Everyone Not Wanting a Playoff Is the Rose Bowl's Fault

Posted May 01, 2008 8:09AM By Brian Cook (RSS feed)

Annoying 'Bama-bot Ray Melick:

The brick wall blocking a playoff will still be standing Wednesday afternoon.

But maybe - just maybe - the blockheads of the Big Ten and Pac-10 will begin to see the cracks.

Springing to the defense of his Pac-10 counterpart is Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who together with Hansen forms a kind of Axis of Obstruction.

Matt Hayes:

Please, everyone. No more questions about who runs college sports. We give you Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten.

Dick Harmon, man who does not watch college football:

A true college football championship is being held up by two conferences - the Pac-10 and Big Ten.

ESPN's Mark Schablach:

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen have long been opposed to any sort of playoff, as their leagues remain attached to the Rose Bowl like toddlers to a bottle.

In the immortal words of Buzz Bissinger: sorry, various media members, but you're full of s---. Why after the jump.

Here's why:

Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said if the proposed plus-one model for determining college football's national champion "looked like a playoff, smelled like a playoff and felt like a playoff," it probably was a playoff.

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe said his league's board of directors is adamantly opposed to any kind of "NFL-type playoff."

WAC commissioner Karl Benson ... said they were still "very pleased with the current system."

Even Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White... left a conference room at an oceanfront resort smiling and proclaiming, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The kicker... that's Schablach's article! The sentence after the Rose Bowl suckling one reads "More surprising, [Big 12 commissioner Dan] Beebe announced Big 12 schools voted in March to oppose the plus-one model."

This is only surprising if you can't read. Take this piece from January:

Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe said his presidents weighed postseason modifications last spring, were united against a playoff and reaffirmed that stance in the wake of Adams' proposal.

It apparently shocks the media when the Big 12 doesn't completely reverse its stance in a few months. The universal opposition to any college football playoff from not two but four major conferences and Notre Dame has been obvious for months unless you get paid to write about college football for a newspaper.

Yeah, the Big Ten and Pac 10 are opposed to a playoff. This is doubly unsurprising since they have a longstanding relationship with the Rose Bowl and the proposed "Plus One" guarantees that every Big Ten playoff game would be a road game. Even if the Rose Bowl didn't exist, the Big Ten would have to be the biggest bunch of saps this side of Kevin White to agree to Mike Slive's patently self-serving proposal.

So, in a sense, they are an "axis of obstruction." But that axis encompasses everyone except Mike Slive, mainstream media, so shut up about it. The correct answer to "who is preventing a college football playoff?" is "everyone." So says everyone, directly.

Sincerely,
Basement-Dwelling Troglodyte who, while unworthy to lick the soles of your feet, can actually read and stuff and thus humbly submits this correction

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-01-2008 @ 2:03PM

einsteinrig said...

exactly...i was surprised that, after i saw an espn headline saying that the big east was against a playoff, i was reading stories painting delaney as the wrench in the works.

...and since i'm a michigan guy, i can say it - delany IS the devil. but not because of this.

5-01-2008 @ 11:50AM

Skapanza said...

Thanks for the body of evidence and links. It seems like poor Pete just keeps running into brick walls of logic here. He's apt to jump on just about headline he reads and go along with it. Obviously the Big-10 and Pac-10 don't want playoffs. Who is going to Ann Arbor or Minneapolis for winter break? No one. No surprise that it turns out the SEC is the only major conference in favor of the idea.

5-01-2008 @ 12:26PM

Noah said...

Normally I'm right with you, Brian. But when BON posted this ESPN poll (http://www.burntorangenation.com/2008/4/30/470775/distractions-from-property), it became sort of obvious that "the commissioners are not exactly in step" with the fans, as he said.

Granted, they aren't exactly subject to the whim of the people (who pays the commissioners, anyway?), but aren't they missing something here?

5-01-2008 @ 12:36PM

wile_e8 said...

Noah, the article isn't about the commissioners being out of step with the fans. It's about everyone trying to blame the Big Ten and Pac 10 for failing to change the BCS, when practically everyone but the SEC is against changing it. Or, lots of commissioners are out of step with the fans, not just Jim Delaney.

