And so the dominoes have started to fall—although not in the direction everyone thought.

While Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany was sitting smugly holding a full house, Pacific-10 Commissioner Larry Scott may well be holding four aces. IF Scott ends up stealing Texas for his conference then he will have out-maneuvered Delany—perhaps showing that a Harvard education is more valuable than a North Carolina education. (Just joking Tar Heel fans).

What’s far more significant here than exactly where everyone lands is this simple fact: the college landscape is in the process of changing forever and it isn’t going to change for the good. Nothing ever changes for the good when the only motivation involved is money and that is ALL this is about—nothing else.

Here’s one thing I don’t EVER want to hear again from my friend Bill Hancock; from his henchman Ari Fleischer or from any of the BCS college presidents: “The BCS must continue to exist in order to preserve the tradition of the bowls.”

That’s always been a bogus argument but now it rings even more hollow because this dismantling of the conferences—The Big 12 is on life support as we speak—is absolute proof that NO ONE in power in big-time college athletics could care less about tradition.

Tradition? It’s bad enough that Nebraska and Oklahoma don’t play every year anymore. Now they won’t even be in the same league. Texas Tech-Washington State is tradition? Nebraska-Michigan State is tradition? What if Delany, having been shunned by Notre Dame and lapped by Scott on Texas, adds Maryland and Syracuse to his wish list? Can you imagine how Maryland fans would feel about annual games against Iowa and Northwestern instead of Duke and North Carolina in basketball? The Big Ten may be overrated in football but Maryland and Syracuse would be buried in that league as opposed to the even more overrated ACC and the rarely rated Big East. Of course Maryland and Penn State have tradition in football (Penn State traditionally hammering Maryland) but how about a Maryland-Penn State basketball rivalry? Can’t wait for that one.

There are a lot more issues involved here than the breaking up of football and basketball rivalries—although that matters a good deal. Football teams travel to games by charter and, most of the time, so do big-time basketball teams. That’s not true of soccer teams or wrestling teams or field hockey teams or volleyball teams. The Oklahoma State non-revenue teams are going to love those trips to Pullman, Seattle, Eugene and Corvallis. The same—obviously goes for Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech and Texas A+M. And in reverse for the Pac-10 teams. Eugene to Stillwater in December—what a delight.

You think the Maryland non-revenue teams will enjoy trying to get to Iowa City in January?

Let’s be honest, none of that matters to the presidents or the commissioners who are putting these deals together. This is all about chasing money and trying to jump on board before the train leaves town. How do you think Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Iowa State and Missouri are feeling right now—especially Missouri which thought it was going to get a Big Ten invite only to be left standing in the rain without an umbrella. The only thing missing was a crumpled note saying, “My darling I can never see you again,” from Ilsa Lund/Delany.

Beyond that, how do you think Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe is feeling these days? Beebe took over the league from Kevin Weiberg in September of 2007. Soon thereafter Delany convinced him that an ACC-SEC proposal to change the BCS to a ‘plus-one,’ format—which in affect would have created a four-team playoff en route probably to an eight-team playoff—was a bad idea. If you believe Dan Wetzel, the outstanding Yahoo!.com columnist who knows more about BCS finances than anyone (he’s done a book on the subject) that decision may have been the Big 12’s death knell. If Beebe hadn’t trusted Delany—and since he knows him and succeeded him as commissioner of The Ohio Valley Conference in 1989 there’s no excuse for that—then The Big 12 would probably be so flush right now that schools wouldn’t be looking to jump ship. It might even be better off financially (according to Wetzel) right now than The Big 10. Which might explain why Delany told Beebe it was a bad idea.

But the league’s real demise—ironically—may have come in February when Scott convinced Weiberg to move west and become his No. 2 man. Weiberg was commissioner of The Big 12 for five years, so he knows all the players in that conference. He was also Delany’s deputy at The Big 10 for nine years which means he (A) knows the league (B) knows how to set up a TV network since he was involved in the start-up of The Big Ten network and (C—perhaps most important) he knows Delany’s psyche and knows when Delany says, “I’m going to make a left-turn,” you better watch out on the right.

It is probably not coincidence that soon after Weiberg’s arrival, Scott, who has spent his entire professional life in tennis, has proven to be the wild card in this scenario, swooping in to stand on the verge of creating the first super-conference—one that will include Texas if things go Scott’s way on Tuesday when the school’s board of regents meets. If Texas goes, the other invited Big Twelve schools (Colorado has already jumped) will follow (although Texas A+M seems to change by the moment). End of Big-12; start your engines on The Pac-16 (or whatever it is called) being the most important—and perhaps most lucrative—conference in college athletics.

To keep up, The Big Ten, the SEC and the ACC will almost certainly have to go the 16-school route. That will probably mean The Big Ten going after Syracuse, Maryland, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Rutgers—Notre Dame (again) and God knows who else to try to get to 16. The SEC will likely try to recruit Florida State, Miami, Clemson and either Georgia Tech or Virginia Tech from the ACC. The ACC would be left to plunder The Big East yet again going after Big East schools left out by The Big Ten including perhaps Connecticut and Cincinnati. Big East football would go away.

Of course there are about a million things that can happen in the next few months. What we know for certain though is that they WILL be happening. This is no longer speculation. Where everyone will land isn’t certain although it is becoming clearer by the day. Once the musical chairs have all been grabbed and some schools are left standing, college athletics will undergo another sea change.

Whether the super conferences will bring us any closer to a true football playoff is hard to say. About the only thing the BCS Presidents may like more than money is power and control. IF they can find a way to hold a playoff just among themselves—in other words leave out schools like Boise State, Utah, Hawaii and any other upstarts that might pop up—they might very well do it.

They might even forget about the great tradition of the bowls. In the end, there’s only one tradition any of these guys care about—the time-honored tradition of the rich getting richer. It has never been more in play in the cesspool that is big-time college athletics than it is right now.



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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

The Golf Channel will be airing a documentary based on the book "Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story," with the premiere showing Monday, June 14 at 9 p.m. ET.

Some days it is hard to know where to begin. Yesterday, a number of people I know with ties to Seattle and the University of Washington urged me not to be my usual judgmental self (me, judgmental?) on the subject of Mark Emmert, the newly-named President of the NCAA. Emmert was the President of Washington and apparently did an excellent job of fundraising (always a college president’s primary job) and was well-liked by people out there.

That’s fine. And I will try to reserve judgment until I see what sort of action he takes on various issues going forward. I was encouraged to read this morning that he plans to contact NBA Commissioner David Stern about the one-and-done rule. Maybe he reads the blog.

Then again, maybe not.

Emmert was quoted two years ago as saying that a college football playoff was, “inevitable.” It took him about 15 minutes to start back-pedaling from that comment once he was named to succeed Myles Brand. All of a sudden he’s saying that the NCAA has no say in the BCS and that his personal views aren’t really relevant as NCAA President.

Really? They’re not? Why in the world is he about to be paid something like $1.7 million a year (Brand’s annual salary) if his views on critical issues aren’t relevant? What’s he being paid to do, look good in a suit? Excuse me for being judgmental but I am pretty sick and tired of people being paid big bucks to allegedly be leaders who claim that it isn’t their job to lead. If the President of the NCAA, who is on record as saying that a playoff is the right thing to do, won’t try to do something about it, who will?

One almost wonders if Emmert was told he wouldn’t get the job if he didn’t back off on the playoff issue because he couldn’t wait to stake out the, ‘we have no say in this,’ position.

That’s one of the great copouts in history. In fact, after the NCAA’s Final Four press conference a few weeks back when Greg Shaheen and I had our now famous (or infamous depending on your point of view I guess) exchange on the 96-team basketball tournament, I made a point to Shaheen that it was ridiculous for the NCAA to try to shove a 96-team tournament down people’s throats when it could make all the extra money it wants or needs by creating a football playoff—which would NOT cause, ‘student-athletes,’ to miss any more class time.

“But we have no authority in football,” Shaheen said.

Oh please. If the NCAA wanted control of football it could acquire it in about a 15-minute meeting with the BCS commissioners and presidents. Here’s how it would go:

NCAA: “We are starting a football tournament next season. We are going to sell the rights to corporate America and the TV networks the way we sell the rights to the basketball tournament.”

BCS goons: “We have the BCS. We won’t participate.”

NCAA: “No problem. You can turn down the invitation to the football tournament. By the way, any school that doesn’t participate in the football tournament can’t participate in or receive revenue from the basketball tournament.”

Now, the BCS will scream and yell and threaten legal action. Fine. To begin with, the NCAA already set this precedent years ago when it told basketball teams it had to play in the basketball tournament if invited. It’s known as the, ‘McGuire rule,’ because it was put in place after Al McGuire took Marquette to the NIT in 1970 because he thought his draw in the NCAA’s was unfair.

What’s more, the NCAA is a private organization. Membership is voluntary. It can make any rules it wants (and does) and any member has the right to drop out if it doesn’t like the rules. Aha, you say—the BCS schools will drop out and form their own organization. Not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the basketball contract for the next 14 years is with the NCAA. And, even if they formed their own superpower tournament the magic of the tournament would be completely lost. Butler makes the NCAA Tournament a must-see event. So does Cornell. The superpowers are semi-pro teams with zero romance attached to them other than by their own fans. The BCS would be cutting off its nose to spite its face if it went rogue. The easiest and best way would be to go kicking and screaming into an incredibly lucrative—for all—football tournament.

Emmert seems to have no stomach for that battle. So, my friend Bill Hancock and his PR goon Ari Fleischer will continue to put out disinformation on how the bowl system would be hurt by a playoff (bologna, to use a polite word Bill might use) and how the regular season would be devalued by a playoff. (Hooey, to use another Bill word). By the way, how ironic is it that the NCAA, which uses the regular season argument as much as the BCS folks do, was thisclose to throwing the entire basketball regular season overboard?

