Benazir Bhutto: Saintly Martyr for Democracy?

For those who listen to NPR, and I count myself in their number, the name Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was fast becoming as familiar as Ahmadinejad and Musharraf. The difference was that she was supposed to be a positive force in her country, and it is not difficult to see how such a perspective could be promoted. The delicate female, ousted by a brute male and whose father, himself a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was executed by the man who replaced him in a coup, returns to a poor land preaching democracy and trying to take back the government for the people. It was a classic case of an underdog you can feel good cheering for. At least, that was the impression one was left with.

I am proud to say that I reserved my judgment of Señorita Bhutto, allowing for the remote possibility that she was a good person but figuring that the odds of the character of a former Pakistani Prime Minister being unsullied by her rotten profession were about as good as, say, an American president being similarly uncorrupted. I declined to actually investigate the matter.

And then Benazir, in a masterstroke of cunning strategy, got herself assassinated. It was the smart move on her part. She can now benefit from the positive discrimination which all the recently departed, especially the recently assassinated, enjoy. Though I myself am inclined to agree with H.L. Mencken, who said that democracy is the theory that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it good and hard, most people will embrace her memory because she preached democracy, which enjoys such an inflated reputation that in most circles it is equated with freedom. They’ll even admire her courage for returning, at great personal risk, to the land where she was thrown out of power. She will become a martyr.

The press, in this respect, plays a similar role to that of the mortician, who must apply his craft to make a corpse more presentable. While the shot and shattered corpse of Benazir Bhutto would challenge any mortician, the press has accomplished no less a feat with her twisted and corrupt history. But the mortician, at least, works for a dignified purpose.

Fortunately, there are some intrepid souls who are dedicated to uncovering the truth, no matter how impolite it is, and from them I have put together a different picture of Ms. Benazir. She was the political head of a nation which, according to Transparency International, was one of the three most corrupt in the world during her time as PM. Amnesty International said that her regime had one of the worst records ever for custodial deaths, torture and killings. Her husband spent eight years in jail for what amounts to embezzlement of tax funds, and though she escaped imprisonment she was implicated in the process and her innocence was always in serious doubt.

Perhaps the surest mark of her corruption was the habit her political rivals had of disappearing or being killed. After she declared herself leader for life of her political party, the PPP, her brother Murtaza challenged her for political power. He was gunned down outside his own home under what has been described as dubious circumstances. Murtaza’s wife, daughter, and Benazir’s own mother insist that Benazir gave the order to have him killed.

About twenty people died from the bomb that rent the car Benazir was traveling in, most of them her supporters. I shall save my tears for them, who have committed no greater crime than that of naïveté, of being gulled into supporting another seeker of power with a charming smile and false promises. In this they are no guiltier than the vast majority of their species. For Benazir Bhutto, who lived a life of oriental luxury as a member of a landed aristocracy, a parasitic ruling class that fed off the poor of Pakistan, I can summon no tears without an eyedropper.

How Much Could a Ron Paul Presidency Really Accomplish?

When the spleen overtakes me, I can be as negative and grouchy as any man ever was. Though not a consistent cynic, my transient forays into gloom are quite as deep and seemingly unshakable as if I had spent a lifetime staking my claim there. But I am just a tourist in the realm of pessimism; a frequent tourist but still nothing more than a visitor. Often enough my fellow human beings provide enough evidence to convince me, at least for a while, that my disdain is unwarranted, or at least not wholly warranted. In America today there is a movement afoot – a revolution some have called it – that has proved more than enough to keep me optimistic for months at a time. As it becomes clearer and clearer that Ron Paul will make a serious challenge for the Republican nomination, and looks to be easily the most likely of the group to take it, I do not think it too early to consider how effective a president Ron Paul could be.

Even among his supporters there is a lurking skepticism about how much a Paul administration could accomplish. When he takes aim at the IRS even those whose hearts flitter giddily at the pronouncement will quickly come back down to earth with a sigh, glumly declaring that, “He’ll never be able to do it.” Perhaps he won’t, but let’s not discount that WE might.

When Ron Paul thanks us for inviting him to our revolution, he’s not just being humble. He may be the guest of honor, but the party is about all of us. If this is to be a revolution, then it needs to be about ideas, not about a man. Though we may dispute the particulars, we are in agreement that government must play a smaller role in our lives, even a drastically smaller role. It is incumbent upon us, therefore, without getting stuck on details, to support others who espouse similar beliefs.

Once elected, President Paul, even alone, can do much to further the cause. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces he can bring home our troops and close the vast, international network of military bases that the US government has established. If nothing more than this gets accomplished it will have been worth the struggle to see him elected. Not only will so much violence have been ended and so much future enmity prevented, but also fresh wounds can begin to heal, the budget will have been substantially reduced and the now feckless military-industrial complex will have been deprived of that impulsion by which they induce politicians to lay siege to civil liberties. A rough estimate of the effects, the effects of the effects and the effects of the effects of the effects of this troop withdrawal as they ripple through our country and around the world – even from a conservative perspective – is quite enough to gladden the heart.

