Hodgepodge

National Letter of Intent Day is on Wednesday.  If your coworkers are needlessly edgy this week, that's why.  There's nothing like worrying about the decision-making skills of high school seniors to set off an anxiety attack.

***
Parade has released its 2007 All American team.  You can see the roster here.

Its co-players of the year are Punky QB Jimmy Clausen who is Notre Dame bound and all-purpose offensive force Joe McKnight from Louisiana who will choose from LSU, USC and Ole Miss on signing day.

***
The Indianapolis Colts won a strange Super Bowl last night.  It was reminiscent in some way of college football's title game.  We had the opening kickoff returned for a touchdown.  We had a game-long answer to that return by the other team that utilized a sharp underneath passing game to mystify their opponents' vaunted defense mixed in with a healthy dose of first and second down runs.

But we also saw the favorite win, whereas the underdog won in college football's title game.  Where Indianapolis had no answer but field goals in the short field red zone situations, Urban Meyer's crew wasted no time scoring touchdowns.

Congratulations to the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts, although you'll have a hard time convincing me they're the best team in the NFL.  San Diego and Baltimore made a great case during the regular season before the apparent randomness of playoff football saw neither team even make the Super Bowl.  Remind me again why you want a playoff in college football?

***
Say what you want about the Gang of Six but five of the original six have now appeared in and won BCS games, including championships from USC and Florida.  Three of the original six (USC, Boise State, Louisville) plus 2005 entrants Florida and Notre Dame were in this year's series of BCS games.

And about Boise State... I never got to it around bowl time, but I ended up being a year early on my whole bold prediction thing.  Boise slayed their dragon alright, it just took another year and for Jared Zabransky to do something other than melt down.  There was an article by Austin Murphy in last week's Sports Illustrated documenting the in's and out's of their Fiesta Bowl victory over Oklahoma that might be worth a look.

One can be good for a long time in college football with talent and a mundane offense, but the innovators alone are the ones who move the wheels of history.

Comments

[Marty]

Burrill, I never said that a playoff determines the best team. I said that there is no way of proving which team is best (polls or playoff), so there is no reason to try. That's why I don't care about who people think is the best team, because it is not proveable. Just because everyone says a team is best does not mean that they are.

A playoff is no more arbitrary than the regular season - there are upsets, the favorite loses. That's what's great about sports. You never know what's going to happen.

A playoff determines a champion 100% of the time. The team that wins all their playoff games is the champion, end of story.

CFR, go ahead and quote me. I stand behing everything I've written.

[Burrill]

Marty, here's the thing: playoffs try harder to prove something than do human polls. The polls express opinions, and I think most people understand that. A playoff tries to provide definite results, even though its results hold no more weight than the polls'. But if the playoff's results are no more authoritative than the polls', then why do we need to make such a drastic change to college football? You're asking for a change for no good reason.

If you want a champion, pick a conference -- you have a champion 100% of the time. And the context (a full season) is far better then the effectively self-contained second season of a playoff.

[Marty]

Burrill, if actually playing games is not more authoritative than opinions, why bother playing any games at all?

[Burrill]

That would be a silly statement from me if I were talking about every game. But we're talking about the playoffs. In the context of a full regular season, playoffs mean no more than do the poll results. The polls are a judgment of opinion; the playoffs are a second season.

So why play the games? You play the regular-season games to win your conference. That's not a meaningless championship. Far from it.

[Marty]

Of course conference championships are not meaningless, they are won on the field and there's no subjectivity involved. If conference champions were determined by polls, then they would be meaningless just like the current "national champion."

[Burrill]

And that's my point, Marty: football conference championships are meaningful. In the regional world of college football, they are as good as it gets.

[Gabe Harris]

My thing is that a plus one system is not a drastic change to college football...especially if the rule is that you have to win a conference championship to get to the final four.

I think more teams in the playoff than a final four would damage the regular season, which I agree must be protected at all costs.