Anyway, I’ll wait and see what Dr. Emmert does going forward before passing judgment. But my gut feeling is he’s going to spend a lot of time looking good in a suit. Business as usual in Indianapolis.

*****

I would be remiss as someone who has lived in Washington for more than thirty years if I didn’t take a moment to bemoan the stunning defeat of The Washington Capitals Wednesday night in the opening round of The Stanley Cup playoffs.

My hockey team, as people know, is the New York Islanders but when the Islanders are a non-factor (as they have been for the past 17 years except for an occasional blip of being a tad better) I do pull for the Caps. Like everyone else in town, I like and respect owner Ted Leonsis. I also like general manager George McPhee and have enjoyed watching their climb from a non-playoff team to having the best record in the league this past season.

The Caps have a history of playoff collapses. Give them a 3-1 lead and you have them right where you want them. This one was different though and worse than anything in the past. Not only did they have a 3-1 lead but they were the top seed in the playoffs and they were playing the bottom seed. After winning two games in Montreal to get that 3-1 lead, they came home for game five and came out as if they were out for a morning skate.

The Canadiens, who haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1993, jumped to a 2-0 lead that night and basically let Jaroslav Halak do the rest. He made 131 saves on 134 shots over the next three games—meaning the Caps averaged just under 45 shots per game but only scored once in each of those games—and the Canadiens somehow won the series. In fact, the Caps never led during the last three games and Halak held the Caps scoreless on Wednesday for almost 58 minutes and kept the puck out of the net with the Caps playing six-on-four during the last 1:44.

As my mother might say ‘ov-vah.’

Washington is a town that doesn’t get to cheer a lot. The Redskins were good during Joe Gibbs Era 1—three Super Bowl wins in 10 years—but have been decidedly mediocre since Dan Snyder rode into town on his constant wave of bad feeling. The Wizards won their only NBA title in 1978 and were a national laughingstock this season when they became—literally—The Gang That Shot Empty Guns. There was a 34 year gap between baseball seasons and only now, in their sixth season, are the Nationals starting to show some potential. The Caps had the worst record in NHL history in their first season (breaking the record set by my Islanders two years earlier) and have been to one Stanley Cup Final—in 1998 when they were swept by the Red Wings. Heck, even the once powerful soccer team, D.C. United has fallen to the bottom of MLS.

This was supposed to be a spring of celebration ending in a parade. It ended in embarrassment and frustration Wednesday night. No knock on the Canadiens, who played their hearts out to beat a team that finished 33 points in front of them in the regular season, but this was inexcusable. For now, the Alexander Ovechkin-Sydney Crosby argument is off the table. Crosby has one Cup, one Olympic Gold medal—and counting as the Penguins take on the Canadiens in the conference semifinals. Ovechkin has scoring titles. Last I looked, no one engraves the name of the scoring champion on The Stanley Cup.

Readers – as you know from time to time, the hands on the clock speed by quickly in the morning. Well, today was one of those for John, as in ‘Woops, I forgot what my day was like….I’m walking out the door to take Danny to school, to do an appearance at a school and driving to Philadelphia for interviews.” Therefore, there will be no original blog post today – if not the first occurrence on a work day, a rare one indeed. In its stead, we thought a post that many have not read would be his inaugural blog post, and you’ll find it below. In the meantime, if there are any topics on the top of your head that you want to get into over the next couple of weeks, feel free to post in the comments section as he reads and enjoys all the comments and emails. He'll be back posting on Monday.....have a great weekend.

FOTB Staff

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There are a number of phrases in the English language I honestly thought I would never find myself writing. Among them would be things like, “the warmth and humor of Barry Bonds.” (Remember him?). Or, “The modesty of Phil Jackson.” (More on that on another day).

But the number one phrase I thought I’d never write is this one: “Welcome to my blog.”

I learned to read by grabbing The New York Times before my parents woke up and working my way through stories on the Mets and Jets and Knicks and Rangers. I’ve worked for newspapers all my life and still do—proudly—even in these very difficult times for our business. When people ask me what I do I usually say, “I’m a reporter.” That means I deal in facts, often laced with opinions when I write columns, but not in rumors. You will never read on this blog, “I hear that…” We all hear things and in today’s world, in the world of the blog in particular, anything is apparently fair game.

Not for me.

What I hope to do here each day is write about something that’s on my mind. It may be something that’s funny like yesterday when one of the cops at Bethpage told me he didn’t think my credential let me into the clubhouse (it did) but it was okay with him if I went in because he knew I was, “a Long Island guy.”

Some days I may get on a soap box on the hypocrisy of the BCS or how foolish the Atlanta Braves look forcing Tom Glavine into retirement because they didn’t want to spend a million bucks to bring him up to the big leagues. Other days I might just tell stories—old ones, new ones. Occasionally I may rail about the internet not working in a hotel—as was the case this morning. It’s amazing how the world has changed. In the old days all I needed in a hotel room was a bed, a working TV and an air conditioner that didn’t make noise. Now the first thing I check is to see if the internet is working.

The U.S. Open begins tomorrow morning. I’ve probably done 40 radio interviews in the last three days, most of them connected with the book I wrote with Rocco Mediate about his life and last year’s remarkable Open which is called, “Are You Kidding Me?” which is Rocco’s description with one word missing (rhymes with ducking) of that week. All the interviewers ask about whether Rocco has a chance to make another miracle run here (Yes he can though it isn’t likely. He hasn’t been playing real well but this is his kind of golf course).

They then ask the same two questions: What about Tiger and what about Phil?

Do I have any brilliant insight into either one? No. For one thing Tiger doesn’t let anybody inside his life although he’s great at making it SOUND like he’s telling you a lot. I do know he was very unhappy when people were whispering that he wasn’t the same player after his knee surgery.

He was right. I mean the guy wins once and doesn’t finish out of the top NINE in five stroke play events and people are questioning him? That’s like the Republicans I know who started questioning President Obama halfway through his inaugural address. Tiger is still Tiger. He’s going to blow past Jack Nicklaus and keep going because he wants to put the record so far out there it will be almost impossible for anyone to come and get it.

Curtis Strange, who won two U.S. Opens made a great point last night: “If you were to write down the 10 greatest shots of all time in major championships, Tiger’s probably hit eight of them. He then went on to say that the chip-in Tiger pulled off on the 11th at Memorial on Sunday, “can’t be done. You can NOT do what he did.”

So enough about Tiger slipping.

As for Mickelson, all you can say is that he and his family are going through a nightmare millions go through. I’ve been through it in my own family. BEST case scenario it will be a nightmare for Amy and for him and those around him. I would think the waiting until July 1 might be the worst part of it all. At least once you get started you feel as if you are moving towards what you hope is the finish line.

It will feel like a Rangers playoff game in Madison Square Garden this weekend if he somehow gets in contention.

Okay, that’s it for today. I have now written my first blog. I hope there will be many more to come but I do feel right now as if I should go take a shower.

At last, the college football season is over.

It ended with a thud, Alabama, after almost falling asleep at the wheel in the second half, pulling away to beat Texas, 37-21. Texas deserves credit for hanging in after being down 24-6 and after losing quarterback Colt McCoy on the first series. I have no doubt Texas fans will claim forever their team would have won if McCoy had played. In the end, we’ll never know. Maybe if McCoy had been hurt in a first round playoff game the Longhorns would have survived and advanced and McCoy could have come back and played. But, as we all know, that’s not the way college football is structured.

My pal Bill Hancock was at it again on Thursday, giving his “state of the BCS Address,” in his new role as executive director of America’s most corrupt organization. It was pretty clear that Bill had been prepped thoroughly by Ari Fleischer, who knows a thing or two about simply throwing out untruths from a pulpit of power and getting the public—or at least some of the public—to swallow them.

Bill made four claims Thursday that are, put simply, 100 percent untrue. Not 99 percent, 100 percent. Let’s review.

1.   A college football playoff would lead to more injuries. This isn’t just wrong, it’s absolutely hypocritical. The BCS Presidents (Bill and Fleisher’s employers) are the ones who voted several years ago to add a 12th regular season game for one reason: more money. Three of the six BCS conferences play a conference championship game with the Big Ten soon to follow. That’s a 13th game followed by a bowl game. That’s 14 games—two fewer than an NFL regular season. If an eight team playoff existed with an 11 game regular season no one would play more than 14 games and only two teams would play that many. So claiming the BCS Presidents care at all about injuries is absolutely untrue.

2.   A playoff would affect the exam schedules for players. Oh please Bill, don’t trot out that tired argument. Everyone knows that basketball players miss FAR more class during the NCAA Tournament in March and April than football players would miss if there was a playoff system. Let’s go through this one more time: You play quarterfinals on New Year’s Day, making it an absolutely spectacular college football day instead of making people watch The Outback Bowl or The Gator Bowl with five and six loss teams playing on New Year’s. You play the semifinals the next week. At that point six teams will have been eliminated without missing a day of class. Then you play the championship game two weeks later—the same weekend as the NFL conference championship games so there are no NFL games on Saturday. Depending on the school players from TWO schools might miss two or three days of classes at the very beginning of a semester. NO FINALS missed—none, zero.

3.   The bowl system would be damaged. Not only is this wrong, the opposite is true—the bowl system would be enhanced. Instead of having one game that has meaning to everyone across the country you would have seven. The four bowls that are currently BCS hosts would be joined by three more bowls—let’s say The Cotton for tradition; The Citrus (or whatever it is called now) for location and The Gator (tradition and location). They rotate games each year although if I’m in charge the championship game is always at The Rose Bowl because it is still the best setting there is for a football game. The 29 other bowls (two more come on line next year) continue exactly as they are EXCEPT they are all played before New Year’s Day to clear the stage for the playoff. The 6-6 teams still get to go play a bowl game and the boys in the ugly jackets can still parade around in their ugly jackets. Nothing changes. Bowls can still take a 6-6 Iowa State team over an 8-4 Missouri team because Iowa State sells more tickets if that’s what they so desire.

