Express yourself!

Granted, I slacked off over the turkey day holiday, so I missed Friday's strip. I don't see it in the archives either, was Friday skipped?

As I have said before, I love the strip, keep up the grand work.

NEWT!!

What, does The Newt now have a permanent home beneath the bar?

I guess I can't expect you, as an Oklahoma fan, to complain to much about the BCS - the Sooners get rewarded as often as anyone. But the issue isn't so much whether Auburn deserved to be in the title game over OU or USC under the current system. Frankly, I don't think they did. The issue is if there's a way to settle this on the field so we aren't relying solely on human polls (flawed) and computer numbers to pick the title game. Maybe OU would roll Auburn and move on to play USC anyway - but why not let us find out?

Of course, it'll never happen because of all the money in the bowls. But as an NCAA basketball tournament junkie, I can dream, can't I?

First of all, you are correct in that we're certainly not complaining about Oklahoma going to the Orange Bowl this year (in fact, if someone has extra tickets, please let us know!). Nor were we complaining about their Sugar Bowl trip last year, even given the way they backed into it. Let's go into a little background about the BCS.

The BCS was set up in 1998 because the previous method for selecting the national champion was all polls. If this was 1997, USC would be going to the Rose Bowl, OU would be in the Orange, and Auburn would be in the Sugar. Most likely all three would win and then you would have a three-way tie for number one. Talk about controversy! At least now you only risk having two major unbeatens.

And yes, Utah fans, we're ignoring you for now. This is tough enough to explain without throwing you into the mix.

Anyway, the BCS was only created to match up the top two teams so there would be a unified national champ. As this year has shown, it has no answer for three undefeated teams, so it's not perfect, but it's better than it was.

Now, on to your question, which basically is, "why isn't there a playoff?" Money is only part of the answer. The biggest answer is that it would completely change college football, arguably the most popular sport in the country.

Let's start with scheduling. Unlike the basketball tournament, which takes place in the middle of a semester, a football tournament would happen at the end, where it interrupts finals. The Big 12 Championship game took place on December 4th. At the University of Oklahoma, as well as other universities, finals will be taking place on both the 11th and the 18th, and no one wants to be on campus for Christmas, so already, every date in December is shot. NCAA Division 2 football gets their playoff system in by starting it on November 13. Now, that's for 24 teams, but a 16-team playoff would have to start on November 20th, and an eight-team playoff would have to start on November 27th --the Saturday after Thanksgiving-- in order to get bowl games set for January. So, to hold an eight-team tournament, the Big 12 Championship would have had to been on November 20th, and the Big 12 regular season would have had to end on November 13. A 16-team tournament would mean that 101 of the NCAA's 117 teams would only play one game in November.

If you somehow manage to convince 101 to 109 universities to give up their fall cash cow, where do you hold the playoff games? The bowls can't be semifinal games. As Oklahoma fans, we guarantee you there is no way we'd consider traveling all the way to Florida to watch OU play a semifinal. We're going to save our money for the final because we're confident in our team. We're assuming USC fans are similarly-minded. So, now the Orange Bowl would be stuck trying to sell 80,000 tickets to Miami residents to watch teams that they don't care about. Unlikely, so the games would have to be hosted by the tournament teams. This year, that would mean USC, OU, Auburn, and Texas would be hosting first-round playoff games. Do any mid-level conference fans think they'll ever play home games in the playoffs? Big schools will get bigger.

Finally, who benefits from a playoff? Seriously, would Auburn be in better shape? The most likely scenario now is that OU wins (ha-ha USC fans) and Auburn wins, and both claim to be national champs because they're undefeated. OU will still get the trophy, but the Tigers will get bragging rights. Two teams are happy. Two sets of fans are happy. The bowl system is friendly to a university's fans. A playoff system is friendly to TV, but essentially leaves the fans out of the system. We think there's already too little emphasis on the fans in the game and too much emphasis on television (don't tell ESPN--who keeps hiring various members of Team Rockwood).