This much Ron Paul has already promised, and as president there is little to nothing that could be done to stop him. The final result of his other promises, e.g., vetoing unbalanced budgets and imprudent spending, is less certain, but it must be noted that big increases in federal spending are generally driven by spendthrift presidents. The mere elimination of a squandering president’s demands would likely ease the pressure to increase the budget.

Apart from the above, a president may grant pardons and clemency to criminals, and Lord knows there are many who unjustly languish in prison as these words are written. Rather than paying for their imprisonment, we would be better off if their productive capacities were put to use, and they certainly would be better off. President Paul might also decide to take a swipe at a multitude of executive orders, orders which he no doubt views as unconstitutional. I am not aware of his position on this, but he could well conclude that any act of nullifying an executive order is precisely as constitutional as the original order itself. Indeed, the many tens and tens of thousands of regulations in the Federal Registrar could be wiped out as quickly as Dr. Paul can swipe the tip of a pen across parchment. I have seen estimates that these regulations represent an annual drain on the economy of $800 billion, and that figure is a few years old. Should he pursue this course, the lives of Americans everywhere would improve as unproductive labor reverted to more productive activities.

All this is that part of the revolution which will likely soon be in Dr. Paul’s hands. The greater part of it is up to us. I feel safe in assuming that no supporter of Dr. Paul is behind him because of his looks, his speaking ability or his fame. If it is the ideas which charge us, then let us take the fight for these ideas elsewhere, encouraged by how popular we now know them to be. Ron Paul will not – cannot – be elected in a vacuum. Already there are Republicans running for other offices and calling themselves Ron Paul Republicans. If they truly are Ron Paul Republicans, Dr. Paul can grant his endorsement to the ones he trusts in this respect, and we can help to get them elected. As Dr. Paul himself has said, politicians are good at gauging which way the wind is blowing, and many of them are already sympathetic to some of his positions. If the movement serves only to elect Ron Paul as president of the United States, it will have accomplished much but sold itself short. If it moves on beyond this election to change the face of American politics, if it fills Congress with men and women who want to work with Dr. Paul, not against him, then it truly could be a revolution.

A few successful policies early on can work to sway millions. A few libertarian-minded Congressmen can influence dozens of others. A few million Ron Paul supporters can get many other decent people elected to Congress and elsewhere. By the 72-year cycle theory of American history, we are four years late for a political overhaul. If we want that overhaul, let us dedicate ourselves right here and now to extending the revolution beyond – far beyond – the Paul presidency. Let’s use our momentum to make America what it never quite was but always should have been.

Ron Paul: the GOP Front-Runner

We have entered a new era of politics and it is time to discard the old ways of analysis. New technologies have changed how we live and how we get our information. Politics is fundamentally the same, as it always will be, but elections have undergone some important changes and if we want to properly analyze them, our methods must be adapted to the new landscape. Right now, political pundits are marveling over the seeming surge of Mike Huckabee as he overtakes the anointed Republican “front-runners” of Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Mitt Romney. But a more careful analysis of the situation leads to a different conclusion. In all likelihood, Ron Paul is the strongest Republican candidate and the one most likely to take the GOP nomination.

The only measure by which Ron Paul is doing poorly are the telephone polls. He is slowly growing even by this measure, but generally lags well behind the other candidates. Even while marveling at some of his successes, talking heads always remind us that he is “nowhere in the polls” and quickly turn the discussion to questions of how a candidate who obviously does not have much support could possibly be doing so well in other respects. It is time to acknowledge that the polls are flawed, and the only thing that needs explaining is how a candidate with so much popular support could be doing so poorly in them.

The explanation, once given, is immediately clear and compelling. The telephone polls do not give us a representative cross section of the voters who will show up to vote in the Republican primaries. First of all, polling companies may not call numbers on the Do Not Call List. It has been suggested that the people who most desire to be left alone will more likely skew libertarian. I think this is possible although the assertion by itself remains a bit tenuous, but it is not hard to imagine that the polls have a non-representative sample from the very outset. Caller ID also reduces their response rates, and while John Zogby himself has said that he believes this is not yet enough to invalidate telephone polling, even he foresees a day when telephone polls will no longer be useful. At the very least, the ever-diminishing response rate is problematic.

These first considerations cast doubt on the process, but do not necessarily lead us to conclude that the polls are skewing against Ron Paul. For that, we must consider their culling process. When the polls finally do get a response, they do not necessarily count it in their final analysis. Indeed, only a small minority of responses are typically counted. Apart from the respondent’s candidate preference, the pollsters inquire into other things as well, such as if they voted in the last election, if they have voted Republican before and other similar issues.

What they seek to do is peel away people they believe are unlikely to vote in a Republican primary. This might be valid for most primaries, but Ron Paul is a different sort of candidate. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming that Ron Paul is drawing huge support from Democrats, independents, Libertarians and libertarians, lapsed and disaffected Republicans and people who have never voted before. None of these groups is registering in the polls. John Zogby himself has said that Ron Paul probably has support above 15%, and possibly above 20%. My own opinion is that it will eventually prove even higher than this.

Remember, the polls are essentially measuring the support candidates have among those who voted in the last Republican primaries. But four years ago George Bush was an incumbent president. He had not only proved himself a douche bag but was guaranteed the victory. Ron Paul is polling, nationally, at about 8% among who showed up to vote for a douche bad who was going to win anyway (presumably this 8% has realized its mistake)!

