College Football Playoff -- Go Bucks!

After playing an almost perfect game in the shutout of Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship, Ohio State was selected as the #4 seed in the new four-team NCAA playoff.  I'm thrilled for my Buckeyes!  They had an excellent season and are deserving of a shot at the national championship.  And yet . . . you could say the exact same thing about TCU and Baylor.  Those two teams and their fans are feeling confused and ripped-off, and it's understandable.

A four-team playoff is an improvement over the "beauty pageant" polls of the past, but it turns out that selecting four teams by committee is just as controversial and unsatisfactory as picking two by computer.  The suits-in-charge will very likely go to an 8-team playoff next year, which will be better.

But that still necessitates subjective selection, and some good teams will be left out.  Look at the the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  March Madness has a 64-team field.  (I think it's actually 66 if you count the "play-in" games.)  And yet, even with that many, there's still a selection committee, it's still subjective, and many teams on the bubble wind up disappointed.

The pro sports, with their well-defined playoff systems, do it much better.  Baseball -- the Long Season -- probably does it best of all.  After 162 regular-season games and a bunch of playoff games, the World Series features what are clearly each season's two best teams . . . probably.    

College football could never duplicate that, and that's OK.  The four-team playoff ain't much, but it's a start.

All of which is a very wordy way of saying . . . GO BUCKS!