Ari Fleischer's BCS Job: Stop A College Football Playoff

The Daily Beast:

On Monday, just after noon, I received a telephone call from Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary to George W. Bush. In ordinary times, Fleischer and I might be political opponents. But on that autumn afternoon, we were conspiring about how to handle a political hot potato more explosive than health care, more fraught than Afghan troop escalation, and more frighteningly complex than cap-and-trade.

We were talking about college football.

Read the whole story: The Daily Beast

Comments

[jugganaut]

01:47 AM on 12/04/2009

They hired the right man for the job. Fleischer has a lot of experience defending clusterf**ks.

[cybolt]

04:51 PM on 12/03/2009

Ari Fleischer--defender of the conservative status quo. Anything he supports, I'm against.

Like all articles defending the BCS system, it simply fails to address why the current system is better than a playoff other than 1) tradition, 2) marginalization of the traditional bowl games and 3) a longer season all of which are ridiculous and/or false.

An eight team playoff starting in mid December would:

1. Constitute only three extra weekends and three extra games for two finalists.

2. Still end by the first week in January.

3. Allow you to use the six major bowls--Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, Cotton and Gator--as playoff sites, rotating first, second and final rounds between them.

4. Allow the major bowls to maintain their importance and prestige in a "one and done" system.

You dont think Florida fans are going to turn out for the first round game? Alabama? Consider who they'd play and what the bracket would like today, using the top eight BCS teams:

#1 Florida v. #8 Ohio State
#4 TCU v. #5 Cincy

#3 Texas v. #6 Boise State
#2 Alabama v. #7 Oregon

'Bama and Oregon to start?? That rocks!! Florida and OSU with the winner playing... say TCU? How could it get better? Answer: it cant.