In the end, we must remember that voting in a primary is a self-selecting process, but being called to give your opinion beforehand is not. To solve this, pollsters whittle away at their responses until they get something that they think resembles the group of people who will self-select themselves into voting booths when elections come. It should be quite apparent that their responses are coming from a sample of people quite different from what is going to show up on Election Day.

Every other indication suggests that Ron Paul is doing exceptionally well. For instance, he has finished first in every post debate poll except the first, where he finished second. These polls represent tens of thousands of votes, and despite the deliberately misleading comments made by Satan Hannity, only one vote per phone can be texted in; there is no way to manipulate these polls on a large scale (as if the other candidates wouldn’t be doing that if it were possible). I would suggest that the people who care enough to watch the many debates and text in their vote are at least moderately representative of those who will show up to vote in the different state primaries. By this measure, Ron Paul was strong from the beginning and getting stronger.

Also indicative of his success is all the activity of his enthusiastic supporters, activity quite apart from the official campaign. A Ron Paul blimp is, as I type these words, flying over the eastern states, the money for which was raised independently of the campaign by people who have been inspired by Ron Paul’s message. Ron Paul has many active Meet Up groups and members, more than any other candidate. He has more Myspace members and more Google searches than anyone else.

But the single most important measure of his campaign’s strength is the money he has been able to raise. In the third quarter, when all the other candidates saw a drop in raised funds, he more than doubled his second quarter contributions, exceeding $5 million dollars. This raised a lot of eyebrows and garnered him some deserved attention. When, on November 5th, the date of the first now-famous Money Bomb, he raised $4.3 million dollars on a single day, nearly all of it from online contributions, and set the record for actual funds raised in a single day, it was grudgingly conceded by the Main Stream Media that he was a serious candidate (John Kerry’s supposed record haul of $5.7 million on the day he accepted the Democrat nomination consisted largely of pledges, not actual donations. Furthermore, the Clinton campaign’s claims of a record day of fundraising are not supported by the papers she filed with the Federal Elections Commission). On December 16th, when he raised $6.04 million and set a new record, one that bettered even John Kerry’s dubious mark, he served notice that he was unequivocally the leading Republican candidate for president.

So far, Ron Paul has raised about $18.5 million dollars this quarter and looks to finish at about $19 million, unless another surge of money comes in to end the quarter. This will far outstrip anything the other candidates are raising. The supposedly surging Huckabee campaign, when they tried to initiate a Money Bomb of their own, got all of 186 pledges in the initial days. Contrast this with the 60,000 individual donors for the December 16th Money Bomb. Now, apart from the free Internet attention he has been getting, Ron Paul will be able to outmuscle the other candidates in the more traditional areas of marketing. Ron Paul’s average donation, at least on his Money Bomb days, is just over $100, an amount far below what other candidates typically get. Ron Paul, you must understand, does not sell future favors for campaign contributions, and so does not get big corporate donations. Therefore, $1 million raised by Ron Paul represents many more votes than $1 million raised by Rudy McRomnabee Thompson. When Ron Paul not only has more votes per dollar raised, but also more dollars raised, you know the other candidates are in trouble.

The others are pro-war candidates, and they will split the vote of this smaller segment of America. Meanwhile, Ron Paul is all by himself as a pro-peace candidate and will without serious competition collect votes from the 70% of the American public who are sick of the war. It has long been demonstrated that Ron Paul demolishes the rest of the field among those who have heard him speak. Now he has the money to reach well beyond the Internet.

My prediction is this: Ron Paul will finish in the top three in Iowa, possibly even winning it, and will take New Hampshire and South Carolina, thus forcing the MSM to treat him as a front runner. Strong finishes, perhaps even victories, in Michigan, Nevada and Wyoming will solidify him as the favorite whereupon he will clean up on Super Tuesday. I am quite confident that he will go into the Republican Convention with the most delegates, and while I am not as optimistic as some that he can win a brokered convention, I think he stands a very good chance of having more than 50% of the delegates and obviating this process. If Ron Paul can get 50% of the delegates, Ron Paul is our next president. No Democrat stands a chance against a Ron Paul that the MSM cannot ignore (they can attack him, besmirch him and distort his views all they like, if they can’t ignore him he’ll win).

And when Ron Paul becomes our next president, a new prosperous era in American history, and in world history, will have begun. Long live Ron Paul.

* It has been ever so politely pointed out to your humble blogger that there is an error in the article. Pollsters may indeed call numbers on the Do Not Call List. I shall leave to the good reader to decide if and how much this affects the conclusion of the article.

Post, in which the humble blogger proves that Ohio State will win the national championship

It is time for this humble blogger to tell the good readers who will be college football’s next national champion. The answer, of course, is Ohio State, and there are nine indisputable reasons why.

Reason #1

Ohio State has come out of nowhere this year to gain national prominence.

Since the start of the modern era, which in my opinion approximately coincides with the hiring of Woody Hayes in 1951, every Ohio State national champion has exceeded preseason expectations, and by a large margin. Normally, these are Buckeye teams which are talented but young, and they have the grit and determination to take the title.

