College Football, Hypocrisy and Bowl Season

Once again, Division IA college football is surrounded by "controversy" over who should have a chance to be declared the national champion. I say "declared" deliberately as the winner is still being chosen by polls not by play on the field. The poll voters have determined that Florida will play Ohio State in the closest thing we have to an official national championship game. Boise State, though undefeated, is ignored and Michigan has been passed for reasons known only to the poll voters.

As every college football fan knows, this could be solved by the NCAA having a playoff as it does for every other sport and even for football at every level except Division IA. Why doesn't it? Well, there is the TV contract, the resistance of stuck-in-the-mud coaches and athletic directors, and the just plain idiocy of all top football universities. Every year you hear some university official somewhere claim that a football playoff would somehow academically injure the football players. All those extra games (probably no more than 3 or 4) at a "crucial time of the semester." This is said and then the official goes off to watch the basketball team (either men's or women's) which now begins in November and ends in March. I guess this "crucial time" isn't such a big deal for basketball players who may travel twice a week and now have to work in courses between games in both semesters.

This isn't about academics. The big time college sports universities sacrificed the academic side of their "student athletes" decades ago. There are Marx Brothers movies mocking the idea that football players are real college students. A playoff system for IA football will not change that much. I teach at a Division II university where most athletes only manage to get a partial scholarship, if any at all, from our underfunded athletic department. I have seen the effort it takes for a dedicated student to also be a dedicated athlete. Those that do both well amaze me. When I was an undergraduate at a Division I school, the captain of the defense was an Academic All-American in mechanical engineering. I doubt he slept much, but he performed at a high level in both fields of endeavor. He deserved as much praise as any of the athletes who went on to professional sports. I don't know if his name is among the university's honor roll of football players at the stadium, but it should be. Maybe I'll post my views on how more "student athletes" in big time sports should be given a better shot at academic success later.

As for Division I, do the damn playoff and settle it on the field. One of team sports' finest attributes is that there is clarity in who is a champion. The honor goes to the team who wins the game. The game will be flawed. Errors by officials, coaches and players will play a role. But no one will take a vote at the end to decide the winner. Having a poll decide who can play the game is not very different from the old system in which the polls just voted a winner at the end. In either case, it makes the Division IA football champion closer to a figure skating champion than to any other college sport.