No Shock To The System Needed

There was a recent story about how 13 juniors from Ohio State were allowed to make arrangements with the NFL to assess if and where they would be chosen in next year's draft. I wasn't as alarmed as some people, who claimed "Wow, that's like the entire team!"

That math notwithstanding, I can explain that Ohio State will usually go out of its way to help one of its athletes make an informed decision about whether to declare for a draft, be it NFL or NBA. After all, a man like Jim Tressel is fully aware that high school football's elite come to Columbus for two reasons:
1) To fuck a lot of girls
2) To get ready for the NFL (I realize that's basically the same thing)

Furthermore, it's certainly a help to one's coaching efforts when one's players gain feedback regarding what holes in their game could potentially be costing them millions of dollars. The majority of these players, I believe, will take the information that the League gives them and prepare for their respective senior seasons accordingly. I would guess four or five will take the leap and declare. The rest will wait and take a shot at bigger money down the road.

Speaking of, I suppose some of you are pissed off about the Ohio State-LSU matchup, and to be totally truthful, you can all suck down a used catheter bag like a cherry-flavored Capri Sun. Just because you assholes want to fill out some brackets before Christmas is no reason to drastically alter the landscape of college football.

Besides, what we have now IS a playoff. It's a two-team playoff. Just because we're over the third-best team instead of the ninth-best team or the 17th-best team doesn't change the structure of that. And why should a potential 1-seed, that (typically) goes the whole season taking care of their business be rewarded with the chance to blow out Clemson, right back on the same starting line with 15 other teams that (most of which) couldn't get it done in the regular season. Fuck those teams and fuck you. Better luck next year.

I don't understand how this matchup supports anyone's argument for a playoff. If we had a playoff, this is exactly the game that we would have: two teams with pretty good reasons to be there, methodically picked from a handful of other teams with pretty good reasons to be there.

"Oh, but Antonio," you'd say, as I'd reluctantly turn to listen. "At least with a playoff, everything would be settled ON THE FIELD." What about those first 12 games? Were they not played on the field as well? All you do with a playoff is reward a team that got hot at the end of the year, one that, more often than not, doesn't have proper claim to such a mulligan.

And I hear the argument about strength of schedule. But I don't understand how a conference that's "been beating each other up the whole season" could have TEN FUCKING BOWL-ELIGIBLE TEAMS! How tough are those alleged beatings if no one is out of bowl contention? I've heard people say Ohio State would be lucky to go .500 in the SEC. What bullshit. Mississippi State went 4-4. You're telling me they couldn't beat Mississippi Goddamn State?

(And how is it the fault of the Big Ten that they weren't stupid enough to put together another opportunity for their team to get knocked down in the polls in a conference championship game? They're "pussified" because you decided to play on Thanksgiving Week and they didn't? Isn't it a bit pussified that LSU is playing a home game for the BCS title?)

And all this fucking money that a playoff would supposedly generate? Where do you think that's gonna come from? That money will get yanked out of your so-called league championships and all the other, lesser bowls. And with the same teams playing in more games, you're actually preventing fan dollars from all of these other bowl-eligible teams from getting into the picture. Do you think the TV money from those first-round games is going to be so much better than Shitty Bowl TV Money? More than enough to facilitate a change?