The 1954 group was picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten. They went 10-0, defeating six ranked opponents along the way, and handled USC in the Rose Bowl. The 1957 team was also picked to go fifth, yet they finished 9-1 and beat Oregon 10-7 on a third quarter field goal. These two teams cannot be accused of lacking talent, but they were a touch on the young side, and the following seasons, despite returning their big name talent, they went 7-2 and 6-1-2 respectively. Strong seasons, especially when one considers that back then they didn’t play filler games against MAC or I-AA competition, but not what one might have expected given the returning talent.

The 1968 squad came out of nowhere to go 10-0, defeat the O.J. Simpson-led USC Trojans 27-16, and take the title. This squad was as talented as any the Buckeyes have ever had, but was extremely young. Led by the class that came to be known as the Super Sophomores, perhaps the greatest recruiting class in college football history, they took the title when no one expected it, but went 8-1 and 9-1 the following two seasons, despite fielding teams which seemed much stronger in the early and midseason contests.

The 2002 squad started the year outside the top ten, got very little respect along the way due to a struggling offense, and relied on a brick wall defense and some good fortune to put them at the top of the rankings when the season was over. The next year, though they started as SI’s preseason choice for the title, they lost two games along the way (it should be noted that many of the big names from that team were gone the next year – for one reason or another – and SI’s pick was awfully optimistic). This team had a lot of defensive talent, but the offense was more modest, with their arguably best player being a true freshman.

Contrast this with the talent-laden teams which everyone expected to do well: 1964, 1969, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1996, 1998, 2005 and 2006. Somewhere along the way, though nearly all of them spent time at the #1 spot, they fell short of their goal.

The 2007 squad, therefore, fits the typical profile of a Buckeye national champion. They started the year with low expectations, are young, but had enough talent and determination to get to the title game.

Reason #2

Bad things come in threes. The football team lost the 2006 title to Florida, the basketball team did the same, and the soccer team just lost to Wake Forest in the finals. Three disappointments are quite enough.

As everyone knows, both quantum physics and General Relativity predict that unfortunate occurrences will come bundled in discrete groups of three, with no bundle having a privileged position of observation. This has been confirmed by numerous empirical studies, and though some Christian groups and Kansans still think cavemen lived with dinosaurs, scientists are more and more coming to realize that three strokes of bad luck will be followed by, at the very least, a stroke of good luck.

When Einstein and Bohr agree that you’re going to win the national championship, you know you’re sitting pretty.

Reason #3

LSU has waned throughout the season, while OSU has generally waxed.

When LSU slaughterfucked Virginia Tech and Mississippi State early on, people assumed they were an unstoppable juggernaut. As Mark Twain said, “If a man gets a reputation as an early riser, he can sleep ‘til noon.” No amount of close games after this, some of them with very middling or even poor competition, has shaken this image of LSU. The Tigers have not beaten a respectable opponent by a significant margin in a very long time. And Louisiana Tech was hot on their heels until late in the third quarter. Les Miles can say what he likes about being undefeated in sixty-minute contests, the fact is that not all college football games end now after sixty minutes. They have lost two games, one of them at home, and neither of the victors was anything more than decent.

In contrast, Ohio State has lost one game, to a very solid team, and hardly any other team has managed to stay within a score of them. Michigan came close, losing in Ann Arbor 14-3, and they needed a rain drenched field and several unforced Todd Boeckman fumbles to do it. Michigan State only lost by seven, but they scored 14 easy points on defense in a one-minute span off Boeckman turnovers. I’m not arguing that these scores shouldn’t count, but LSU can hardly rely on this sort of thing to happen again, and without those MSU lost 24-3, by far their worst margin of the year. Everyone else has been, when all was said and done, blasted right off the field by an unyielding defense and an offense that has come along nicely as the year has progressed.

If the trend of the year continues and OSU keeps improving while LSU treads water, we might even see a blow out.

Reason #4

The #2 position has probably been the most unstable.

In a season where 87 top five teams have lost to unranked opponents, the #2 spot has been harder to keep than the #1 spot. Something is in the air this year, and right now it smells like fried Tiger.

Reason #5

LSU does not benefit from the SEC “curse”.

Much has been made about Ohio State being winless in bowl games against the SEC. Starting with Alabama in the 1978 Sugar Bowl and continuing right up to last year against Florida, Ohio State has never been able to defeat an SEC opponent in a bowl game. Are they really cursed? Is the SEC that much better than the Big Ten? Or is it something else?

We can quickly discard the idea that the SEC is that much better than the Big Ten. It certainly has been better in recent years, but the Big Ten has done quite well against the SEC in bowl games. Florida has lost to Iowa, Michigan and Michigan State in the last decade. Last year Penn State and Wisconsin both beat their SEC opponents, and Michigan beat Alabama not too long ago. Since the Big Ten has been perfectly capable of beating the SEC, and Ohio State is, all things considered, the Big Ten’s premier team, there has to be some other explanation.

