Without a playoff, what’s the point?

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Monday, Jan. 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

When I logged on to the official Mountain West Conference Web site Saturday morning there were a grand total of five paragraphs dedicated to Utah’s stunning 31-17 victory against mighty Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

Five paragraphs. Three fewer than the number of sacks the Utes had against Alabama quarterback John Parker Wilson.

Maybe the person in charge of the MWC Web site doesn’t work evenings. Or perhaps the MWC just expected the Utes would reduce the Crimson Tide to a Crimson Trickle, the kind you get from a leaky faucet, which sort of described Alabama’s offensive line Friday night in New Orleans.

But if the latter was the case the MWC could then be accused of being smugger than Alabama coach Nick Saban, and I don’t think that’s possible.

In the run-up to the Sugar Bowl, Saban said Alabama was the only team from a “real BCS conference” to go through the regular season undefeated. Technically, he was correct.

For a little while longer, anyway.

At some point, the Mountain West will get around to blowing trumpets in Utah’s honor. By the time you are reading this, Craig Thompson, the MWC commissioner, may have already gone Al Hirt on David Frohnmayer.

Frohnmayer, president of the University of Oregon, also is chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee. I think he’s the one that guys such as Thompson and WAC president Karl Benson (when Boise State is running the table) complain to for inclusion into the Bowl Championship Cartel — er, Series. At least he was the one who responded to President-elect Barack Obama’s recent call for a college football playoff.

In an e-mail response to ESPN, Frohnmayer said the BCS deeply respected the president-elect and is glad that he is college football fan but that playoffs would not be in the best interest of college football (or at least the six conferences that control it). “We have the most compelling regular season in all of sports, and I’m sure that contributes to Senator Obama’s enjoyment of our great game,” Frohnmayer wrote.

Baseball pennant races are compelling, too. But take away the World Series, and basically all you’ve got is Yankees and Red Sox fans calling each other names.

I have a feeling David Frohnmeyer is going to know what it’s like to be a Yankees fan at Fenway Park or a Red Sox fan at Yankee Stadium. USC and Utah fans will to see to that. And depending on what happens in the Fiesta Bowl, Matthew McConaughey and all those Texas Longhorns supporters may hurl some sticks and stones as well.

After USC was through running 400-meter dashes around Penn State at the Rose Bowl, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, a proponent of the “Plus One” game that would once-and-for-all (at least until next season) determine the champion of college football, said USC is why you need an addendum to a bowl docket that already is 34 games long.

Name a college football fan who wouldn’t like to see USC line up against the winner of Thursday’s Oklahoma-Florida game, he said.

Besides the fans of Thursday’s winner, I can’t think of one.

Then the winner of that game could play Utah. And the winner of that one could play Texas, if it blows out Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl tonight. And so on. I’m sure if you give him a couple of more days, Nick Saban will come up with more convoluted logic why Alabama should still be considered. Then Plus One becomes Plus Four. Might as well just have playoffs.

But if the BCS committee can diss the president-elect, the chances of a college football playoff happening during our lifetimes are slim as Mondale’s vs. Reagan in ’84.

So first things first. Craig Thompson and Karl Benson need to march on BCS headquarters, if there is such a thing, and request — no, make that demand — inclusion because Utah was so much better than Alabama that it wasn’t even funny (except to Auburn fans) and, like I said, it’s only a matter of time until Boise State hits the hook-and-lateral and Fresno State beats somebody somewhere.

Then that little piece of pie the BCS committee fed the non-BCSers a few years back to keep them from hiring lawyers and whispering “antitrust” too loudly may not be good enough anymore.

One of these days, I expect, the Mountain West will receive its BCS membership card. And then Utah and BYU and TCU are going to get even better, because although the BCS may not produce a national champion that everybody is comfortable with, its money does pay for recruiting trips and additions to locker rooms and practice facilities and other amenities that tend to further reduce the gap between the haves and Michigan and Notre Dame and the other have-nots.

If Craig Thompson hits the right notes on his trumpet, it might even happen before the black and blue marks on John Parker Wilson’s backside turn yellow.