Four What? (Final 4 still a mess)

"Starting in 2014 we'll have  4 teams playing for all of the marbles!"

Big Momma would always say, "Some folks ain't satisfied with nothing!"  Eddie Murphy once said, "Give brother a rope he wanna be a cowboy."  My favorite is , "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Well, you can but it'll give you the runs if you're not careful. All we ever wanted to see in college football was #1 play #2 and up until 1998 we didn’t have that luxury. Remember just the year before in 1997 when #1 Nebraska played in the Orange Bowl and a #2 Michigan played in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day?

 They both won their respective games and they were both named National Champions? Then we spent the next year arguing about who was better. That happened so many times before we got the BCS that I care not to remember. All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2. Then we finally got what we were asking for and that still didn't satisfy folks. Now we've got a College Football Final Four coming in 2014 and that still won't be enough for most folks, playboy.

I've always said that the top 4 teams should play it off  anyway because the problem was always with #3. However, I'm not in favor of them using two of the existing BCS Bowls as a national semifinal. Here's why, the bowl games are held during the Holiday season and fans typically use them as the family vacation etc. If you play the game as a national semifinal then you're asking those same fans to travel the following week to another city to do the same thing all over again.

Your average fan doesn't have the bread to do all of that bruh. By structuring the National Title game in this manor you've just turned it into the Super Bowl because you've made it an all CORPORATE event. The title game will go to the city that makes the highest  bid so now it becomes the "Corporate Takeover" and tickets would cost $5,000 or $6,000 and guess who will no longer be at the game? The REAL college football fan! Be careful what you ask FOUR bruh.

In order to keep the game of college football available to the real fans I 've always proposed starting the season a week earlier and then making it mandatory that every conference play a title game the last weekend of November. Right now not every conference plays one and that isn’t fair to those that do. Once the dust settles, then on the first weekend of December there should be a Final Four and not during the bowl season!
Have #1 play #4 and #2 play #3. The higher ranked teams would play at the crib so that the higher ranked team's fans don't have to travel. The two winners would then play for all of the marbles in January in the BCS Title Game! The argument has always between #2 and #3 anyway. Then everybody else would play in the bowls as normal. I don't want to hear about #5 being left out because they're too far down the turn pike to be relevant, anyway.

We don't need some committee determining who plays either because bribes come in to play with that bruh. Just leave it the way it is. You know these rich boosters will do anything to get into the Ship and that means getting to the 14 to 20 cats picking and choosing. So who's to say that it's a legit champion anyway because it's still gonna be subjective! That doesn't make it better because we got FOUR teams. It just means that some duns sat in a room and conspired to get certain teams in. That's REAL talk bruh!

Also just stop it with the silly argument that you have to win your conference to play for the national title because what about those playing in the SEC? Their 3rd or 4th best team is better than the Big East or ACC champ! Last year the SEC had 3 out of the top 5 teams in the country for most of the year with South Carolina rolling. Let's keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st!  Alabama and LSU were clearly the two best teams in the country in 2011. Either one of them would have won the other conferences easily. Remember my class "Sports 101" when I taught you to take your heart out of it? Those that didn't want to see a rematch of LSU/Bama a couple of years ago were simply thinking with their hearts.

I keep hearing folks say, "Take the bowls away and have a straight up playoff like they do in D-2 or D-3." Bruh, you can't touch the bowls because there's too much bread on the table that boyz aren't giving up. That's like asking the Mob to give up Vegas! Don't think for one minute that they did either. Secondly, it would be unfair to the other 107 schools in the FBS because there are only about 13 schools or so that have the players consistently enough to complete for a national title. I’ll name them: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio St, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia, Florida St, Miami and Notre Dame. There may be 1 or 2 more duns that I missed but cats like Wisconsin, South Carolina, Louisville, Virginia Tech etc. are good but don't have the depth to complete year in and year out for a title.

 If you try to eliminate the bowls what do you tell the other schools? It was nice doing business with you and I'll holla. See schools like Purdue, Miss St., Arizona  etc. will never play for a national title because they can't recruit the players those schools previously mentioned can recruit. If there isn’t a bowl for the Purdue's of the world to play in after they’ve won 6 to 8 games in a good year what are those kids even playing for and what do those coaches use as a recruiting tool? Sure, every 30 years or so they’ll get a player that everyone slept on like Drew Brees or Bob Grease and win the Big Ten Championship but they won’t ever play for a national title. So schools like that will never vote to take bread out of their pockets. In my Puffy voice, "It's all about the Benjimans! What?"

So by taking the bowl games away we would cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff starting week one anyway. I still hear you saying that those bowls are meaningless. We’ll… not to the kid playing at Missouri, Ole Miss or Western Michigan. The bowl game IS their National Championship not to mention the guaranteed revenue that the schools receive as a result of playing in those bowls. That bread is guaranteed just for showing up. If you’re fortunate enough to get to a BCS bowl it’s a $17 million payday whether you’re playing in the title game or not. The mid level bowls like the Chick-Fil-A, Cotton and Outback pay $3 million each. The Sun Bowl which Purdue has participated in previous years pays out $1.9 million. Even if you play in a bottom tier bowl like the Emerald it’s worth $850,000 to your school. Boyz ain't walking away from that type of scratch bruh.

So if you were the presidents of Fresno State and Wyoming would you have voted for a playoff or accepted the invite to the 2009 New Mexico Bowl which paid them $750,000 each just for showing up? See the greatness of college football is the pageantry and the excitement of the regular season and the culmination of events with the bowls. If I’m an LSU fan I’m not only concerned with the Tigers, I’m concerned with all the chess pieces moving around them. Now really… would you want to take all of that away just to have seen LSU and Alabama anyway? Remember what I said about that cake earlier! You know boyz aren't gonna be satisfied with 4! Soon it's gonna be 8 then 16 teams then the joint's going to go up in flames. Be careful what you ask FOUR bruh cuz it just might give you the runs!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
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