The National Collegiate Football Championship: The Debate Rages On

Spotlight on a delightful San Francisco Chronicle post-season college football writeup

Well... the final result are in. The Salt Lake Tribune reports this morning that our beloved Utah Utes finish the season #2 in the Associated Press Sportswriters poll, and #4 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. The University of Florida thus lays claim to the "undisputed" title of National Champion, of course, by virtue of #1 ratings in both polls, and their win in last night's BCS National Championship bowl game. So now that the 2008 NCAA collegiate football season has drawn to a final close, will the question of which team in the country is #1 finally be put to rest?

Heavens no! The debate rages on, as evidenced by the various reader comments lodged under the above cited SLTrib story.

And we learn this morning that at least one Texas congressman is contemplating corrective legislation to replace the so-called BCS Championship with a playoff system, thereby joining Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff in proposing to utilize the power of Big Government to "fix" the nation's "broken" collegiate football playoff system.

Let no one argue that college football is not serious business in America, gentle readers.

The Standard-Examiner has a fine editorial this morning, arguing that certain football fans might want to take a deep breath and "chill out" a little bit.

Following the Std-Ex editors' lead, and in the spirit of putting a cap on the now concluded college football season, we'll spotlight a San Francisco Chronicle sports page piece, which puts the collegiate football championship debate in clear perspective, in our belief. Although we differ with columnist RayRatto's conclusion that Florida's win over Alabama was "more convincing" than Utah's 31-17 rout, we believe he gets it mainly right. We accordingly incorporate Mr. Ratto's lead paragraphs below:

It may be instructive that the BCS championship game aired opposite "Antichrist" on the History Channel, given that there is some debate over which institution Americans find more objectionable.
The BCS, we mean. Not the History Channel, although if we see one more showing of "Hitler's Bodyguard," we may regard the topic as open for debate.
But we digress. Truth is, Florida and Oklahoma clashed Thursday night to convince hearts and minds that either should be more fondly regarded this morning than Utah. A dichotomy, we think you will all agree, that nobody on the planet saw coming.
While it is a fact that the BCS bought the rights to call the winner of its game a national champion, and while it is equally true that Florida is a superior team by any rubric, most notably the 24-14 win over the Sooners on Thursday in Miami, the institution and its mechanisms are so reviled that people were willing to A) extol the virtues of a Mountain West team, and B) reconsider the value of the once-loathed Associated Press Top 25.
(This last part is particularly horrifying, as your humble author is a voter in the AP Poll, an institution that, with modern technological advancements, has become a new way to tell the sportswriter of your choice that he or she would serve America better as a rail-yard hobo).

We invite you to read the full column below, which we found to be truly delightful:

• Sorry Utah but BCS beast lives on

The floor is hereby open for comments.