Mountain West just wasting time with proposed playoff

Wednesday's Mountain West Conference call proposing an eight-team college football playoff lasted about 40 minutes too long. In other words, it lasted 40 minutes.

Half an hour into a wasteful discussion about the ill-conceived plan, some media urchin (OK, it was me) asked, "Can you do this without the Rose Bowl, Pac-10 and Big Ten? A playoff, historically, is an absolute non-starter with them."

If the MWC wants an ally, it should chat with Texas coach Mack Brown. (US Presswire)

Four seconds of dead air on the phone line -- finally, MWC commissioner Craig Thompson answered/fell-on-the-grenade:

"To answer you directly, no."

So why are we having this discussion? It's going on two weeks now that the Mountain West has hijacked the college football offseason with its whining about the inequity of the postseason. Fine. Great. We get that. The BCS is not perfect. It's what everyone can agree to at this point.

But a 10-year-old, nine-team league mostly west of the Rockies leading the charge is analogous to that poor sap in Tiananmen Square standing in front of all those tanks. Nice gesture but we all knew/know how it was/is going to end.

We feel for Tank Dude but at least he has his dignity. The Mountain West? It's trying to make sure that the likes of Utah get a better chance to play for a national championship. Nothing more. If Houston, Tulsa or Cal-Poly go undefeated next year, that's their problem.

Slow down, boys. You're trying to go from first date to wedding reception without even trying to get to first base. By breaking from the pack, the Mountain West goes into this fight down 10-1. While its non-BCS peers might support a playoff in theory, the WAC, Conference USA, MAC and Sun Belt also like their BCS money each year.

But let's not get bogged down in details. Every proposal/chat/threat/summit meeting about a college football playoff starts and ends with the words "Rose" and "Bowl". The Grandaddy Of Them All likes his rocking chair facing the sun, cocktails at 5 and a big parade once a year. He hasn't, and won't, go for anything except the traditional Pac-10 vs. Big Ten game.

And in case you haven't noticed those conferences have schools in some of the most populous states in the union. The Rose Bowl basically does a M*A*S*H* finale in ratings each year. It doesn't need the BCS or a playoff. It especially doesn't need the Mountain West. That's 21 teams out of Division I-A's 120 teams basically on the record as saying: Go ahead and have your playoff, we're just not going to be a part of it.

Admitting that simple fact would have saved the Mountain West a lot of copying, collating and e-mailing. Its four-page release on Wednesday proposed a 12-person selection committee replacing the BCS computers and polls. Teams would be evaluated every two years for automatic qualification status.

If I read it right, the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions would have been dangerously close to being at-large participants if the Mountain West playoff started today. That has to be more good news for the Rose Bowl. Conceivably, USC and Ohio State would have trouble sneaking into the playoff tent with their piddling three combined national championships the last seven years.

That 12-person committee -- one from each I-A league plus Notre Dame -- would replace the two human polls and the six computers. I'm no math/philosophy major, but if you want to eliminate bias, you don't reduce the number of voters. Try to find 12 cyborgs around the country who would evaluate the SEC the same as the Sun Belt.

The NCAA tournament works not so much because biases are eliminated on the 10-person Division I basketball committee, it's because the sample size is so large. The committee picks 34 at-large teams to go with the 31 automatic qualifiers.

That's 10 people picking 34 teams vs. 12 people picking eight. If this is about the Mountain West getting an automatic postseason berth -- and it is -- the league has missed the (extra) point. It is closer to getting a national championship through the existing system than it is through its convoluted playoff proposal.

Anybody notice that Utah finished second in the final AP poll?

If the MWC wants an ally it needs to lob a call to Austin, Texas. In a roundabout way, Mack Brown is championing the conference's cause. He would like the coaches poll to be independent. Currently, it isn't. The automatic final No. 1 vote goes to the winner of the BCS title game.

That means that not only Utah, but also Texas and USC were automatically eliminated from getting a share of the national championship the moment Florida and Oklahoma made it to the championship game. After winning the Fiesta Bowl, the Texas coach was upset that he couldn't vote his team No. 1 in the coaches poll at the end of the season. Except that, it turns out, he could. Utah coach Kyle Whittingham did it, going against an American Football Coaches Association mandate.

That mandate is essentially the only thing that legitimizes the BCS. It allows that glass football to go only to the winner of the title game.

Is it perfect? To answer you directly, no. But it's what everyone -- who matters -- can agree to for now.