John Walters

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

To begin with, congratulations. Your presidential election victory was positively Jeffersonian — both George and Thomas. Movin' on up? I'll say.

And, full disclosure, I voted for you. Me: a forty-ish white male who was raised in Arizona. You are quite a persuasive figure.

However, as I type this correspondence, I see that in a few hours you will appear on 60 Minutes and that during your appearance you will be lobbying for a playoff in college football.

"We should be creating a playoff system," you say in the interview. "I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this."

Mr. President-Elect, allow myself to introduce … myself.

College football is not only my overriding passion, it is my profession. And, as it will likely be your wont to assemble dissenting opinions in policy matters once you take the Oval Office, allow me to caution you that your opinion in this matter is not shared by all. In fact, other "serious fans" of the sport, such as ESPN College Football Live hosts Rece Davis and John Saunders, are on record for years now as concurring with me.

Thus, before you, the soon-to-be Most Powerful Man in the Free World, opt to alter the landscape of my favorite sport, please read this policy paper.

You are a busy man, so I will begin with my most ardent point (we'll call it Item 1): The beauty of the alchemy of the unknown. College football offers unforeseen plot twists and turns each Saturday. It is a fragile yet fertile ecosystem, something that man could not knowingly create yet, now that it exists in its present form, he can appreciate. To attempt to "fix it" would no less befoul the college gridiron landscape than would unregulated drilling in Alaska.

On Saturday, Maryland hosted North Carolina in a game with ACC championship implications for both schools. Meanwhile, next week, Oklahoma hosts Texas Tech in a game featuring a pair of teams neither of whom might win the Big 12. And yet, an overwhelming majority of Americans, if given a choice of only seeing one, would vote to watch the latter game (this despite sideline reporter Stacey Dales sporting a completely drenched look in the ACC contest).

In your proposed universe, Mr. President-Elect, you only say you want an eight-team playoff. I humbly submit that conference champions must be a part of that, or you will never get buy-in. You're not THAT powerful.

Therefore, the ACC champion would earn a berth. This contest between two slightly above average opponents (think, Republican primary) would hold the same import as one between two clearly superior adversaries (you … Hillary? Hello?).

The intrigue of a team remaining perfect…of games that one month earlier no one could have foreseen as having an impact (I refer you to the landmark case of Pittsburgh v. West Virginia, 2007), would be forfeited under your plan.

Simply put, the games between Labor Day and Thanksgiving would lose nearly all their juice — or have you noticed that college basketball is a back-burner sport from November through February? In terms that you can understand: What good is winning the South Carolina primary if you have to give back all the delegates and start anew?

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

Item 2: Just because something is different does not mean that it is flawed (a truism to which you of all Americans must subscribe). Thanksgiving is the only federal holiday that falls on a Thursday, but would anyone want to tweak Thanksgiving? Pass an executive order mandating that Virginia stop referring to itself as a commonwealth? Edit Pulp Fiction so that it runs chronologically?

Pulp Fiction, by the way, is the very analogue of college football’s playoff as presently constituted: non-chronological, maddening, filled with heroes, villains and inexplicable moments (Why is Mr. Wolf wearing a tuxedo and attending a cocktail party at 8:30 a.m.?), and yet ultimately brilliant. Satisfying. A masterpiece.

Item 3: You hold diplomas from one-fourth of the the eight Ivy League colleges (Columbia and Harvard). The Ivy League is a conference that does not determine a champion via playoff. Would you be willing to foment a change there as well?

Item 4: March Madness is at best half the tournament the BCS is. To win the NCAA basketball championship, a team must win six consecutive games, a run that almost every Division I team (with the possible exceptions of Oregon State and Northwestern) is capable of. To even advance to the BCS championship game a team must win twelve straight or twelve of thirteen. Which is more difficult?

Item 5: I will close with this, Mr. President-Elect. Just as “Drill, baby, drill” advocates fail to appreciate the grandeur of the millions of years of natural beauty they would be destroying in exchange for a few decades’ worth of oil, playoff advocates fail to appreciate that a postseason playoff would undermine the magic of the regular season. You may win this battle, and the majority of the populace may even agree with you, but it is a change I don’t believe in.

You would be wrong, Mr. President-Elect. And it takes a brave soul to raise his voice against the masses when they clamor for a short-sighted solution that fails to take into account all of the consequences. You, certainly, must appreciate that.

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