Ira Miller column: Fans knew Big Ten title game irrelevant

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - It’s right there, in bold type, on the College Football Playoff website.“Every Game Counts.” Well, and sorry if this seems a little weird, truth is that maybe not quite every game. Maybe the game that does not count is a conference championship game, like Saturday night’s Big Ten matchup of Penn State and Wisconsin, and try to explain that one.Because, in the very next paragraph, the playoff website’s criteria go on to proclaim, “The selection committee ranks the teams based on conference championships won ...”In other words, a conference championship is the key factor.
Except when it isn’t.Critics used to mock the people who run the college football bowl games because they paraded around looking like peacocks in all those brightly colored blazers with their oversize logos, spending fall weekends wining and dining athletic directors.Well, those guys look like Einstein compared to the clowns now in charge of the college playoff.They played the Big Ten championship game Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, and as game time approached, tickets could be had for less than $10, which should give you some idea of what the public thought of it.And about a dozen hours after the end of the game, Ohio State, which failed even to qualify for the conference title game, is expected to be chosen one of the four teams for the college playoff.The Big Ten champion will finish the season with a high place in the national rankings and a boost in its recruiting. It just will not be given a chance to play for the national championship, not be allowed a Cinderella champion like Texas Western in 1966 or a Villanova in 1985 in the NCAA basketball tournament.The consolation prize will be a trip to the Rose Bowl.That’s not bad.And, an argument can be made that Ohio State was the best team in the Big Ten this year, anyway, and maybe it was, although it lost to Penn State and beat Michigan only because of a few dunderheaded plays by the Wolverines in critical spots. But the point is the Buckeyes did not even win their conference championship and they are going to get a chance to play for the national championship and the team(s) that finished ahead of them in the conference are not. You have to wonder what the geniuses who dreamed up the college playoff were thinking when, by design, they guaranteed a degree of controversy by setting up a four-team playoff among five power conferences. In other words, you know you are starting out by leaving out one of the conference champions. Period.It’s a small step from there to leaving out another.The playoff, of course, was supposedly designed to eliminate the controversy that occurred in the past when the national champion was decided by a vote instead of, oh, say, an actual game. Which is how an undefeated Nebraska was selected over an undefeated Penn State in 1994 or several years when two groups of voters selected different teams as national champions, giving a little for everybody.A word, “supposedly,” appears in the previous paragraph because it would never pass a lie detector test. Let’s face it, the playoff was set up to give a small group power and a bigger group money, because nothing much happens in college sports that does not really involve power and money.One interesting sidelight is that the people who run this sham championship arrangement, try as they might, could not fool everybody. You’d think, ordinarily, the championship game of the richest conference would be a huge magnet for fans, but since the fans realized it had so little to do with the national championship they smelled it for what it is.On Stubhub earlier in the week, there were more than 15,000 tickets available for the Penn State-Wisconsin matchup. As late as Saturday morning, more than 5,000 were still available, with sideline seats going for as little as, get this, $9.71.You can be sure that would not have been the case were the winner assured of going on to play for a bigger prize, but as it was, even Penn State and Wisconsin fans kept their wallets in their pockets because, since the meaning of the game was diminished, they’d prefer to save for, say, a trip to Pasadena instead of Indianapolis.Going into the game, the coaches, of course, tried to downplay the bigger picture by simply talking about the import of a conference championship - “huge,” said Penn State’s James Franklin - and deferring any questions about the playoff possibilities.But it didn’t take a deep reading of Franklin’s comments to know how he felt.“You could make a really good argument that the Big Ten, specifically the Big Ten East, may be the best conference in all of college football right now,” Franklin said.He is probably right. The Big Ten is probably the best conference in college football right now, just a couple years after people were writing obituaries about the league’s weakness. It’s just not a good enough conference, apparently, to allow its champion to play for the national title. Ira Miller is a columnist for The Sports Xchange.INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - It’s right there, in bold type, on the College Football Playoff website.“Every Game Counts.” Well, and sorry if this seems a little weird, truth is that maybe not quite every game. Maybe the game that does not count is a conference championship game, like Saturday night’s Big Ten matchup of Penn State and Wisconsin, and try to explain that one.Because, in the very next paragraph, the playoff website’s criteria go on to proclaim, “The selection committee ranks the teams based on conference championships won ...”In other words, a conference championship is the key factor.
Except when it isn’t.Critics used to mock the people who run the college football bowl games because they paraded around looking like peacocks in all those brightly colored blazers with their oversize logos, spending fall weekends wining and dining athletic directors.Well, those guys look like Einstein compared to the clowns now in charge of the college playoff.They played the Big Ten championship game Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, and as game time approached, tickets could be had for less than $10, which should give you some idea of what the public thought of it.And about a dozen hours after the end of the game, Ohio State, which failed even to qualify for the conference title game, is expected to be chosen one of the four teams for the college playoff.The Big Ten champion will finish the season with a high place in the national rankings and a boost in its recruiting. It just will not be given a chance to play for the national championship, not be allowed a Cinderella champion like Texas Western in 1966 or a Villanova in 1985 in the NCAA basketball tournament.The consolation prize will be a trip to the Rose Bowl.That’s not bad.And, an argument can be made that Ohio State was the best team in the Big Ten this year, anyway, and maybe it was, although it lost to Penn State and beat Michigan only because of a few dunderheaded plays by the Wolverines in critical spots. But the point is the Buckeyes did not even win their conference championship and they are going to get a chance to play for the national championship and the team(s) that finished ahead of them in the conference are not.You have to wonder what the geniuses who dreamed up the college playoff were thinking when, by design, they guaranteed a degree of controversy by setting up a four-team playoff among five power conferences. In other words, you know you are starting out by leaving out one of the conference champions. Period.It’s a small step from there to leaving out another.The playoff, of course, was supposedly designed to eliminate the controversy that occurred in the past when the national champion was decided by a vote instead of, oh, say, an actual game. Which is how an undefeated Nebraska was selected over an undefeated Penn State in 1994 or several years when two groups of voters selected different teams as national champions, giving a little for everybody.A word, “supposedly,” appears in the previous paragraph because it would never pass a lie detector test. Let’s face it, the playoff was set up to give a small group power and a bigger group money, because nothing much happens in college sports that does not really involve power and money.One interesting sidelight is that the people who run this sham championship arrangement, try as they might, could not fool everybody. You’d think, ordinarily, the championship game of the richest conference would be a huge magnet for fans, but since the fans realized it had so little to do with the national championship they smelled it for what it is.On Stubhub earlier in the week, there were more than 15,000 tickets available for the Penn State-Wisconsin matchup. As late as Saturday morning, more than 5,000 were still available, with sideline seats going for as little as, get this, $9.71.You can be sure that would not have been the case were the winner assured of going on to play for a bigger prize, but as it was, even Penn State and Wisconsin fans kept their wallets in their pockets because, since the meaning of the game was diminished, they’d prefer to save for, say, a trip to Pasadena instead of Indianapolis.Going into the game, the coaches, of course, tried to downplay the bigger picture by simply talking about the import of a conference championship - “huge,” said Penn State’s James Franklin - and deferring any questions about the playoff possibilities.But it didn’t take a deep reading of Franklin’s comments to know how he felt.“You could make a really good argument that the Big Ten, specifically the Big Ten East, may be the best conference in all of college football right now,” Franklin said.He is probably right. The Big Ten is probably the best conference in college football right now, just a couple years after people were writing obituaries about the league’s weakness. It’s just not a good enough conference, apparently, to allow its champion to play for the national title.Ira Miller is a columnist for The Sports Xchange.