WEEKLY WHINE

Collegiate fix

It's time to fix college American football.

No, not like that, UNLV fans.

College American football has myriad problems that are preventing it from being a useful part of students' lives.

• It's too big. Many college American football programmes dwarf the other sports at their schools, and some even dwarf the academic programmes at their schools.
• It's too insular. College American football players effectively play by different rules, with all too frequent reports that professors have been pressured to pass players or otherwise fudge their grades to ensure their academic eligibility.
• It's too mismanaged. The hypocrites who "lead" the NCAA siphon millions of dollars for themselves whilst simultaneously refusing to permit the players who work hard to earn, accept, or even look at money.

So what can be done? Well, the GoobNet Special Projects Enhancement and Enforcement Division [SPEED] normally lives for this sort of challenge. But when we presented this task to them, most of them ran away screaming. They are now working on an easier problem: rescuing the stranded people in New Orleans.

But Ron and Gaby are still here, so we told them to fix college American football. Their findings were as follows.

• Divisions I-AA, II, and III are acceptable and are not in need of repair.
• Divisions I-AA, II, and III have playoff systems.
• Therefore, Division I-A requires a playoff system.

So when we read that, we sighed and sent Ron and Gaby to New Orleans. In the meantime, since a playoff system is the obvious first step, here you go.

SUPER COLLEGIATE OBLONG OVOID PLAYOFF [SCOOP]

The 119 NCAA Division I-A members are to be sorted, 1 through 119. For your reference, Sports Illustrated has ranked the University of Southern California first and Florida International University 119th. That will give us the brackets for the seven week playoff.

In week 1, the first placed team gets a bye, and the second placed team plays the 119th team. The third plays the 118th, and so on down to the 60th-61st place game. In each case, the team that wins takes over the higher ranking, and the losing team is relegated to the lower ranking.

The second week features games between the 1st-60th, 2nd-59th, and so on. Then the pairings are 1-30, 2-29, and so on. Then 1-16, 2-15, and so on, at which point the top bracket becomes a simple elimination tournament. Teams that lose continue to play in the lower bracket, similar to a double elimination tournament.

The end result is a complete, objective, unambiguous ranking of all Division I-A teams, 1 to 119. As a special bonus, we have provided for a Toilet Bowl game, which decides last place, in the same week as the championship game. Now all we need is relegation provisions.

PROJECTED SCOOP RESULTS FOR 2005

Let's start with the Sports Illustrated preseason rankings mentioned above. If we seeded the teams according to those, this is how the rankings would change from one week to the next as the season progressed:

Congratulations to the University of Michigan. If they don't actually win the 2005 Division I-A championship, it's obviously because the NCAA hasn't implemented a playoff system.

To follow this hypothetical season, start with the preseason column above. For each game listed in the Week 1 schedule below, find the teams ranked accordingly in the preseason ranking. For example, in the 35-86 matchup, Missouri is in 35th, and Wake Forest is in 86th. Now move over to the Week 1 ranking: Missouri is now in 86th, and Wake Forest has jumped to 35th, meaning that Wake Forest has upset Missouri. So next week, Wake Forest will play Utah in the 26-35 matchup.

SCOOP SCHEDULE