There are probably a number of factors that have simply coincided to create this seeming inability to defeat an SEC team in a bowl game. For instance, no one beat Alabama in bowl games in the late seventies. But just about everyone did in the early seventies, for whatever reason. OSU was unfortunate to meet Alabama in a bowl game during a period when they were almost invincible. Had the 1975, 1974, 1970, 1973 or 1968 Buckeyes faced the Crimson Tide, it almost certainly would have been a Buckeye win. Tennessee defeated Ohio State in 1975 due partly to wearing illegal footgear with impermissibly long studs on a rain soaked field. Given that Tennessee only won 20-14, this was quite likely the difference. Ohio State has never benefited from illegal cleats against an SEC opponent.

Nor has Ohio State ever faced an SEC team that finished 8-4 while the Buckeyes had only one loss, but this was exactly Alabama’s fortunate mismatch in 1994. In fact, Cooper’s bowl losses to SEC teams, and these contests make up half of Ohio State’s SEC losses, were against teams that finished as well or better in their conference than the Buckeyes did in the Big Ten. Ohio State has never played an SEC team that finished lower than they did. Nor have they played an SEC team whose QB was suffering from Heismanitis and a two week longer layoff.

Excuses aside, this alleged curse, whether true or not, does not extend to LSU. Ohio State has never played LSU in a bowl game. The Buckeyes have played LSU, it just wasn’t in a bowl game. Nor were they LSU victories.

An underdog Buckeye squad went down to Baton Rouge in 1987, a year in which Ohio State finished 6-4-1 and did not make a bowl appearance, and tied the heavily favored Tigers. The next year, in which Ohio State had one of only two losing seasons in the modern era, a respectable LSU squad came to Columbus… and lost.

Any curse which may afflict the Buckeyes with respect to SEC opponents does not seem to hold for LSU. Indeed, the Buckeyes have demonstrated that even when the Tigers are clearly a superior team, they are unable to pull out a victory against the Scarlet and Gray.

Reason #6

Ohio State has better uniforms and more respect for them.

While no one alive can deny the superiority of Ohio State’s gorgeous Scarlet and Gray, there is also the matter of their respect for the game and its traditions. Baseball has its own traditions, and one of them includes the home team wearing white. This works for baseball, principally because in baseball the white uniform is a sharper ensemble. But in football the colored jersey is indisputably better looking, and all college teams honor it by making it their home jersey.

All teams except LSU. LSU, in defiance of common decency and common sense, wears its white jerseys at home. On their own field. In front of their own fans. It doesn’t take a high IQ to understand why this will translate into an on-field advantage for the Buckeyes.

Reason #7

Ohio State’s QB is in his first year as a starter, and has demonstrated greater mobility than passing ability.

At first glance this would seem to go against Ohio State, but we must once again consider the typical profile of a Buckeye championship team. The 1954 squad returned two-year starter John Borton, who was destined to play a few years in the pros and who in 1953 had set a single season passing record for OSU that would stand for a quarter century. Despite having two years experience as a starter, this future NFL QB was benched in his senior season in favor of Dave Leggett, a less able passer who was more fleet of foot. We’ll never know how the team would have done with Borton at the helm, but either despite or because of the switch to Leggett, they won the title.

The 1961 team, which finished undefeated and won the regular season national championship, had just lost Tom Matte, a first round draft pick and NFL starter who may have been the best QB Woody ever had. The 1961 team experimented with several players, finally settling, more or less, on Joe Sparma. But they finished their regular season ranked #1.

The 1968 team, though they had a fine QB in Rex Kern, nevertheless saw a two-year starter and decent passer in Bill Long sitting on the bench in favor of a young and inexperienced player with more foot speed. The results are hard to argue with.

In 1973, Ohio State once again benched a starting QB, one who had led them to a Big Ten title the previous year, in favor of an inexperienced sophomore. But the faster Cornelius Greene led the Buckeyes to another Big Ten title and an undefeated season.

No one will ever accuse Steve Bellasari of being one of the all-time greats, but after starting three years and getting very little accomplished, he was replaced by Craig Krenzel, an average passer with good scrambling ability. The result was a 2002 Buckeye national championship.

And so it would be just like Ohio State, one year removed from Troy Smith getting the Heisman Trophy, to come through with a national title, led, if we can use the term, by a first year starter with a forgettable arm but surprisingly good foot speed.

Reason #8

LSU has two losses. No need for much elaboration here. Only Minnesota, in 1960, has won a national title with two losses, and that only because they played in what was then the nation’s best conference and scored an anomalous thrashing of the nation’s true best team, Iowa. The Pac Ten, not the SEC, is the best conference this year, and though LSU did slaughter Virginia Tech, V Tech isn’t the nation’s best team.

And neither is LSU.

Reason #9

Finally, Ohio State is just plain better.

The Big Ten is a perfectly respectable conference, and Ohio State struggled with no one but Illinois, the #2 team in said conference. LSU has struggled with just about everyone since their red-hot start, including Louisiana Tech. Ohio State has the nation’s best defense and an offense that people shouldn’t forget about. They had an off week against Illinois (everyone has had at least one off week this season!) and faced a torrential downpour in Ann Arbor, so it has been a while since we’ve seen them go. But remember what they did to Wisconsin in the second half? Remember how Penn State didn’t see OSU’s punter until late in the game? The offense has improved markedly over the course of the season, and the defense has been unyielding from the get-go.

