A Final Word on Pageantry!

The 2006 College Football Season is Over!

Now I have to find new subjects to write about until August.

The 2006 College Football Season featured a handful of really good teams but no great team with Florida surprising the country beating what everyone thought was far and away the best team in the country.

The season was highlighted by a Saturday of seven matchups of Top 25 teams, An epic rivalry game that now doesn't seem so epic, and a Watershed game that brought the sport an element it had never seen before.

Whether Florida were champions for a whole season. or for one well coached night depends on your view of college football's postseason. Paul and I will argue this to our graves but I simply believe college football's regular season doesn't provide an adequate sample to give us the two best teams in the country to play for an undisputed championship. Especially when the bowl games don't confirm the arbitrary criteria by which they are determined.

And you simply don't see the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, or NCAA basketball rushing to emulate College Football's postseason anytime soon.

Paul makes good arguments but they aren't even the ones given by the college presidents, conference commissioners, and bowl organizers themselves. Instead of admitting they are all in bed with each other, they cite "academics" as if the cure for Cancer is held up because USC and Florida are spending an extra week doing Oklahoma Drills.

My problem with college football isn't as much the BCS as the arrogance of the people that run it. They refuse to give credence to the demand for a playoff system and don't even bother to argue the merits of their system, as Paul admittedly does. This year they allowed (while kicking and screaming) for an elite small conference team to play in a BCS bowl if they met a criteria which all but forces them to go undefeated. The result was the most fun game in the history of college football which the country is still talking about even after a champion has been crowned.

Boise State and the Fiesta Bowl is proof that when college football's hierarchy thinks outside of its ignorant box, good things can happen. One Shining Moment can happen.