4.   The regular season has more meaning under the current system. Really? I’d love for Bill to walk into the locker rooms at Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State and explain how much meaning their undefeated regular seasons had. Only in the BCS can teams not lose a game and not have a chance to play for a championship. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Basically, those teams’ regular seasons had no meaning at all. If Boise State had beaten the Dallas Cowboys in their bowl game instead of TCU there are people out there who would say, ‘yeah but how would they do in the Big 12?’ Here’s the answer: who knows since no one from The Big 12 will play them and the criminals making the BCS matchups (thankfully that’s not Bill) put TCU against Boise State to make sure those two schools wouldn’t (again) embarrass BCS schools by beating them.

So Bill went four-for-four yesterday—aided by his new best friend Ari. He made four assertions and none of them was even close to true. My guess is he’ll get a bonus in his next paycheck for keeping a straight face while saying all this stuff.

A couple of other things are worth noting: NONE of the five BCS bowls provided a really dramatic finish. Perhaps it was coincidence, who knows? The best game was TCU-Boise State, which at least turned on a fake punt but the rest of the games were really duds. Here’s a stat for you: In five games there were three lead changes: Oregon briefly taking the lead on Ohio State before the Buckeyes took it back and pulled away and Alabama going ahead 7-6 in the championship game. Florida, Iowa and Boise State took the lead in their games and never trailed although TCU did tie Boise State at 10-10.

There were second tier bowl games that had that many lead changes in the last three minutes. In fact, the second tier bowls were great this year: Idaho’s 43-42 win over Bowling Green was spectacular; Arkansas’s overtime win over East Carolina was excruciating and so was Auburn thinking it had won three times after blowing a two touchdown lead before finally beating Northwestern in overtime. There were others: Central Michigan over Troy in overtime; Wyoming beating Fresno State, also in overtime.

Here’s one thing I guarantee: If you had a playoff, if every game played was a step towards a championship, you would have far fewer dud games and more great ones because there would be no doubt that everyone involved was playing for something.

Which reminds me of one more thing: Bill also made the claim that as exciting as the Division 1-AA championship was, the attendance at home sites (except Montana) wasn’t very good. Two things: December football in cold weather places isn’t usually much of a draw (including in the NFL where no-shows abound in December) and, did he check the attendance at a LOT of the second tier bowls? And that’s with virtually every bowl forcing the schools to buy thousands of tickets and then give them away if they can’t sell them. If there were a seven game, eight-team playoff as I suggested there would not be one unsold ticket. Not one.

Sorry Bill, I love you but, as you might put it, gee whiz are you kidding me?

And finally a note on the polls: My colleagues in the AP poll completely ignored me (and others) and not only didn’t vote Boise State first, they voted them FOURTH. Craig James of ESPN voted Boise SEVENTH and TCU 14th! Who does he think he’s kidding? His partners, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit were a little less blatant in their BCS sellout, voting Boise fourth. Still. Those guys should not be allowed to vote.

At least the AP publishes the individual votes. The coaches poll, run by (surprise) ESPN and USA Today, keeps the individual votes secret except for the final regular season poll. I’m really disappointed that my friends at USA Today continue to participate in this farce. That said, the coaches did better by Navy (26th) than the AP boys and girls (28th). Here’s a shocker: none of the ESPN-three voted for Navy. Maybe that’s why Mark Jones thinks the future marines at Navy are going to Quan-TEE-co and Bob Davie keeps talking about “chop blocks.” God forbid anyone should do any homework over there it might interfere with their ability to read 10,000 promos per telecast.

Okay, I promise not to rant on the BCS for a while. As long as Bill and his pals promise not to say anything they know isn’t true. My guess is they won’t be able to do that.

Okay, here we go again.

A year ago at this time I publicly pleaded with my brethren who vote in the AP football poll to pick Utah No. 1 on their final ballots for two reasons: First, you could make a case the Utes were as deserving as Florida after they blasted Alabama in The Sugar Bowl and second, to send a message to the BCS bullies that a lot of people are sick and tired of their system and aren’t going to take it anymore.

Not surprisingly, I was largely ignored. So much for independent thinking among members of the fourth estate.

Well, if nothing else, I don’t give up easily. I come before everyone today to ask those with AP ballots to please—PLEASE—vote Boise State No. 1 in their final poll. My reasoning is the same as last year: The Broncos went 14-0 and whipped Pac-10 champion Oregon, the one BCS school that had the guts to schedule them. They beat a TCU team in The Fiesta Bowl that had gone unbeaten in The Mountain West Conference which, if you check, did not lose a bowl game until the Horned Frogs crossed paths with Boise State.

TCU won on the road at Clemson and hammered Virginia—the only BCS schools willing to play THEM.

Now, you BCS apologists will talk about the depth of the SEC and the fact that Boise would finish no better than third in that league. That might be true. But there’s no proof is there? Until and unless the power teams are willing to schedule Boise instead of Chattanooga and Charleston Southern we can’t know what would happen if Boise played Alabama or Florida or, for that matter, Texas.

That’s the entire point of deciding championships on the field: there’s no arguing, you just go out and play. The BCS folks are so arrogant and so gutless they wouldn’t even give TCU and Boise the chance to play their schools in bowl games—matchups that would have been far more compelling than Georgia Tech-Iowa or, for that matter, Florida-Cincinnati.

Why didn’t the BCS want TCU and Boise matching up with their conference champions? Simple: Utah-Alabama; Boise State-Oklahoma; Utah-Pittsburgh. Can’t have that. Can’t have people saying things like, “Florida had to come from behind in the fourth quarter to beat Alabama and Utah dominated Alabama so…”

And please don’t give me the, “Alabama wasn’t motivated with no national title to play for,” excuse. How’d Florida look the other night bashing Cincinnati (a BCS school for those scoring at home) with no national title to play for? What’s more when was the last time you saw a Nick Saban team fail to show up to play—in a major bowl game no less? No. Utah just whipped Alabama. Given a chance Boise and TCU might have done the same thing, which is why they weren’t given the chance.

That’s why the AP voters should Just Say No to the BCS, which isn’t a pox the way drugs are a pox but is pretty damn sickening. They should vote Boise No. 1 and the winner of Alabama-Texas No. 2. The Alabama-Texas winner will still get a trophy and all the BCS hype as national champions and that’s fine. I can’t tell you for sure that Boise would beat either of those teams anymore than anyone can tell me those teams would beat Boise. And we’ll never know because the BCS bullies won’t allow us to find out.

Here’s the problem: For all of our vaunted claims of being independent thinkers, most of us in the media aren’t. Earlier this season I wrote to a friend who had not voted Navy in his top 25 but had five—FIVE—teams from the lousy ACC in his top 25. He wrote me back and said, “I know Navy beat Notre Dame but it did lose to Temple.” I pointed out two things in response: Temple might finish in the top four in the ACC and Navy had played the Owls without their starting quarterback, without their best slotback and had lost in the last minute. He wrote back, “Oh, didn’t know that.”

A week later he STILL didn’t have Navy in the top 25.

What’s more, there are guys voting in the poll who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Guys who work for ESPN? Are you kidding? ESPN and the BCS are business partners. That’s like letting me vote for the best books of 2009. Let’s see, “Change-Up,” looks pretty good at No. 1, followed by “Are You Kidding Me?” and at No. 3 I’ve got the paperback version of, “Living on the Black.”

Most of the voters—the ESPN guys aside—cover BCS teams. Like my friend, they not only don’t see Boise State live (perhaps TCU since it played two ACC teams) but they don’t even see the Broncos on TV because they’re covering games every Saturday. Maybe they saw the Oregon game but I bet a lot of them said, “well, that was way back in September.” Who would you bet on today in a rematch?

You see, this problem’s not going away because the BCS schools will just continue not to schedule power schools from the non-power conferences. Can San Jose State get a game with a BCS power? You bet. Boise State? Not so much. Karl Benson, the commissioner of the WAC, who is one of the more honest guys I’ve encountered in athletic administration through the years, said earlier this season Boise had contacted TEN BCS schools about playing them the next couple of years ON THE ROAD and all ten had said no thanks.

So, here’s my final plea: spread this around. Go online and get the list of AP voters—it’s there every week, which is more than I can say for the ridiculous coaches' poll—and write to anyone you can and say VOTE FOR BOISE STATE. It doesn’t even take a lot of guts to do it. It isn’t like saying, ‘I’m voting for Villanova because it won the highest level tournament there is in college football.’ This is a team that met every challenge it was asked to meet. It is now 2-0 when given a shot at a BCS game and is willing to play anyone, anytime.

By the way, don’t be surprised when the final poll comes out if Florida finishes ahead of Boise State too. That’s how little faith I have in my colleagues. I would love for them to prove me wrong and vote Boise No. 1. But it isn’t going to happen. The irony is it would be a great STORY. Sadly, a lot of these guys don’t know a great story when they trip and fall over it. And if that upsets some of them—fine—prove me wrong and I’ll gladly shut up.

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A number of people wrote me yesterday to ask why Norman Chad continues to annually take a gratuitous cheap shot at me in his Washington Post column. There are two answers: I really don’t know because I’ve never exchanged an angry word with him and didn’t when we worked a few desks away from one another at The Post years ago, and, answer number two, I’m pretty sure I do know.