And my private rating system agrees that the Buckeyes are better. With some exceptions, national champions finish above 100.00 points in my system, and this year Ohio State is the only team to be that high, scoring 107.57. LSU is at 95.80, still a very strong score but generally a bit weak for a national champ.

And definitely too weak to beat Ohio State in the game they have waited a year to play.

Movie Review: I Am Legend

We revisit the genre of the last man on earth with Will Smith’s latest, I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence directing). It’s a genre that holds so much promise, and yet very rarely does it bear fruit. The latest attempt falls in line with the majority: entertaining premise, mundane execution.

A new virus is genetically engineered to cure cancer and meets with initial success. But the virus gets loose and wreaks havoc on the human race, turning the vast majority into mindless vampire-like creatures with no tolerance for sunlight. Will Smith, playing Colonel Robert Neville, is, as far as he knows, the last human being on the planet. A scientist as well as colonel, he spends his days maintaining his solitary existence and searching for a cure. His nights he spends bunkered down in his home with his faithful canine companion, praying the physically enhanced vampires do not discover where he lives.

There is nothing really wrong with I Am Legend, but there are so many minor flaws, missed opportunities and poor decisions that the premise, no matter how much one likes this sort of thing, has little hope of saving the enterprise.

Once again we are treated to, or rather made to endure, more CGI creatures. I find myself repeating the same thing over and over on the topic: CGI has its place, but a director has to know where that place is and must guard against overusing the technology. In a movie like I Am Legend, a serious endeavor with creatures that are meant to scare us, CGI is a poor choice to represent the monsters. A CGI vampire is not scary for the same reason the Smurfs aren’t scary: IT’S A FREAKING CARTOON! It might have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to get a human to move with the force and speed that the vampires in the movie have, but that would have been a small sacrifice in exchange for the gripping presence of a real looking vampire. Makeup and costumes still trump computer graphics, and it’s not even close. If you don’t believe me, watch portions of Alien 3, then go back and watch Alien.

Another poor choice is the lead character. Will Smith, reprising the same role he has played in every movie I’ve ever seen him in, plays a brilliant scientist, a dashing hunk, and a super athlete all at once (Yes, the specifics change, but the persona is the same). It might have been interesting to see, say, Paul Giamatti playing the role of intellectual scientist in search of a cure, a scientist with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies that great minds often have who must use his brain to compensate for his average or even frail physique, something that hampers him in his struggle against the vampires. Or, staying with Will Smith, it could have been just as interesting to watch an athletic man with an average mind using his brawn to survive, but always treading water, getting by until the sun rises again, lacking the cerebral capacity to grasp the bigger picture and discover a solution.

It would have been even more interesting to see these characters meet halfway through. But instead what we get is a character from an Ayn Rand novel: flawless both physically and mentally. It’s a perfection which snuffs out any sympathy we might have felt for the man as his sad back-story is revealed to us. I have a difficult time accepting movies where the female characters, no matter who they are supposed to be, look better suited for lovemaking than whatever it is they are doing. It is equally hard to accept Will Smith.

Implausibility is another affliction that curses this film. Sometimes the implausible thing is only a minor irritant, such as when the sets show New York City streets, only three years removed from the outbreak of the virus, already choked with weeds pushing through the cracks but the posters for the Broadway musicals are not even peeling at the corners. Other times, the implausibility is more damaging to the project’s integrity. Examples of this include the fact that Will Smith is still eating food from a jar that – unless he has found the time and know-how to master all the different jobs spread throughout the division of labor and therefore grow, harvest, process and jar his own food – must be at least three years old. Will Smith’s home has running water, water which he apparently believes to be pure enough to drink. It also has electricity. Either show us exactly how he is able to maintain this living standard – and still find time to hit golf balls off the wing of a fighter jet when he isn’t searching for a cure – or show us how life would really be without extensively divided labor like we now have.

Show him boiling his water after collecting it from buckets on his roof. Show him tending his garden, using his own feces to fertilize his crops. Show him mending his own clothes. Show him in agony as he must cut out his own decaying tooth. The movie does show him hunting – albeit in a sleek looking car as, incredibly, he cruises New York City looking for deer – but it doesn’t give us a reason for him to be hunting. Rather than all the jarred and canned food he has, show us a bare pantry, or a half-eaten cured leg of some beast hanging from a hook in the ceiling. And if you must show him driving cars, at least show him coping with gasoline which has degraded for the last three years. Does gas last that long? How well does it work after thirty-six months? It would have been interesting to find out.

There is a hint of something more interesting in the movie which is introduced but left undeveloped. The colonel hunts the vampires during the daytime to use as guinea pigs in his search for a cure. As he makes notes of his observations, he remarks that the social humanity of the vampires is almost entirely gone. However, it soon becomes apparent that he is wrong, and the vampires may even be hunting him. But instead of pursuing this potentially interesting cat and mouse game, the movie breaks down into fighting and screaming and explosions wherein even greater implausibilities await.

I will give the movie credit for taking its time. Despite the CGI and dubious actions of the lead character, and despite everything else that was missing, the movie does at least concern itself with setting things up. It certainly doesn't push headlong into something, anything, to get some action started. But when all is said and done it is still a tantalizing but ultimately unfulfilling trip down an avenue of unrealized possibilities and disappointing decisions.

