The folks in charge of college football's championship formula are at it again.
Head for cover.
Word is, they are considering a system that would give equal consideration to three polls — the AP media poll, the USA Today/ESPN coaches' poll and the infamous polls done by humorless, soulless and passionless computers. Oh, and they want to add a fifth BCS bowl game to mollify the pesky hicks from conferences such as the Mountain West, which currently are left out of the system altogether.
All of this is like a doctor telling a patient with a broken arm that he's working on a new formula for an aspirin that ought to make things better. What the patient needs is for someone to set the bone and attach a cast. What college football needs is a playoff system.
When word of the new formula spread earlier this week during meetings of the Atlantic Coast Conference, officials were quick to say it was too early to announce such a plan. First, they said, a group of mathematicians will have to test it out to see if it works.
That just about says it all, doesn't it? Mathematicians deciding football championships.
Unless they want to lace up pads and start tackling someone, they don't belong on the field of play.
This ought to be a particularly sore subject for people who live in Utah. Not infrequently, local universities field teams quite capable of beating any team in the country. And yet, under the current system, neither BYU, the U. nor USU has a chance of winning a national title. Even if the new formula changed that, which isn't likely, it would still be a championship decided in a room somewhere, not on the field.
Last season, USC ended the year ranked No. 1, and yet it was denied a chance at the championship because a computer decided Oklahoma and LSU were better. That rumbling you heard was Knute Rockne rolling in his grave.
Sure, college football evolved a little differently than everything else in this land. Bowl games emerged early on as unique ways to attract local interest and raise money. But to preserve that scheme in 2004, when division 1-A football is the only NCAA sport in which thousands of athletes have no chance to win a championship, is simply wrong.
A playoff system could be designed in such a way as to not disrupt academic schedules. It would attract enormous interest and make money. This would be a good time to adopt it.