Picture this scene. It’s an ungodly hot September day and our Florida Gators football team take the field to deliver their traditional, early-season Charles Sumner-style canning of a non-conference powerhouse St. Cecilia’s School of the Blind and Anorexic.
The score is being run up faster than your blood alcohol content at that 9 a.m. pregame, and you are starting to believe this 2011 Gators team could actually be destined for a bowl not named after a search engine website or fast-food chain.
Our quarterback (insert either Brantley/Reed/Burton/Driskel or Uncle Rico) chucks a long bomb toward the end zone. Can you see it? (Try to think back before this year.) The ball looks like it’s about to connect. TOUCHDO--
Wait a minute, what’s this? It’s two Justice Department officials dropped from F-16 jets, halting the game to deliver an executive order calling for a congressional fact-finding inquiry into whether such a play is constitutional. A Senate panel has published a 1,000-page report that uncovers whether there is any indication the Founding Fathers would have wanted a stadium with a blue field.
Ridiculous? Perhaps a bit. But so is our best and brightest in Washington trying to get involved in the Bowl Championship Series system. In Washington state, a group of attorneys have launched a political action committee, “Playoff PAC,” with the goal to kill the BCS machine. The Senate felt it necessary to hold hearings. Even our commander-in-chief vowed to “throw his weight around a little bit” on the issue. Really?
With a country currently languishing under the weight of two multi-billion-dollar wars and an unforgiving economy, we feel that trying to salvage a college postseason formula that is more broken than a Larry King marriage shouldn’t be the top priority. It’s good for politicians to show they care about “regular-folk” topics, but let’s try to tackle some key issues instead of righting the wrongs of Utah and Boise State.
But Big East football still poses a threat to national morale.