My guess—and that’s all it is but others who know Chad think I’m right—is that Chad was supposed to go to Hollywood and become a big star writing screenplays because he’s so smart and so talented. I happen to think he is smart and talented but the screenwriting thing never happened for him and now he makes a living commenting on poker and writing the same, tired column he’s been writing for about 20 years, once a week. Twenty years ago he was funny. Now he’s just bitter. The column says the same thing every week: I watch a lot of TV, I’ve been divorced twice, I like bowling, I drink Rolling Rock and I’ll prove how smart I am by calling other people dumb. He’s even turned on Tony Kornheiser in his bitterness because Tony, well, is very, very successful.

So, about once a year comes the shot that I’m a no-talent and to be honest I think it makes Chad (and the paper) look kind of silly and I doubt if it changes anyone’s feelings about my work one way or the other. All I can say is if I ever end up doing commentary on poker please—PLEASE—ask no questions, just have me dragged away and put inside a small room someplace where I can’t hurt anyone.

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And finally: Kudos today to Bobby Cremins for The College of Charleston’s stunning upset of North Carolina last night. There is no one—I mean NO ONE—in college basketball who doesn’t enjoy Cremins. He’s been one of the game’s true characters for a long time.

The line that best summed Bobby up came from an ACC referee who I asked about all the league’s coaches when I was working on, “A March to Madness.” Of Cremins he said, “if Bobby Cremins says you missed a call, you missed the call.”

Bobby almost never argues with officials. One reason for that is that he often can’t remember their names. When I was working on the book, I often sat next to the Georgia Tech bench. Almost without fail, Bobby would walk over to me a couple of minutes before tipoff and say, “John, do me a favor and tell me which official is which.”

It reminded me of Al McGuire who would often come over before doing a telecast and say, “give me one kid on each team I can talk about.”

The funny thing is, for all the wackiness, they were both so damn good at what they did. Apparently Bobby still is damn good at what he does.

Kudos also to Roy Williams for playing the game AT Charleston because of his long-standing friendship with Cremins. There are very few big-time coaches who will schedule a reasonably good mid-major on the road. Roy does it. He lost a game but my guess is his team will be fine and his career is still in pretty good shape. That may not sound like much but if I told you the number of coaches who have told me through the years, “NO WAY,” will they play a mid-major of quality on the road it would blow your mind.

So good for Bobby. And good for Roy too.

If 2010 turns out to be as enjoyable as the last day of 2009, I am really looking forward to the New Year.

I got all my work done yesterday by noon, built a fire in my office fireplace (best thing about this house) and sat down to watch Air Force-Houston followed by Navy-Missouri.

You may ask why I wasn’t in Houston with Navy doing the game on radio. Believe me, there’s part of me that would have loved being there. But, as I’ve said before, I really despise the entire flying experience and that ratchets up during a holiday week. I could have flown down with Navy but they left last Saturday and I really didn’t want to spend six days in Houston during the holidays—especially when I had a family trip planned—and then fly back home on New Year’s Eve, landing sometime after midnight.

So, I stayed here and watched on TV.

Let me explain first how I feel about Air Force. I root against the Falcons twice a year: when they play Navy and when they play Army. In every other game I’m an Air Force fan. Obviously I’m closer to the programs at Army and Navy because of “A Civil War,” and my years now doing Navy on radio (13) and my close association with Army. This past September I was honored when I was asked to MC Army’s Hall of Fame banquet when Mike Krzyzewski was inducted. Plus, I have all those boyhood memories of going to games at West Point.

That said, I have great respect for Air Force and like the people I know there very much. Even though the Army and Navy people insist that life at Air Force isn’t as tough as at their schools—they call it, “the country club academy,”--I know that being a cadet at Air Force is about 100 times harder than going to any civilian school. I always respected Fisher DeBerry and I feel the same way about Troy Calhoun, who has done a remarkable job reviving the program the last three years. What’s more, his No. 1 lieutenant, Tim DeRuyter—also an Air Force grad—was at Navy for four years and became a friend so there’s an extra bit of personal connection for me.

So it was that I watched with both surprise and happiness as Air Force absolutely crushed Houston. The Falcons were up 14-0 in the blink of an eye and, although Houston threatened for a while, eventually pulled away to win 47-20. Wow. This was a Houston team that won at Oklahoma State and was 10-2 going into the Conference-USA championship game. Case Keenum was considered a Heisman candidate at one point during the season. Not yesterday: he threw six interceptions—the most in a bowl game since a guy named Bruce Lee threw six for Arizona in the 1968 Sun Bowl.

Keenum had written, “Jesus Saves,” on his eye black for the game. For some reason as the Falcons picked off one pass after another I thought about a famous billboard in Boston years ago when Phil Esposito was setting goal-scoring records for the Bruins. It said: “Jesus Saves….But Espo puts in the rebound!”

There was one disappointment at the end of the game: Instead of staying in Fort Worth for an extra 90 seconds to watch the Air Force players stand at attention for their alma mater, ESPN just HAD to throw it back to the studio so we could hear Lou Holtz and Mark May blather for a few extra minutes. It scares me a little that I actually agree with Holtz on something: he said the Mountain West should get an automatic BCS bid. Of course it should. My God, is there anyone out there who thinks the ACC is as good a league as The Mountain West right now? Or, for that matter, The Big Ten? How did Oregon State, which almost won the Pac-10, look against Brigham Young in the Las Vegas Bowl? Anyway, May, who is always scripted to disagree with Holtz tried to say the bottom of the league was weak. Really? How about the bottom of the ACC Mark? The Big Ten? Or, for that matter the Pac-10 and The Big 12? If TCU beats Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl the Mountain West will be 5-0 in bowl games this season. That’s a pretty deep league if you ask me.

Anyway, I digress.

Just as Navy-Missouri was kicking off, the plumber who had come to the house to fix a broken toilet came in to announce he was finished and—surprise—would like to be paid. I walked into the kitchen, wrote him a check, wished him a Happy New Year and came back in to find Navy trailing 7-0. Whoo boy, this might be a long afternoon. I later saw the replay of Danario Alexander’s 58 yard catch-and-run touchdown.

Then Ricky Dobbs fumbled on Missouri’s 20-yard line on Navy’s first series. I can think negative thoughts faster than almost anyone alive: Missouri was going to score again, make it 14-0 and it was going to get bad. I cursed the bowl system which sent Missouri to the Texas Bowl even though it had finished ahead of both Iowa State and Texas A+M in The Big 12. This was a big-time team, with a future pro quarterback…

I forgot two things: I forgot that the kids playing for Navy are a lot tougher than I am and NEVER think negative thoughts and I forgot about Buddy Green.

ESPN—more on them later—focused about 99 percent of its attention during the telecast on Dobbs. That’s fine. He’s a terrific player and a wonderful kid. Bob Davie did manage to give some credit to the slotbacks and at the very end of the telecast mentioned Green. With all due respect to everyone else at Navy, I’m not sure the MVP of this team wasn’t Green.

Two years ago, his defense, torn up by injuries and wracked by inexperience, got hammered week after week. It gave up 62 points in a WIN against North Texas State. Joe Flacco and Delaware sliced it and diced it for 59 points. There were freshmen all over the field and Paul Johnson even started spending time on the defensive practice field which you know didn’t make Green happy at all.

He never complained, never whined about the injuries or the inexperience. He just kept saying, “Hey, it’s our job to keep coaching them every week and hope they get better.”

They did. Last year the defense was solid. It made plays when it had to—a late interception to seal a game against Rutgers; an amazing fumble recovery in the final minute to steal a game from Temple. It finished the regular season with back-to-back shutouts.

This year though would be harder. Two weeks before the season began, Nate Frazier, by far the team’s best defensive player, a guy who had to be double-teamed on every play at nose tackle, was separated from the academy on an academic honors charge. There’s no messing around at the academies with stuff like that. There was no stalling until after the season; no one game suspension—he was gone.

The schedule was brutal: at Ohio State; at Pittsburgh; Wake Forest; Temple (which won 9 games); at SMU; at Notre Dame; Air Force; at Hawaii. Plus there was the matter of playing 11 weeks in a row without a bye with a team that is always smaller than every civilian opponent it plays.

Every week the defense made key plays. It gave up yardage—Green knows he can’t attack on every play so he sets the opposition up to make mistakes. Notre Dame never punted—but Navy kept stopping it inside the red zone and won the game. In a driving rainstorm with Dobbs hurt, Navy didn’t throw a single pass against Wake Forest—and won the game because the defense made plays. Did you see Air Force roll up more than 500 yards in offense against Houston? That same offense didn’t score a touchdown against Navy’s defense.

Yesterday, facing a team that he knew wanted to throw on every down, Green came out with two down linemen on most plays. Davie was literally open-mouthed. (He also kept referring to Navy’s legal cut blocks as chop blocks, which are illegal. Was that a little bit of the old Notre Damer coming out?) And Missouri kept falling into Green’s trap. It moved up and down the field almost at will but couldn’t score inside the red zone. In fact, Alexander’s touchdown—30 seconds in—was the only touchdown the Tigers scored all day. Final: Navy-35, Missouri-13.

“We’re like 11 hyenas out there,” Niamatalolo said. “Sooner or later we’re going to bring an elephant down.”

Naturally, ESPN didn’t stick around for the playing of the alma mater. It had to show its bowl week promo for the thousandth time. It was also ill-prepared for the broadcast: both Mark Jones and Davie kept mis-pronouncing names and confusing players—without every getting corrected by the truck apparently. It was annoying but didn’t matter.

A word about Niamatalolo: He’s an amazing guy. He’s as genuine as he appears on TV and he stepped into a brutally difficult situation following Johnson, who had become a legend in Annapolis. He’s now 18-10—playing tougher schedules than Johnson did—in two seasons, with a 4-0 record against Air Force and Army, a win over Notre Dame and a bowl win. He’s had to use five different quarterbacks during the two seasons because of injuries.

