The NFL Championship Series: An Open Letter to Bill Simmons

I sent this to Bill Simmons following the New Year's Day festivities in which Michigan, a team many thought should have been playing for the national championship, got throttled by USC and in which Boise State, the undefeated champion of a "non-power" conference, beat Oklahoma in a thrilling contest. I sent it to Bill because that gives it the greatest chance that a lot of people will read it. But just in case he doesn't respond, here it is:

Just to show how absurd the current method for determining the best team in college football's "Bowl Division" is, I think the NFL should have an NFL Championship Series one year. The top two teams in the league would be determined by a combination of polls (with electors selected on a purely random basis, and with no thought to football knowledge or general intelligence) and proprietary, undocumented computer algorithms. These two teams would compete in the NFLCS Championship Game.

All the other teams with non-losing records could play in meaningless neutral-site games sponsored by corporations with names that are humiliating to all the participants. These could be portioned out according to warm-weather dictates and the NFL's desire to grow the brand. For example, the champions of the NFC West and the AFC West could meet in the Qwest Battle for the West Bowl in Los Angeles, so that the NFL could claim that there was in fact professional football in L.A. Chicago could forsake its usual cold-weather playoff jaunt to play in the Original Whizzinator Battle for the North Bowl in Jacksonville, but Baltimore would probably be selected to compete in the NFLCS Championship Game Presented by Depends Undergarments, so a replacement would be selected from among the wild-card teams. Then Lovie Smith could spend a month bitching to the press about how his team deserved a shot and how the pollsters are idiots and computers never played a game. If that wasn't enough, under this system, we'd have exciting matchups between teams like Denver and St. Louis in the Code Name The Cleaner.com Bowl.

I'm convinced that, if the NFL used this system for one year, the NCAA would realize how stupid it looks for not having a playoff and knuckle under to the pressure from everyone involved in college football besides whoever's making money from the current system. Thoughts?

One more point in the ongoing discussion. Thanks to Robert Kahn for encouraging me to write this up.

The Sport-Watching Life Home

Spam-O-Matic Home