5-01-2008 @ 6:06PM

Timmy Tebow's unworthy jockstrap said...

Everyone in the world is against a playoff system...except 25% of D1A teams (SEC + ACC).

How exactly is Mike Slive self-serving? He took the plus-one cause after Auburn was burned by the BCS and 3 teams from his conference have won the NC since he took that cause 5 years ago. His conference has benefited the MOST from the current BCS system, which pretty much gives any 1-loss or better SEC team the benefit of the doubt over a 1-loss team from any other conference (see: 2003 LSU, 2006 Florida, 2007 LSU) because everyone simply assume the SEC is that much better than everyone else. Mike Slive is the commissioner of conference which has benefited most from in the decade old BCS NC system (4-0 in the BCS NCG) and he's leading the fight against it.

But instead of taking the opportunity to decry the decision to come out of South Florida or using your pedestal to publicly ridicule the Big Ten and PAC 10 commissioners, you defend their actions because "the Big 12 and Big East commissioners" did it too. Well great, your precious Big Ten must be vindicated because the mighty WAC agrees! Yes, it is clearly the biased media and their unabashed SEC favoritism that's at fault here for not focusing enough on the peripheral schools blocking a playoff system rather than schools with money and power leading the fight against it. School like, say, Michigan. Great job, Brian Cook for exposing the true villains in this playoffs saga: the media. Let's congratulate the Big Ten commissioner for a job well done for standing up to the big bad SEC. Everyone is a winner today...except for the coaches, the players, and the fans of the game itself.

Mark this this as #819723 Best Moment in Big Ten History: Big Ten sells out to fans everywhere in order to make a buck and the conferences unrelenting trolls side with out-of-touch old white men smoking cigars in some lodge, remenissing about the time-honored traditions of Rose Bowl parades, leather helmets, and segregated football teams. Oh no, no..scratch that last part, some "traditions" are best forgotten.

5-02-2008 @ 2:22PM

Vol Fan said...

What Tebow's jockstrap said...well put, sir...

5-02-2008 @ 4:58PM

George B Vieto said...

The college football playoff is a just a dream. The fans will just have to settle for the college football coaches to play politics and sell to the powers that be why their team should play in the championship game.

5-02-2008 @ 6:17PM

Mike said...

Tebow and Vol..

Brian wasn't necessarily exonerating the Big Ten and Pac-10 for opposing it. He was just pointing out the fact that all the blame can't be heaped on the two conferences. They deserve their fair share, but how come nobody blames the Big East or the Big 12? Or Notre Dame for that matter? All you hear is about the Big Ten and Pac 10 not wanting a playoff because it will upset their traditions, instead of getting the whole story that 2/3rds of the BCS conferences oppose the idea.

FWIW, I am in favor of some sort of plus1, or as Brian has diagrammed, a 6-team playoff, much like the NFL conferences.

5-03-2008 @ 9:56AM

idlegolfer said...

Having endured 12 years of life in Alabama I know full well that every nitwit down there has the same mind set as Ray Mellick. Ray also had or has a radio show on WJOX in Birmingham and is his bio he professed his hatred for the Big Ten, really an objective journalist.

5-04-2008 @ 4:18PM

KGar said...

After watching Big 11 champ Ohio State the last few years the commish is smart to keep this system. They are truly the worst of the 6 major conferences, they have a ton of votes in the writers poll which over inflates their actual strength vs other conferences and we all know if the Buckholes are your best team of the 11 you are in serious trouble. Delaney is smart, keep money pouring in for useless minor bowl games which the Big 11 loves and just hope your champ doesn't have to play in a national title game and get embarrassed every time.

5-05-2008 @ 5:40AM

Hey Tim Tebow's unworthy jock strap-I was just "remenissing" also and I remembered that the conference commissioners have absolutely no power to determine whether there will or won't be a one plus whatever playoff, college presidents will make that decision. The only presidents I know of that are campaigning for this are a few from the academically challenged SEC.