would be some admission from the establishment that sounds something like, "Yeah, it's definitely far from perfect."
Instead, we get a hat rack on which rests this fabulous party line: "College football has the best regular season in sports."
Honestly, I don't disagree with it one bit.
But is that a worthwhile selling point? Is that their way of saying they know their sport's postseason is the second-best part of the season? If no one remembers who came in second place — as the old expression goes — who the hell cares what happened in October of a college football season?
Unnecessary is a 16-team playoff or even an eight-team tournament. I get that the more inclusive the post-season playoff, the larger the pool of potential contenders. So keep the event small and focus on either the plus-one model or a plus-three. And get it figured out once and for all.