Branded president

NCAA boss must fix college football's championship system

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has a spanking new president but the same old goofy football championship format for its premier division. It would be hoped that the new can quickly change the old when he assumes command on Jan. 1.

The president-elect is Myles Brand. He's the first college president ever chosen to lead the NCAA, migrating, as he has, from the helm of Indiana University. Although Brand is a distinguished educator, he is now generally known only in one respect. Yes, the phrase, "The Man Who Fired Bobby Knight," is a barnacle attached to every mention of Brand's name as sure as Kuwait must always be identified as "oil-rich." Indeed, just as "Ph.D." follows President Brand's name, so too should the letters "TMWFBK" (an abbreviation of "The Man Who Fired Bobby Knight) so as to save space and time.

But, as Myles Brand, Ph.D., TMWFBK will soon discover, discharging General Knight was easy compared to getting the NCAA army to move in any direction. The moment may be propitious, though. The mere fact that an academician, not an athletic administrator, has been chosen to run the college big top, is symbolic. Moreover, college presidents throughout the land are speaking out in favor of reform, maintaining that henceforth student-athletes really and truly should attend class. Through the years, though, college presidents have periodically stood up on their hind legs and barked at the NCAA, only to too soon lose their will.

Anyway, President Myles, Ph.D., TMWFBK could use a splashy start, and revamping the college football playoff system would provide him a lift. The current arrangement, whereby only two teams are chosen to play in one game by coaches and journalists who vote on the basis of what highlights they caught on ESPN and by la-de-da computers that make a great to-do about something called "strength of schedule," is unfair and idiotic.

But then, it is also hypocritical. Every other NCAA sport and every other football division has a championship playoff. Indeed, the NCAA is virtually wholly owned and financed by what is marketed as March Madness. But a Division I football tournament is outlawed because somehow, it is claimed, football players would be kept out of their classrooms by engaging in the same thing -- a postseason tournament -- that the college athletes in all other sports do.

This sanctimony is made all the worse in that several dozen Division I football teams that have been playing since early August are kept on the practice field for weeks after the regular season ends so that they may prepare for one more game. Ah, the bowls. The current protracted football postseason not only manages to be more anti-education than other sports, but it also satisfies no one.

Let eight teams qualify to compete for the title, let them play the first round the week after the season ends, just like every other sport -- hello, we have airplanes nowadays -- and soon enough all the gladiators would be back in the classroom. Also, because everybody loves genuine competition more than they do the anachronistic bowls, the NCAA would make oodles more television millions, which President Myles, Ph.D., TMWFBK could then use to hire a battalion of gumshoes to make sure athletic departments stop cheating.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

 

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