Wetzel’s playoff plan: Money talks
Texas – not TCU, nor Cincinnati or Boise State – is playing Alabama in the BCS championship game because, well, its name is Texas.
The system is designed to reward the big brands of the sport. Just as important as what you did this week, or this month, is what you did a decade ago. Perception is everything. The BCS sells this as fair.
Maybe Texas is the best team, maybe it isn’t. To the naked eye there’s no easy answer.
It is why, according to a Sports Illustrated poll, 90 percent of fans don’t approve of the BCS. We want to find out on the field.
In response to the system’s crushing unpopularity, the BCS has hired a Washington public relations firm, Ari Fleischer Sports Communications, to “defend” its image. The results have been comical. The firm is used for political fights, not sports ones. It’s hard-wired to operate with typical Beltway gumption, which is why it’s failing miserably.
Fleischer arrived with a dismissive attitude that all the rubes in fly-over country know nothing and have some nerve to demand change from the entrenched powers profiteering off of them. So he launched a social media campaign full of Washington ruling class arrogance.
“With a playoff, the more you move down the rankings, the more teams have identical records and arguments about why they should be in,” the BCS wrote (if this even counts as English) on Twitter.
Really, choosing among three 9-3 teams for a playoff bid is somehow more difficult than five unbeaten ones? The BCS powers actually think someone would believe this?
On one of its propaganda websites, the BCS asks whether a playoff would really satisfy everyone?
“NO!!!” it boldly declares.
Who knew Ari Fleischer wrote like a sixth-grade girl on an iPhone?
Give the campaign credit for this: It’s hardly bothering to explain why the BCS is any good.
Instead, it launched a clown-show website (playoffproblem.com) that claims there can’t be a playoff because college football is incapable of figuring out how one might work.
Sure, every other sports entity on the planet can do it, but we somehow can’t decide how many teams would be in it or where they’d play and so on? So stop asking.
This is a ploy designed to create gridlock. It’s based on the idea fans lack basic mental competency. (After all, how smart could you be? When was the last time you attended a Georgetown cocktail party?).
Because Ari Fleischer, BCS director Bill Hancock and the rest of the suits are confounded by the mysteries of a playoff, I’ll gladly explain it for them. Below is a simple 16-team playoff that will make them more money, offer more excitement and create a more equitable competition.
Rivals.com
12/7/9