Final Grade: C

Who Watches the Watchers?

It is the age-old dilemma which has proved insuperable. We humans, we tell ourselves, are incapable of getting along in a stable society without someone forcing us to. So we humans – the very same ones who are incapable of self-governance – have designed for ourselves various governments, or rather, have submitted to governmental designs that we were born into. From which talent pool are the enforcers of this institution drawn? Why, from the ranks of the very human beings who, if you’ll recall, were the ones incapable of self-governance in the first place. These leaders, apparently incapable of governing themselves, are given the solemn task of governing others. But who governs them?

Democracy was offered as a solution to this problem. Its track record is such that leading proponents of it have raved, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms.” The same ravers continued, “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” Even fierce opponents of democracy have been forced to concede that, “Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses,” and that, “Democracy is the theory that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it good and hard.”

Despite this near universal admiration for a comparatively new form of government, a careful examination suggests a more cautious conclusion. After all, even if we assume, as we must if we support democracy, that there are some among us who are wise enough and temperate enough to govern others, we are still left with a very fundamental problem: that these wise and temperate individuals must first be willing to govern, must then be recognized as wise and temperate, must be reliably distinguished from those who are not, and all this must be done by people too foolish and improvident to govern themselves in the first place.

A few moments’ thought will uncover several traits which prove propitious in getting elected, but which do not contribute to wise governance and perhaps detract from it. A person with great charisma will be more likely to be elected, for instance, but charisma does not help a governor make wise decisions. If this personal charm serves to mask a malignant character underneath, it will be to society’s detriment. There are a host of other qualities which in and of themselves are neutral, but which can serve to make attractive a less savory figure. Among these qualities are height, beauty and speaking ability as well as qualities which vary in importance according to time and place, such as gender, ethnicity and religious affiliation.

The desire to control others aids one in getting elected by virtue of the fact that candidates for government office are self-selected. The very first step in getting elected is running for office. A political post will serve as a magnet for people who want power, and yet surely we would prefer governors who wish only to restrain the deleterious aspects of human nature, not those who wish to control us. But the ranks of office seekers will be disproportionately represented by the power hungry.

Elections, especially large ones, are not won by a candidate stating his case and then sitting back and waiting for people to vote for him. Coalitions must be built, alliances made, promises given. Most candidates who get into office arrive there with a balance sheet of favors owed, and any prospect of reelection depends on his execution of the assumed debts. Therefore, we can expect that adaptable individuals who do not too strictly adhere to principles will have longer, more successful careers as office holders. People who can navigate through the ever-shifting maze of political alliances are well suited for democratic political office, but none of this suggests an ability to govern wisely. Indeed, a flexible candidate such as we should expect to come to dominate the halls of government power will be unlikely to remain faithful to wise policies, and inasmuch as he occasionally supports sensible positions it will be as a matter of convenience, and probably temporary.

The office holders with the longest careers will also be the ones who can shape the system so that it favors their reelection. The ability and willingness to do this is closely related to the adaptability mentioned above. As an example, we might imagine that a basic literacy requirement is imposed in order to be eligible to vote. All parties and candidates who are more popular among the uneducated will be hurt. There are also potential requirements which would discriminate against candidates based not on their supporters, but rather on their status. Restrictions on how money may be raised and in what quantities discriminate against candidates who have never run before, or never successfully run, while favoring candidates who are already well known for having been elected.

Another feature of government is that taxes can be spread out over a population, while the distribution of tax money can accrue to smaller groups who therefore benefit more than other individuals suffer for the taxation. We would therefore expect the beneficiaries of tax money to be more motivated to lobby for their benefits than the taxpayers are to fight against such benefits. This feature further induces the formation of officeholder/tax recipient relations that are cemented by the politicians’ promises.

Given the nature of the system and the qualities of the people who seek office in it, we should expect to get an arrangement wherein charismatic public speakers of above average height with few strong principles but a great desire to wield power arrive in office beholden to people who seek to benefit at taxpayer expense and who go on to tinker with the rules until they have made it unlikely that any serious challenge will unseat them. In the meantime, they are free to monitor the ranks of the up and comers so that preferred replacements can be found, taught the game and later handed the necessary connections to alliances to perpetuate what is fast coming to resemble an aristocratic oligopoly.

Furthermore, such an aristocracy will be better glued together by those willing to punish dissenters. If laws are passed which require full disclosure of campaign funds, for example, then any person or company which supports a candidate leaves itself open to retribution if their candidate does not win. Therefore, most people and companies restrict their support to viable candidates, trusting that even if their man doesn’t win, the party he belonged to will still have enough power to shield them should they require it. Spite, it would seem, is a quality much to be prized by the office holders of a democracy.

We must admit that the public’s ideology plays a primary role. If an office holder’s constituents are unyielding on a certain issue, this might pose a problem for his adaptability. However, it must be noted that the candidate who strictly adheres to a certain popular principle is at no advantage over an individual who only appears to adhere to the principle. The perception of adherence is what will affect the voters. Moreover, faithfulness to principle tends to be a general trait, not a specific one. Therefore, a principled candidate, assuming his principles align well with those of the voting public, breaks even on the issues with the unprincipled but talented swindler, but loses out in his ability to build varying coalitions and get reelected. It is often, therefore, important to remain flexible on policy but to appear to be dedicated to good governance, which brings me to the story whose relating over the radio this morning prompted the writing of the present article.