And he never complains about anything. You see, that’s not the way they do it the academies. I may complain but the players and coaches don’t. You want to talk about the best and the brightest, go talk to some of those young men (they’re not kids) and the men who coach them.

Like I said, it was a great day. Happy New Year to all.

There’s an item in The Sports Business Journal this morning reporting that the NCAA has opened preliminary talks about a new TV contract. This isn’t news. Everyone knows ESPN is dying to swoop in with its Disney money and steal the tournament away from CBS, which has televised it since 1982. Anyone who thinks loyalty will play a role in this negotiation—CBS has literally spent billions helping to build the tournament into the mega-event that it now is—also thinks that there’s no football playoff because of concern about the ‘student-athletes.’

The important part of the story concerned the make-up of the tournament. Apparently the NCAA is looking into expansion—going from the current 65 teams to 96 in order to add a week of TV that would add more money to the new contract.

I can’t call this the worst idea I’ve ever heard because the BCS still exists. But it is a solid No. 2.

The perfect number for the NCAA Tournament is 64. The only reason a 65th team was added was (surprise) a money grab by the BCS commissioners who didn’t want to give up an at-large spot when The Mountain West Conference became eligible for an automatic bid, upping the number of automatic bids from 30 to 31.

Unfair as the play-in game is, it is a minor kink in an otherwise smooth-running machine. With a 65-team field, making it into the bracket is an accomplishment. Sure, there are always a handful of coaches screaming that a horrible injustice was done when they get left out but that’s kind of the beauty of Selection Sunday: who will get in and who won’t. The committee doesn’t always get it right and occasionally a team is left out unfairly. But more often than not, the deserving teams get in and when they do they feel as if they’ve actually done something.

Compare that—for example—to the bowl system where 68 of the 120 teams playing Division 1-A football make postseason. All you have to do—literally—is be mediocre and you can play in a bowl someplace. In basketball, the only time a team that hasn’t played well all season gets in is when someone comes from the depths of a conference to win a conference tournament and get an automatic bid. Even when that happens, the team in question has to be playing well when it matters most to pull off that sort of an upset.

(The football-basketball talk reminds me of a story. If I’ve told it on the blog before, forgive me but I think it bears repeating. Years ago, during an ACC coaches meeting Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins was complaining to Commissioner Gene Corrigan about the extra pressure on basketball coaches to make the tournament.

“But Bobby,” Corrigan argued. “There are 64 bids out there. That’s a lot.”

“Sixty-four bids out of how many teams?” Cremins asked.

Corrigan shrugged. “About 300,” he answered.

Cremins turned to Dean Smith and said, “Dean, you’re the math major, what’s 64 into 300?”

“A little more than 21 percent,” Smith answered.

“Okay,” Cremins said turning back to Corrigan, “how many football teams make bowls?”

“Well, there are 26 bowls right now,” Corrigan said. “So that’s 52 teams.”

“Out of how many?” Cremins said.

“About 100,” Corrigan said.

Cremins turned back to Smith. “Okay Dean, 52 into 100, what percentage is that?”)

Back to our story for today.

So now the NCAA, which went to the 64 team bracket in 1985 is talking about expanding to 96 teams. If it happens they will claim this is being done in the name of fairness which is, of course, a lot of hooey. It will be done to up the TV money and to appease all the whining coaches who think expanding the field will help them keep their jobs.

You see, Cremins wasn’t wrong. There IS tremendous pressure on coaches, especially those at the big-time schools, to make the tournament every year. Jim Boeheim went two straight years without a bid and heard sniping all around him. Gary Williams missed three years out of four and if his team hadn’t rallied last season to make the tournament you can bet his AD would have been trying really hard to find a way to force him out at Maryland.

But the theory that more bids means more job security doesn’t really work. You see right now an NCAA Tournament bid MEANS something. If you expand to 96 teams and the ACC gets nine bids every year instead of six or The Big East gets 12 instead of eight then you’ve got the bowl system—except that a real champion does eventually get crowned.

Making a bowl does not guarantee these days that a coach keeps his job because AD’s know that it is often meaningless. In the BCS leagues, you can schedule three home games against weak opposition and go 3-5 in league play and presto! You are on your way to the Insight Bowl or the Independence Bowl or the fabulous St. Petersburg Bowl where you get to go to Florida—to play indoors.

If there is one thing the NCAA gets right every year (except for the play-in game) it is the basketball tournament. It hit on 64 as the right number 25 years ago and—with good reason—has kept it (almost) right there.

That reminds me. Apparently my good friend Bill Hancock, who is now executive director of the BCS (it is sad when a good man goes to work for the forces of evil) is trying to defend the BCS by talking about ‘bracket-creep,’ in the basketball tournament. Bracket creep? The tournament has expanded by ONE team in 25 years and he calls it bracket creep? Bill also claimed that if there was an eight team playoff this year there would be terrible controversy because two of the four two-loss teams in the major conferences would have been left out of the field. Think about what he’s saying: It is okay to leave three UNBEATEN teams out of the national title picture but really awful to leave out a couple of two-loss teams.

For his next trick, Bill will tell us that if unemployment went down it would be unfair to those still unemployed so maybe it would be better for unemployment to go UP.

I love Bill, I really do. He’s coming to dinner with us Friday night in Philadelphia before Army-Navy. Maybe I can perform an exorcism and save him.

Meantime, the NCAA needs to NOT expand the basketball field. If money is the issue do this: Tell the BCS schools that beginning in 2010 there will be an NCAA Football Bowl Sub-Division Tournament. If an invited team declines to play, none of its other teams can participate in any other NCAA postseason tournament. The NCAA would make more than enough money by having a football tournament to make the dumb idea of expanding the basketball tournament go away. The BCS would go the way of The Edsel, New Coke and pet rocks. And Bill Hancock’s soul would be saved.

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One clarification on yesterday’s blog: I was NOT implying that the replay official got it wrong when he put one second back on the clock in the Texas-Nebraska game. Some hysterical Texas fan claimed that by saying he put one second back on the clock I was implying he got it wrong. I was simply saying he put the second back and almost certainly got it right but wondered if he would have gotten it right if the second had belonged to Nebraska. I stand by that statement. The same fan also went into a long diatribe about why Texas deserves to play in the national title game. I’m not saying Texas does NOT deserve to play in the game. I’m saying under this ridiculous system NONE of us knows who deserves to play in the game. That’s why the question should be resolved through actual competition rather than hysterically bleating that MY TEAM is the best. If your team is the best, it should get the chance to prove it on the field. Period…

One more note: Several people asked last week how I feel about Billy Packer. I like him both personally and professionally. We agreed on almost nothing but arguing with him has always been great fun and I always believed he broke down a basketball game better than anyone. I missed him during last year’s tournament especially during the Friday practices at The Final Four. We had an unofficial tradition of sitting together and arguing about everything while the practices were going on. My favorite year doing that was 2006 when I waved Jim Larranaga over during George Mason’s practice and said, “Billy wanted to be sure he had a chance to congratulate you.” Billy never missed a beat. “Great playing,” he said. Then he turned to me as Larranaga walked away and said, “It still doesn’t mean I was wrong you know.”

Actually it did. But that’s okay.

Here is this week's column from The Washington Post --------------

Let us begin today by turning to John Swofford, the commissioner of the ACC, a football conference that might -- might -- have one good football team. As it happens, this is Swofford's year to be the spokesman (read: spinner) for the BCS because the six commissioners who run the so-called power conferences take two-year turns trying to defend their indefensible system.

After Sunday night's BCS "selection show," -- which had all the suspense of the tallying of the electoral college -- Swofford said this about the fact that undefeated Texas Christian and undefeated Boise State had been so graciously included in the BCS bowls -- actually one BCS bowl, since they will play one another in the Fiesta Bowl.

"I think it certainly shows that there's more access than before in terms of the BCS system," Swofford said. "If you look back in recent years, there's a consistency in that access that is evident and very healthy for college football."


Click here for the rest of the article - BCS again proves its worthlessness

I’m not sure what the best part of the BCS bowl lineup announcement on Sunday night—which had all the suspense of the electoral college vote for President—was: the shocking news that Texas, even though it was more-than-fortunate to beat Nebraska on Saturday night will play Alabama for the national championship or the equally stunning news that Boise State will play TCU in The Fiesta Bowl.

On the face of it, the BCS boys allowing two non-BCS schools into their little club is good news. But let’s take a closer look at what they did and why they did it: To begin with, they simply ran out of options. TCU had to be invited because it was the highest-ranked non-BCS school and it was in the top six in the rankings. The question all along had been Boise State, which beat Oregon early in the season and dominated league opponents at the end of the season. (Those of you who are BCS-league fans and want to get on your high horse about the WAC not being a strong league, I would point out that most of your teams would never, ever consider scheduling a game against Boise State).

Up until a week ago, The Fiesta Bowl was trying to make a case to take a two-loss Oklahoma State team whose most impressive win was over a five-loss Georgia team. That scenario got blown up when the Cowboys were embarrassed by Oklahoma, another five loss team. There was really nowhere for the BCS to turn. By rule it couldn’t take three teams out of The Big Ten—which had exactly zero impressive non-conference wins this season. You can bet if the rule didn’t exist, Penn State would be in The Fiesta Bowl, no doubt on the strength of its impressive non-conference schedule.

