Did you see that the Associated Press has asked the yahoos involved with the B(C)S to discontinue the practice of using their ratings to help determine who plays for the (mythical) national championship?

What made me shoot milk through my nose as I was having my morning bowl of corn flakes, though, was that the AP felt the "integrity" of its poll was being compromised. I haven't heard anything that unintentionally hilarious since the time Slick Willie tried to determine what "is" is.

The college football polls have lacked integrity for so long that their relevance is, at best, minimal. The AP poll is chocked full of regionally-biased sportswriters, many of whom wouldn't know a forward pass if it came flying into the press box and hit them in their pizza-filled piehole.

And the coaches' poll is even more hilarious. The coaches themselves, in many instances, leave the filling out of the polls to one of their SID's or student aides, some of whom can't tell the difference between Miami (Fla.), Miami (Ohio) and Miami-Dade Community College. Strangely enough, many of these aides will go on to one day become athletic directors at a major institution of higher learning (see Pederson, Steve).

I have long been a proponent of a college football playoff system. In fact, I dare say that I was actually one of the first sportswriters in Nebraska to put together a 16-team playoff system back in the mid 80's (using the majority of the bowls in play at the time).

I will say this about the B(C)S system...for putting together a 16-team bracket to determine a national champion, it's a great setup (even without the AP and coaches polls). But it's horrible for a 1 vs. 2 matchup, as this year again has proven.

Ask any college president, though, and they'll tell you that a playoff will be too much for a college kid to handle with finals, the long season, yadda yadda yadda. And to that I say...fish feces.

If classes and the length of a season are a problem, tell me why Div. I-AA, Div. II and Div. III teams -- along with NAIA and junior college -- use a 16-team playoff bracket to determine its national champion?

If classes and the length of a season are a problem, why does basketball (and wrestling, for that matter) run from November through March? If there is a problem, why are college basketball players all but absent for six weeks while they bounce from conference tournament to sub-regionals, regionals and -- if they're fortunate enough -- the Final Four???

Do college presidents think we are idiots? It's not about missed classes or rescheduled finals or a zillion-game season, boys and girls, it's about the scratch the schools get for sending 100 players, 20 coaches, 10,000 support staff, school officials and other hangers-ons (state legislators, financially-endowed patrons, paid-off tutors, "welcoming committee" babes, etc., etc.) and the exposure a team gets from playing Podunk State in the Enron-MCI Toilet Bowl in Walla Walla, Washington.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no national champion in Div. I college football UNTIL the college presidents pull their highly-educated craniums out of their airtight backsides and come clean with the fact that the B(C)S is all about the Benjamins and scrap it for a true 16-team, one-and-done playoff format.

That's my rant and I'm stickin' to it...

Bowl games mean a lot of money to schools and conferences, simple as that. That is why we have bowl games instead of a playoff system. If a simple way of guaranteeing as much money would be generated with a playoff system as with the bowl system, there would be a playoff system in place next year. Money drives college football, simple as that.

Much like the Wrestling polls. Ban Mikey

Yea lets get rid of Mikey and go back to the way it use to be before NWI.

Yeah, let's ban Mikey and go back to the good ol' days of having to rely on bi-weekly scraps from the Weird-Herald! Stu Pospisil rocks! He couldn't beat a throwing dummy in a six minute match, but he knows everything there is to know about wrestling! Maybe Shatel will stop writing articles ripping on Callahan and Petersen long enough to go cover the Metro Tournament!