So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Assorted Thoughts about the Bowl season and the end of the worst college football season ever:

-The national championship game would have been a lot better if the television coverage wasn't so amazingly bad. As a rule of thumb, championship events should never be covered by networks that don't have regular season broadcasts. That's why you won't find me complaining too much about ESPN televising any championship. Yes they tend to employ more than their fair share of mouth-breathing idiots, but they are generally technically proficient and don't do stupid stuff like cut back from commercials too late or scream into the mic about how big this fourth down is when it is actually third down.
-Bowl records are always cited by the mainstream media as evidence of the relative strengths of each conference, but they are actually don't tell us much at all. The Pac 10's 5-0 record this year was as much a function of who they played as the strength of the conference. Likewise, while there is no doubt that this was a down year for the Big Ten, if OSU had not made the BCS, and all the Big Ten teams slid down a spot, the conferences record would have been two or three games better.
-All non-BCS games should be played on or before January 1. Period.
-Rich Rodriguez did a couple of interviews on WTKA a few days back and he was asked about a college football playoff. Most of his response was boilerplate, "we want what is best for the kids" type stuff, but he did make one interesting comment about a potential "Plus-Three" format. Now I would love to see a 16 team playoff with all conference champs getting an auto bid. But any system that destroys the bowls has no realistic chance of being implemented in our lifetime, the big money conferences won't allow it. But a "Plus-Three", where the top 8 teams play in the four BCS games, and then the winners of those games advance to national semifinals might actually be a plausible alternative.
-With so few games on January 1, I decided to watch my copy of last year's Cap One Bowl vs Florida. It's amazing how long ago that game seemed, yet they started the broadcast talking about what a great citizen Tim Tebow was. It was enough to make Thom Brennaman cry.
-As I mentioned before, our version of the Golden Rankings had a horrible bowl season, going 14-18. Just like the BCS, we will tinker with the formulas in the off-season to make sure it fails in a completely new way next year.
-Only 237 days until kickoff against Western Michigan. 90 days until the Spring Game at the Big House. 24 days until national signing day.