One final late night for college football

OK. The college football season is over, and I'll have to go into withdrawal for the next eight months. Last night's BCS championship was a good game, in doubt until the last few minutes and with plenty of spectacular plays. It was a game I stayed up to watch (why TV's dictatorial influence puts these games on until midnight on a Thursday night is another issue), and I wasn't disappointed.

Neither team was my choice for the championship, and I have an abiding distaste for both head coaches, but since someone had to win, I relished seeing Mack Brown lose more than seeing Nick Saban win. Roll Tide! (Too bad Auburn didn't succeed in knocking you off and Nebraska failed by one second knocking Texas off.) If I had a vote in the final polls, it would go to undefeated Boise State, the team that still gets no respect, despite one of the winningest records in college football over the past three or four years.

I've watched a lot of bowl games over the past couple of weeks, and I'm the first to admit there are too many of these games over too long a stretch of time and at kickoff times that make no sense to anyone but television executives. Most of the bowls are nothing but profit-making transactions for the teams and host cities and excuses for partying by fans (thus, Memphis was an ideal bowl city for ECU, with its party school reputation). I watched these games not because they were meaningful or because I wanted to see how area teams stacked up against other opponents (though I did), but because college football is a terrific spectator sport that is ideally suited to television. Instant replay and multiple camera locations have turned watching football on TV into a viewer-friendly fascination. The team loyalties and passions of college football make it the most exciting of major sports. I still watch NFL games occasionally, but the loyalties and passions are not the same when grown men are playing for million of dollars per game.

There's much wrong with college football (and college sports in general) — the overwhelming control of television, the monstrous budgets, the non-playoff, non-decisive BCS bowl system, the odiously extravagant coaches' salaries (Mack Brown — $5 million a year, plus bonuses; Nick Saban — $3.5 million or something like that) — but it achieves its purpose of being grand entertainment.

I'll miss it over the next eight months.

We're No. 1; No, we are!

Florida beat Oklahoma last night in the BCS championship game, so that makes Florida the national champions of college football, right? I'm not so sure, and I'm far from alone. Some people who watch a lot more college football and know a lot more about it than I are not convinced.

Utah had already defeated Alabama in a convincing fashion to complete its undefeated season. Anybody else got an undefeated season? Nope. That, it would seem, should make Utah the national champion. Or maybe not.

ESPN columnist Rick Reilly makes the argument for Utah being No. 1. He also argues for the Bowl Championship Series' monopoly on deciding who gets the most prestigious and most financially lucrative bowls to be declared illegal. The Utah attorney general has launched an investigation into the BCS. President-elect Obama has said he wants to see a collegiate football championship playoff system. Might the Obama Justice Department file suit against the BCS? My guess is that Obama has more pressing matters to contend with, but an anti-trust suit might not be out of the question.

The larger issue here is the predominance of intercollegiate sports over the higher education interests of colleges and universities. Television dictates when games are played (which is why so many college games are played at night during TV's primetime instead of on Saturday afternoon, as God intended), and athletic revenues and prestige have universities in a painful grip. The big-time football and basketball powers of the NCAA turn that sports publicity into increased donations and student applications. Sports exercise greater control over higher education than any chancellor or professor would want to admit, and the situation hasn't improved since the Knight Commission began its critique 10 years ago.

A federal lawsuit or indictment against the BCS might finally get the colleges', coaches' and TV networks' attention.

So many bowl games (that's not a complaint)

My wife is complaining that I've been watching football every day lately. I'll admit, I've watched so many bowl games that they have all begun to run together. Not only did I watch the one I was actually interested in, the one involving my alma mater, I watched others as well, those involving teams I had not followed through the season and, in many cases, I had not seen play a game all year.

I'm a casual fan, not a fanatic. I don't watch game after game every weekend. I almost never watch Sports Center. I'm even less interested in navel-gazing about sports than I am interested in navel-gazing about politics.

But there are so many bowl games, and so many of them are good games involving excellent teams. Boise State's game (forgive me for not remembering whom they were playing or what was the name of the bowl) was a case in point. Boise has had an innovative and powerful offense. And I had some interest in Notre Dame's bowl game against Hawaii; I was interested in seeing whether Notre Dame would lose yet another bowl game. Last night's game, Alabama vs. Utah in the Sugar Bowl, promised to be a blowout. Alabama had been ranked No. 1 for most of the season. Utah, I thought, would stand little chance. But I turned on the TV soon enough to see Utah score three touchdowns in the first half of the first quarter! I couldn't stay up to see the end of the game, to see whether Alabama's comeback would be successful, but I watched long enough to see some extraordinary football performances. When I got up this morning, I went to the computer to check the score and see that Utah had held on, convincingly, making Utah the only Division I team with a perfect record and, thereby, giving the Utes a claim to a national championship.

The problem is, there is no real national championship for Division I (or Bowl Championship Series) teams. Florida and Oklahoma will play in the National Championship bowl, but disputes will linger, no matter how the game comes out. Both teams have lost games, giving their conquerors a claim to a national championship as well. The only solution is a true playoff system for Division I teams. Commentators on one of the bowl games I watched (forgive me, they all run together) had a good proposal: Play the four big, traditional bowls (Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange) on New Year's Day. Then take the two highest-ranked, most convincing victors in those games and pit them against each other a week later in a national championship game. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than the current, much-criticized methodology.

But my wife won't like it. It will still mean a lot of good games on the TV, and I'll find a large number of them interesting enough to watch, at least for a while.