USC had four losses after losing at home to Arizona on Saturday so that wouldn’t work. As well as Nebraska played (more on that later) against Texas on Saturday it had four losses and no wins of consequence. The ACC? No way. The Big East? Well, if Pittsburgh had beaten Cincinnati you MIGHT have seen some stirring to give the Bearcats The Fiesta bid but that didn’t happen either. The SEC’s two bids were used up by Alabama and Florida. Notre Dame? No, not exactly although Charlie Weis might be signed up as the halftime entertainment somewhere. (Seriously folks, he’s giving Dan Snyder a run for his money as WGIS—Worst Guy In Sports—and that’s saying a lot).

So there was no choice in the end but to take Boise State. If the BCS boys had to take two minorities into the club for a year they weren’t going to take any chances. It was bad enough when Boise beat Oklahoma a couple years back and worse when Utah dominated Alabama a year ago. It still bothers me that my colleagues who vote in the AP poll didn’t have the guts to vote for Utah No. 1 over Florida last January, partly on principle but just as much on the theory that if Utah wasn’t going to get a shot at the title game the ONLY way to measure them against Florida was by common opponent: Florida had to rally in the fourth quarter to beat Alabama; Utah controlled the Crimson Tide for 60 minutes. Utah should have been an easy choice but there are a lot of gutless guys voting in the AP poll—and too many guys with ties to the BCS for that matter, including the ESPN apologists.

Given past history when non-BCS meets BCS: three wins for the little guys, one for the bullies, the BCS wasn’t going to take any chances this year. No way was TCU going to get a shot at Cincinnati or Florida or even Georgia Tech. The same went for Boise State. You guys just go play one another and leave us alone was the message. We’ll suck it up and send you both the big check but don’t bother us anymore. Here’s a memo to my AP brethren again: You’ve been given a second chance: vote the Fiesta Bowl winner as the national champion even if Alabama beats up on Texas—which it very well might. Just show some guts and say, ‘I’m sick and tired of it and I’m not going to take it anymore.’

Of course most of them won’t do it. I have a friend who has continued to vote five ACC teams in the top 25 every week even though I honestly don’t think the ACC could win a “challenge,” with the CAA if it ever had the guts to play one, even with 22 extra scholarships per team.

Think about this for a minute: who eliminated Cincinnati and TCU from national title consideration? Not any of their opponents, that’s for sure. It was, in fact, the replay official in the Texas-Nebraska game who put one second back on the clock after it had hit zero and gave Texas the chance to kick a game-winning field goal to win 13-12 on the game’s final play. If the replay official decided the call on the field was correct or that it was too close to reverse (which is supposed to be the rule) then TCU or Cincinnati is in the championship game. Texas ought to take that guy on the trip to Pasadena. I’m not saying the call was wrong but it was certainly close enough that it could have been left in place. In fact, I’m enough of a believer in those who theorize that conference officials know which team winning benefits the conference most to think that if the situation had been reversed and Nebraska had needed the extra second it might not have happened.

But it did. Isn’t it amazing how the undefeated team—regardless of BCS conference—always seems to get the key call that it absolutely must have?

As most people know the BCS recently hired ex-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to be its official spinner, the theory now being that defending the BCS is a better idea than simply getting rid of it. Fleischer proved during his years working for George W. Bush that he can spin with the best.

Here then is my suggestion for his first assignment in his new job: Fly to TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State. Walk into each of those three locker rooms, look those players in the eye and explain how each of them went undefeated this season and don’t get to play for a championship. Then list for them all the other sports in which such a thing can take place. Then tell them that the bowl system must be preserved so that all those 6-6 teams can tell their fans that they made a bowl game. (He can also add, I suppose, that the fact that the bowl system would be completely unharmed by a playoff is irrelevant).

Maybe, given his past experience, Fleischer can look those kids in the eye and say to them: “Mission Accomplished.”

If you are the BCS your mission is always accomplished as long you say it is. The whole thing really is sickening. Spin THAT Mr. Fleischer.

Some days I just don’t know where to begin.

I am absolutely restraining myself because how many days in a row can you hammer the BCS? But the apologists are now telling us that Oklahoma State will get a BCS bid—and deserves one—if it beats Oklahoma this weekend, which at last check was 6-5 and got hammered Saturday by Texas Tech.

But if Oklahoma State wins we’ll hear all about their win over a mediocre Georgia team and how they came from behind to beat god-awful Colorado with a third string quarterback leading the charge. Forget the loss at home to Houston or the 41-14 pounding—also at home—by Texas.

What may be worse is that The Big Ten WILL get a second bid—the only question being can Joe Paterno’s name overcome the fact that his team lost at home to Iowa and they finished with identical 10-2 records. Again, let’s remember that The Big Ten doesn’t have a single impact win outside the conference. The most impressive non-conference win by a Big Ten team might have been Ohio State squeaking out a 31-27 win over Navy in its opener—at home of course.

Some Orange Bowl geek was quoted over the weekend talking about how impressed he was with the 48,000 tickets Iowa bought the last time it was in the Orange Bowl. Yeah, but the TV network—Fox—is going to want Joe Pa. Meanwhile, Boise State rolls along undefeated and it DOESN’T MATTER. Boise could beat The Colts or the Saints next week and these bowl geeks would be talking about how impressed they are with Oklahoma State or how Iowa fans travel or how good Penn State looked in beating Eastern Illinois.

Someone please drag me away from all this before I end up back in the hospital.

Speaking of the NFL—no, this will not be the weekly beat-up-the-Redskins segment. Let me just say this: if the Cowboys are planning on winning their first playoff game since Bill Clinton’s first term, they better improve a whole lot. They were life-and-death to beat a team that has no offensive line and is in complete turmoil from top to top. Forget the bottom, there is none.

Sunday night I actually watched some of the Sunday night game in part because I’m sort of a closet Bears fan. I loved Gale Sayers when I was a little kid although my memories of him are pretty blurry and I was in Indiana in ’85 during The Super Bowl run and read the Chicago papers every day. Plus, Chicago’s a great city, a place I spent a lot of time in my younger days—especially when Ray and Joey Meyer had it going at DePaul.

So, I sat and watched and my mind wandered. I was thinking just how really GOOD Al Michaels is at what he does and how smoothly Chris Collinsworth has stepped into John Madden’s very large shoes. That said, I also thought back to 2004 when I was doing my Ravens book.

If you watch the NFL you will constantly hear the announcers saying, “when we talked to Lovey Smith last night…” or “let me tell you, no one is more frustrated by his lack of production lately than Jay Cutler…” Or whatever. The implication always is that the coaches and players tell them things they don’t tell anyone else.

Which, to some degree at least, is true. You see, part of the massive NFL contracts with the networks makes it a requirement that players and coaches from the two teams meet with the announcers, the producer and director prior to each game. The network submits a list early in the week—usually from four to six players, plus the head coach and occasionally a coordinator—to the team. Sometimes there’s some negotiation because a player is tired of doing the meetings every week or because a team wants to get extra mention for someone coming off a good week.

For a Sunday game, the home team usually meets with the TV guys on Friday; the visiting team as soon as they get to town on Saturday. There are no cameras in the room and the TV guys are looking for a nugget of information that can spice up their telecast.

As part of the book, I wanted to compare how the different networks handled the production meetings. Did the play-by-play and sideline people stick to anecdotal questions while the analyst asked more x-and-o stuff? Who was more aggressive? Who took longer—CBS? Fox? ESPN? ABC? (which was in its last year of Monday Night Football) Fox’s Dick Stockton told me he didn’t WANT stories. “They get in the way of telling people what’s going on in the game,” he said. CBS’s Dick Enberg was just the opposite: he craved little details about the players lives.

Obviously I wasn’t going to steal any information in part because I didn’t think (correctly) the TV guys would get anything I didn’t already have but also because if they did it would be on the air the next day. My book wouldn’t be out until the next fall.

When Kevin Byrne, the Ravens PR guy mentioned to the CBS producer doing the Ravens opener with the Browns that I would be in the meeting, there was a little bit of whining. One self-important CBS producer, Bob Mansbach later objected to me coming to a meeting—it was with a group I’d already seen in action so I didn’t really care though I told Mansbach he was full of you-know-what. Overall, the CBS folks were easy to work with.

So were the people from Fox and, believe it or not, ESPN. Jay Rothman, the lead producer couldn’t have been more gracious and since I knew Mike Patrick and Joe Theisman well there were no problems at all for the two ESPN games the Ravens played in.

And then there was ABC. Thank goodness the Ravens were only on Monday Night football once that year. When Kevin mentioned me to Fred Gaudelli, the producer—I think that’s his name but it isn’t worth looking up to be sure--Gaudelli acted as if Kevin had said that I would be replacing Michaels on play-by-play. (I know this because I was sitting in Kevin’s office at the time).

“That’s OUR meeting,” Gaudelli screamed. “NO outsiders.”

Kevin tried to patiently explain that the other three networks had already cooperated and this was strictly about process and had nothing to do with fact-finding or anything along those lines. “Al and John will go crazy,” Gaudelli said. “He shows up, we’ll go straight to the league.”

I was seriously tempted to show up just to tell Gaudelli what a blow-hard he was and to see if he was telling the truth about Madden who I had always liked. Kevin offered a compromise—he’d take notes so I’d get a sense of the meeting and there would be no confrontations. Kevin was SO good to me throughout the book I didn’t want to cause trouble for him. So, I didn’t go.

Neither did Michaels.

Apparently he didn’t like flying in on Saturday for a Monday night game. He was on a speaker-phone for HIS meeting, one that was SO important he wasn’t even there. That cracked me up.

Look, I think Michaels is one of the all-time great play-by-play guys. He also has—and has a reputation for having—one of the all-time egos. At one point he apparently had a clause in his contract that he ONLY stayed at The Four Seasons when he traveled. I had also heard he went crazy over any criticism at all. Plus, our politics are a little bit different—to put it mildly.

