We took a poll last year and 90% of our readers said that the BCS should be trashed in favor of a playoff system. It takes guts (or something) to stand up against that kind of popular opinion, and Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock is the latest to take up the mantle, using President-elect Barack Obama’s pro-playoff stance as a starting point.
Like I did with similar arguments from Tim Cowlishaw and John Walters, let me respond to Whitlock point-by-point…
I realize I’m one of just a handful of American men unpleased by Obama using the weight of the presidency to pressure college presidents to disband the BCS. He knows this, too. It’s probably pretty much all he really knows about big-time college football. Fans — Republican, Democrat and Libertarian — are dissatisfied with the current system. There’s virtually no risk in bashing the BCS.
Why is that? I’m not one to argue that the majority is always right, but when 90% of the populace agrees on something, we should probably go ahead and give it a try.
President-elect Obama doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, and he diminishes his high office and invites other politicians to join him by foolishly entering a debate that has life only because “Joe the Sports Writer/Broadcaster” can’t wrap his brain around sports issues of substance.
Now Whitlock claims that anyone that is pro-playoff “can’t wrap his brain around sports issues of substance.” Mind you, he hasn’t yet made an actual point, but he is already declaring that anyone who doesn’t agree with him just simply isn’t as smart as he is.
Yeah, by lending his name to this non-issue, Obama has pleased every Bubba in America and pretty much ensured that big-time college football will continue an escalation toward professionalism and exploitation of “amateur” athletes.
Okay, here’s the big windup…
Let me quickly repeat the argument I introduced in the mid-1990s:
Division I-A college football has the greatest regular season in all team sports, and a playoff system would ruin that distinction. For decades, coaches and players focused on winning conference championships and were quite satisfied with a “mythical” national championship decided by poll voters. The advent of ESPN and sports-talk radio created the fallacy that the lack of a playoff system scars athletes, fans, women and children, contributes to global terrorism and delays Santa Claus’ delivery run on Christmas Eve.
There’s nothing wrong with college football on the field. It is America’s healthiest sport in terms of consistent entertainment value. This is not even remotely debatable.
So Whitlock’s argument is that the college football regular season is perfect as is, and that it was sports-talk radio that created a “fallacy” that the sport needs a playoff. Assuming this is correct, sports-talk radio was successful in convincing 90% of college football fans that the current system – the very system they were supposedly “fans” of – was broken. Wow, sports-talk radio must be really powerful. How often do 90% of Americans agree on anything?
He also declares that it is “not remotely debatable” to say that any other sport is as consistently entertaining as college football. I know a few million NFL fans that would beg to differ.
There’s a lot wrong with college athletics. Many football and basketball players are funneled through the system without receiving much of an education. Coaches and administrators are paid salaries that invite questionable ethics. Too many athletes arrive on campus completely unprepared to be educated and solely interested in the development of their bodies. The use of performance-enhancing drugs is out of control within most athletic departments.
These and other issues are worthy of discussion at the presidential level.
Who’s No. 1? How to set up an eight-team playoff format?
Leave that to the idiots.
This is a classic debate tool. Distract from the real issue by making points that almost everyone can agree with and then act like you’ve won the argument. Just because there are other issues to deal with in collegiate athletics, it doesn’t mean that Obama shouldn’t help to facilitate something that 90% of college football fans want to see.
He didn’t say why a playoff would ruin the regular season, he just stated that it would, as if it were a fact.
I guess that’s just one of those “sports issues of substance” that we mere mortals just can’t wrap our brains around. Jason Whitlock says he knows best, and therefore he must.