When I wrote the book I made no mention of ABC going nuts at the thought of me being in the production meeting. Inside baseball. Nobody cared. I went on to say that Michaels and Madden were still the best announce team in football even though, “Michaels’ massive ego occasionally tramples on Madden.” Which I had always believed to be true.

Michaels is friendly with my agent, Esther Newberg. When he read that line he called Esther—screaming and calling me names. “Why are you calling me?” Esther said. “Here’s his number, call him—he’ll talk to you.”

Hey, I wouldn’t even have put him on speaker phone.

He never called. What a surprise.

Today’s blog is about corruption in college athletics. Oh My God, I may end up writing my next book before I’m done.

Let us begin with one of my favorite people on earth: Bill Hancock. For many years, Bill was a voice of reason and calm and kindness at The NCAA. When he took over the basketball tournament’s media operations along with Jim Marchiony (another very good man who is now at Kansas) everything changed after the Reign of Terror/Error of the late Dave Cawood—not a good man.

Several years ago, Bill was persuaded to go work for the BCS in large part because the NCAA’s move from Kansas City to Indianapolis had been tough on his family. He is the one person connected with the BCS with whom I refrain from using profanity when discussing how corrupt and god-awful the whole thing is. You simply can’t get mad at Bill. It is a little bit like convincing yourself that there’s something inherently wrong with Sesame Street. Bill is just all good.

Last week, the criminals posing as commissioners and presidents and athletic directors who run the BCS did a very smart thing: they made Bill the face of the BCS, naming him as their executive director. Remember a few weeks ago when some of the BCS Dons announced that they had decided their biggest problem was that they hadn’t defended their system well enough? Well, this is their solution: send Bill out to defend it because even people like me aren’t going to want to jump on Bill Hancock with both feet.

Bill is a man of substance defending something that has no substance. But he will do it well. In one of his first radio interviews since being promoted Bill talked about how great the bowl system is because so many teams get to end their season with a win; so many teams get to be rewarded for their seasons and get to travel to places they wouldn’t otherwise get to see.

As always, Bill told the truth. And I know he meant every word. Of course his argument is completely specious. To begin with, blowing up the BCS and replacing it with a playoff doesn’t mean changing the bowl system even a little bit. All those deserving 6-6 teams will still get rewarded with trips to Shreveport, Toronto, Detroit, Birmingham and Houston—to name a few of the high points on the bowl system world tour. Half of those teams will still get to win their final game. Knowing Bill, he would probably like it if there were some way to ensure they could ALL win their final game.

What’s more, the second-tier bowl system is as corrupt in its own way as the BCS, we just care less about the corruption. All the so-called bowl “tie-ins,” are ridiculous. Why should every team in a BCS conference that goes 6-6—often by scheduling three cream-puff non-conference home games be “rewarded,” with some kind of postseason trip? There are too many bowls—the NCAA hands out bowl certifications like candy at a Halloween party—and then all these self-important yahoos walk around in their ugly jackets acting like they’re saving the world with their bowl games.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. In 1996 Army was 9-1 and Navy was 8-2 going into the Army-Navy game. The bowl game in Shreveport—I forget what corporate name was slapped on it at the time—announced it would invite the winner of the game to play. Since Army and Navy didn’t have bowl tie-ins at the time this was something of a relief that at least one of them was guaranteed a spot in a bowl. During Army-Navy week though it began to look as if one of the conferences tied into the bowl in Hawaii wouldn’t produce enough bowl eligible teams and word was if that happened, the bowl would invite the Army-Navy loser since Army and Navy had already agreed to send the winner to Shreveport because it was the only sure thing on the table.

On the night before the game I was standing around at a party with a group of people. The Shreveport bowl people were there being squired around like royalty by the athletic directors, which I found kind of amusing. I made the comment to some people that something had to be wrong when the WINNER of the game got to go to Shreveport and the LOSER got to go to Hawaii. One of the Shreveport guys overheard me.

Pointing his finger in my face he said, “you don’t like Shreveport maybe we won’t invite either one of you, how would you like that? We’ll go find someone else who WANT to come to Shreveport, who appreciates getting the bid to our bowl.”

I looked at the guy and said. “To begin with, I don’t represent either school, so feel free to NOT invite ME to Shreveport. Second of all get over yourself—you’re running a fifth rate bowl and anyone who thinks going to Shreveport in December instead of Hawaii is a good idea needs serious therapy.”

Cooler heads prevailed before Mr. Shreveport and I could really get into it but seriously folks this is the way a lot of these guys think. Every time I encounter one of them at a game—they’re easy to recognize because of the silly jackets—you would think they were the U.N. Ambassador from someplace, not the bowl rep from Memphis or Fort Worth.

So, long story short, no one is saying those bowls need to go away. They can stay just as they are and everyone who doesn’t make the NCAA football tournament can continue to play in them the same way teams play in the NIT in basketball. What’s more, as Bill well knows, if the four BCS bowls became part of the tournament rotation they would all be a big deal as opposed to now when one of them is a big deal.

One more BCS note: according to at least one of the many ‘bowl prognosticators,’ if Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma next week it will get a BCS bowl bid over Boise State. A team that was life-and-death to beat Colorado (at home) last night would go over an undefeated team. Seriously, other than my pal Bill (who knows better deep in his heart) is there anyone out there who doesn’t think the BCS makes the guy in Afghanistan who took the $30 million bribe look like a fairly decent guy?

Onto basketball corruption: two items today. Someone asked in a post the other day what my problem was with the “I won’t-mention-the-corporate-name/Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament.” There’s a couple things: First, the semifinalists were Syracuse, California, North Carolina and Ohio State. That’s a good field. My problem with it is that their presence last night in Madison Square Garden was decided in AUGUST.

I call it the “Gardner-Webb rule.” Remember a few years ago when Gardner-Webb beat Kentucky and went to the Garden? The corporate geeks running the event and, I guess, ESPN decided they didn’t want to take any chance on an upset. So, even if one of the other 12 teams in the tournament had upset one of the big four, it would not have been playing last night. Last I looked in a real competition you win, you advance, you lose you go home. Not in this event. Don’t call these guys semi-finalists. It implies they had to do something to get that far. The fact is—even though the four teams DID win their games on their home courts—there was no chance for them not to advance.

The other thing—and this goes on everywhere—is that for all the trumpeting about this being a charity event, the corporate logo is slapped in giant letters at mid-court and all over the court. There is ONE “Coaches vs. Cancer,” logo--if you look carefully under one basket. Here’s a question I would love answered: how many NET dollars from this event actually go to cancer research? Coaches vs. Cancer must be a tax-exempt 501C3 organization so it should be required to answer that question.

Last thing on corruption: Did anyone see the story on AOL the other day on the apparent myriad violations committed at South Florida (okay, ALLEGED myriad violations) by this guy named Terrelle Woody, “personal trainer,” to Gus Gilchrist? Woody basically got thrown off campus at Maryland in the spring of 2008 when Gilchrist was enrolled there so he and Gilchrist landed at South Florida where—surprise—Coach Stan Heath put Woody on the payroll.

Now there are all these allegations about illegal workouts and Woody coaching guys up in the locker room during games even though he wasn’t a coach. Heath’s responses to the charges sound a lot like Ron Ziegler during Watergate. The best one is when asked about Woody coaching players he’s says, “any bozo can tell guys, ‘play hard.’” He’s right. But most of those bozos aren’t on the payroll and don’t have access to the locker room during games do they?

Maybe Heath can sign on as Bill Hancock’s assistant at the BCS. Then again, maybe not. Bill will do just fine on his own—or at least better than anyone else can do in an absolutely impossible job.

I made my regular appearance on 'The Sports Reporters' with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a topics including the Military Academies on this Veterans Day, the Washington Nationals and quick talk on the Pac 10's Larry Scott.

Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters

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On Thursday morning in my regular spot (11:05am Thursday's), I joined Tony Kornheiser on his radio show.  We talked about last nights theater,  coach/manager salaries and I admit a change in my thinking on Navy vs. Notre Dame match-ups.

Click here to listen to the segment (I'm on the beginning of the podcast): The Tony Kornheiser Show

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Now that the NFL season has Thursday night football, my visit with The Gasman is moving to Wednesday's at 5:25 PT.  So, here is the first segment in the new, late season Wed night slot -- we talked about the upcoming NFL and Players Association period of negotiation, and discussed the Navy-ND upset.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man

Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------

This column is going to be written in a very calm tone. There will be no calling the BCS presidents liars because their veracity really isn't a relevant issue at this point. There will be no calls for a congressional investigation or even for President Obama to follow up on his comments of a year ago calling for a college football playoff.

The president has other issues on the table and, to be honest, short of threatening the tax-exempt status of the big-bucks schools, even his presence probably won't force the heads of the 66 BCS schools in question to end their hypocrisy.

Let us look factually at the college football landscape with five weeks to go before BCS bids are handed out.

At this moment there are seven teams in the college football bowl subdivision -- as it is now called by those nice people at the NCAA -- with undefeated records. Five of those teams -- Florida, Texas, Alabama, Iowa and Cincinnati -- play in conferences where the champion receives an automatic bid to a BCS bowl, regardless of record. The other two, TCU and Boise State, play in non-BCS conferences where it is possible to go undefeated and not play in a BCS bowl and impossible to play for the national championship under any circumstances.

Click here for the rest of the column: BCS is busy trying to fix its image, but nothing else

So now the geniuses who run the BCS have decided that the answer to their problems is better spinning.

So here we stand on the doorstep of another college football season. The games begin on Thursday and then just about everyone plays on Saturday.

I'm like most people: I get fired up this time of year. I love doing Navy games on the radio because the kids who play there really do stand for something that goes way beyond trying to win football games. I feel the same way about Army and Air Force--often to the chagrin of my friends at Navy. This year, the Mids have a brutal start to their schedule: they open Saturday at Ohio State and, while I think the notion of playing in Ohio Stadium is a cool thing for the players, it could be a long afternoon.

It's nice that the Ohio State people are asking their fans to greet Navy with a standing ovation when the players come onto the field. Personally, I've always felt that should be the case anywhere the academies play and I'm an absolute zealot about opposing teams waiting for 60 seconds at the end of games to show respect during the playing of the alma maters. Many teams now do this. Last year, Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano, after a brutal loss in Annapolis, literally chased one of his players down when he started to leave the field before the Navy band had played, 'Blue and Gold,'--which, if you've never heard it is one of the most spine-tingling alma maters you'll ever hear. Army has the better fight song (although Anchors Aweigh isn't bad) but Navy has the better alma mater if you're scoring at home.

The contrast to Schiano was the sight of the players from my alma mater jumping and down and completely ignoring the playing of 'Blue and Gold,' in Durham. The Duke people were upset when I ripped them for that behavior. Let's see if they get it right when they play at Army in a couple weeks.

Okay, enough ramblings about the academies even though they are the teams I care about most. To be honest, I really don't get all that excited about who is going to play in the BCS Championship game because half the time the system coughs up a fraudulent championship game. Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral site last year and didn't even get to play in The Big Twelve title game because it lost a tiebreaker after losing at Texas Tech in what was probably the best college football game of the year. I won't even get into what happened to Utah--which went undefeated, hammered Alabama in The Sugar Bowl and was not given the chance as (let me make this clear) ANY UNDEFEATED TEAM IN ANY OTHER SPORT would get to play for a championship. Things like this happen every year and there won't be a legitimate championship game until someone sends the BCS Presidents into solitary confinement and tells them they'll be released when they come off their high horses and take the 15 minutes that would be needed to organize a playoff.

President Obama has said a couple of times that there should be a playoff and most sane human beings know that to be truth. All the old arguments have been shot down long ago. A playoff would NOT affect players academically--far LESS in fact than the basketball tournament--and it doesn't render the regular season less meaningful. In fact it would make it more meaningful because more teams would have something serious to play for into December. But the BCS hypocrites went into a meeting last spring and came out with their usual garbage about how well the system was working. I won't even go over it again because it is too boring and so ridiculous it doesn't even merit comment. The BCS Presidents are a bunch of arrogant hypocrites who should all be made to watch Dick Cheney speeches the rest of their lives because he's clearly their role model: "If I say it's true, it IS true no matter how much evidence there is that I'm lying."

Okay, enough of the BCS rant--for now.

There are all sorts of fun games that will be played over the next few months. I happen to be a big Division 1-AA fan (or whatever the NCAA calls it now) in part because there's a real national championship but because there are so many different stories to be told at that level that don't focus on who is going to be a No. 1 pick in next April's draft. Personally I could care less right now whether Tim Tebow is going to be a good NFL quarterback. Let him be a great college player until January and then come talk to me about the draft. Actually, come talk to me next September when he puts on an NFL uniform for real. Then I'll be interested.

Richmond was a great story last year making its late run to the national title under ex-cop Mike London. Montana always plays great football that none of us in the east notice before December--if then. I love The Ivy League although I'm not a real big fan of their presidents either who keep insisting that their players can't participate in postseason in football even though they do it in every other sport. Why is it that Cornell's lacrosse team can come within seconds of a national championship just before exams start in the spring but the football players at Harvard--which has dominated the league in recent years under Tim Murphy, one of the best little-known coaches anywhere, can't play in the 1-AA playoffs? You know what the answer is if you ask The Ivy Leaguers: because we say so. Oh, okay thanks. Why don't you go give that answer to your players who are denied the chance to test themselves against the best. Isn't education supposed to be about learning to be the best at whatever you choose to become?

As my mother used to say to my father: Stop being logical.

Saturdays in the fall are still great fun in spite of it all; in spite of the hypocrisy of the BCS; the constant investigations of big-time programs and the fact that some people just make it a much bigger deal than it should be. I love the weather and the changing leaves and the atmospheres--from the 100,000 seat stadiums (not crazy about the traffic) to the 15,000 seat stadiums and on down. I still want to get to see Amherst play Williams someday and Harvard play Yale again, which I haven't done for more than 20 years. Every school has its own niche and its own big rival and its own traditions--many of them unknown to most of the country but known to those who care about them. I can't stand the weeknight games but that ship has sailed. The schools will never say no to the money or the exposure. I'm just glad Army has signed a contract with CBS College Sports that will ensure all its home game starting next year are on Saturdays. That's as it should be.

So, I'm psyched. I'm looking forward to seeing John Glenn dot the i on Saturday and to the reaction of the Ohio State fans when Navy takes the field. The game I'm a little more apprehensive about. But there will be more games and more Saturdays after that and for a few hours each weekend I will pretend there are no BCS Presidents--or college presidents, period now that I think of it--that there are no out of control boosters or control freak coaches. I'll just sit back, take it in and know that on December 12th sometime before dusk the players from Army and Navy will stand shoulder-to-shoulder when they play the alma maters.

All that other stuff ceases to matter or exist at a moment like that. And there will be others along the way.

Quick note from yesterday’s comments page. I’m not going to make a habit of responding to people’s posts because as far as I’m concerned that should be the reader’s forum to say whatever they want to say—short of profanity of course. That’s my bailywick but only on radio.

If you saw a comment from “John’s Friend,” on the BCS you should be aware of who my friend is: He’s Bill Hancock, one of the very best people I know, a truly wonderful man. As luck would have it, Bill is also the spokesman for—you guessed it—The BCS. Thus, it is his job to defend the indefensible. He’s too good a person to try the ridiculous, “it would affect our academic calendar,” route the Oregon President tried the other day so he went the, “most meaningful regular season in sports,” route.

Bill—please. You don’t think college hoops has a meaningful regular season when every single game the last three weeks is analyzed for its meaning in regard to seeding, to bubble teams, to who is in and who is out? There’s nothing like it. It would be the same with a football tournament. But I know you are paid to find a way to defend these guys so I forgive you and our next meal is on me. Unless you bring David Frohnmayer with you.

I mentioned the other day that, more often than not, I enjoy the people I encounter while doing my job. There are notable exceptions to that rule. High on that list would be college presidents in general—with a few exceptions and presidents of BCS colleges—with no exceptions.

I swear these people must have to pass a rigorous test in pomposity and hypocrisy before they are sworn in. Here’s the oath they take: “I David Frohnmayer promise to lie, obfuscate and say anything that comes into my head to defend the BCS, regardless of what might be right for the so-called ‘student-athletes,’ representing my school.”

David Frohnmayer, if you don’t know, is the president of the University of Oregon and is currently the chairman of something called the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee.

Yesterday, Frohnmayer put out a statement after the latest meeting of the group AGAIN defending the BCS and AGAIN saying there’s no reason at all to change the system. Maybe Chrysler and GM can hire this guy to put out statements saying that everything is just fine in the automobile business.

What is SO aggravating about guys like Frohnmayer and his BCS partners in crime is their extraordinary arrogance. Consider the following paragraph from Frohnmayer’s statement: “In the last six years I’ve read pundits, hear the pronouncements of broadcasters and collected several cubic feet of e-mail printouts from advocates of an NFL-style playoff system. Even those that go beyond sound bit certitude share two intertwined and fatal deficiencies: they disrespect our academic calendars and they utterly lack a business plan.”

Okay let’s break this down. Not first that Frohnmayer refers to an “NFL-style playoff system.” That’s his way of saying he would NEVER want the game professionalized. Oh God Forbid the BCS, which is completely underwritten by corporate America, should be professionalized. How about a Division 1-AA style playoff system? (Forget the NCAA’s silly new names). Or a Division 2 or a Division 3 playoff system? The D-3 schools, whose kids have NO scholarships and have to be serious students have a playoff system—like 1-AA and D-2 that runs right into December. How much you want to bet the graduation rate of the schools that make the D-3 playoffs is a LOT higher than the BCS’s top ten schools?

But that’s the least of it. The comment about disrespecting the academic calendars makes me want to throw something at this guy. How about the academic calendar for the basketball tournament? That’s in MARCH and APRIL, right near the end of the school year! A playoff could easily be held in January, mostly between semesters. STOP SAYING THIS IT IS A COMPLETE LIE. If Frohnmayer made a statement like this before Congress he would be—and should be—held in contempt. I certainly hold him in contempt. If he made it in a courtroom he would be charged with perjury.

Finally, the business plan. Give me a call Dave, I can put a business plan together for you in about 15 minutes and I know ZIP about business. Are you kidding me? By the way is President Obama a pundit or a broadcaster?

Frohnmayer, showing his rapier wit, jokingly said he had heard from fans at Auburn and his own school, Oregon who thought their teams belonged in past BCS championship games. No mention of Utah or Boise State. I guess they don’t exist, right Dave? Riddle me this Mr. BCS oversight chairman: How do you go UNDEFEATED in any sport and not even get a chance to compete for a championship?

What a jerk. I will say this one more time: This is one time when President Obama and Congress need to intervene in athletics. They need to tell these pompous hypocrites that if they don’t set up a playoff NOW the IRS is prepared to investigate whether they should retain 501C3 status. You see with the BCS presidents once you get by the “sound bit certitude,” only one thing matters: MONEY.

Clearly they’ve never been caught in a truth in the past or in Frohnmayer preposterous statement.

Okay, I got that off my chest. But I’m still mad. I think I’m going to find a picture of Frohnmayer, get my daughter to put together a Frohnmayer doll and throw things at it.