Ohio lawmakers recently passed a law which prohibited anyone who contributed more than $1,000 to a campaign to receive any sort of government contract. This would seem to disrupt the time-honored flow of politics. The ability of politicians to form coalitions with would-be tax beneficiaries in exchange for future favors would be hampered by such a law. Can this really have happened? Did the people who benefit from the system and who skew towards the often unattractive qualities listed above actually pass a law to the public good but their own detriment?

No, as it turns out. The law was passed, but it was struck down by a court as unconstitutional. Unconstitutional not because of the content of the law, but because of the way the law was passed. Certain passages of the two versions of the bill, the House and Senate versions, were switched from one version to the other at the wrong time, thus invalidating the law on procedural grounds. This, of course, was done on purpose to sabotage the law by the very people who passed it. We don’t even need any evidence of this; we know the system well enough to know the truth. Accepting that it was an honest mistake requires us to believe that people who pass dozens of laws every year, year after year, and who benefit from the tit-for-tat arrangement of politics actually wanted to cut back on their own benefits and risk losing the support of the people who are vital to getting them elected, but out of sheer dumb luck they made a rare mistake on the procedure for making law on this precise case. I have never heard of politicians flubbing the passage of a bill that retroactively raises their salaries; only when they pass a bill that restricts their ability to raise money by whoring themselves out to greedy business interests.

How many of the qualities listed above were used for this cynical maneuver? These cunning little bastards now appear to be fighting corruption, a position that enjoys widespread support among Americans, without actually having to do so and consequently obstruct their own aspirations. We gave ourselves democracy and democracy has given us this. We do not trust ourselves to watch ourselves, so we picked ourselves to watch ourselves instead. But we never paused to consider that we might need watching while we watched ourselves.

Blog #6, in which a break from libertarianism is taken to straighten out college football and a lucid proposal for a postseason is put forth.

It is no shocking admission to acknowledge that college football’s BCS system is unsatisfactory. This position enjoys the backing of a large majority of college football fans. While I admittedly have no hard data to confirm this, the fact that I have never spoken to anyone nor read the blog/posting/article of anyone who supports the BCS system strongly suggests – especially in the absence of any harsh backlash such as is sometimes directed at minority viewpoints in more controversial areas and which might serve to silence any dissenting viewpoints that are out there – that the dissatisfaction with the BCS system is nearly universal. For once, I find myself agreeing with the majority, but preserving my contrarian niche in life I disagree with the arguments against the BCS system as they are typically expressed.

Whenever late season upsets alter the landscape of the sport, commentators inevitably talk about the BCS system imploding. Chaos, it is generally agreed, reigns and the BCS system is at fault. These allegations are so laughably ridiculous and easy to counter it is a wonder that they continue to be made.

The chaos of college football, which is what makes the regular season so exciting, is not due to the BCS. The chaos is quite obviously due to the fact that so many upsets occur, and, for institutional reasons discussed below, how much impact these upsets have. Teams we thought were strong are not; teams that started strong finish weak; teams that started weak finish strong. In baseball, an upset means the eventual champ will finish 98-64 rather than 99-63. In football, these upsets are magnified by the fact that every game represents a large chunk of the entire schedule. No one, even going into the very last weak, can be absolutely certain where teams will wind up, especially because order is determined by voting and voters dwell on recent games. A loss in baseball means you lose a half game on the other teams; a loss in football means you drop from #1 to #7, or #3 to #8, or, in the case of a certain hapless program, from #5 to right out of the rankings.


The system seems designed for chaos, and who would have it any other way? But the BCS is not responsible for the chaos. Indeed, the BCS is the exact opposite of chaos. By a predetermined formula, teams are measured, ranked and sent to bowl games based on an established method. The BCS is not going to implode because of the blissful chaos of college football; it was precisely because of this chaos that the BCS was created in the first place! If two teams with respectable schedules finish 12-0 and no one else manages this, it becomes a very easy decision as to who should play in the championship game. When you have a season like this one, in which no major conference champ can go undefeated – indeed, only one major conference champ managed to get through the season with only one loss! – there is a lot more difficulty in determining who the two finalists should be. Enter the BCS. But the difficulty comes from the college game itself, not from the method used to make sense of it. Blaming the BCS for the chaos of college football is akin to blaming a calculator for the difficulty of your calculus test.

Again, I am not endorsing the BCS system, because a very serious and supportable charge can be made against it, that being that the formula itself is flawed. Another serious charge is that only two finalists have a chance to win the championship, when, in years like this one, no one can say beforehand and with certainty which two are most deserving. 2003 and 2004 were two other recent examples of uncertainty, as first USC and then Auburn got left out of the title match even though strong cases could be made in their defense. We’ll agree that this particular calculator is unsuitable for this particular test, but please let’s not blame the calculator for the test’s abstruseness.

Two other commonplaces I have been reading that are particular to this year and which I believe are unsupported are that the Big Ten is weak, and that Ohio State “backed its way into the title game.” At least one sports writer went so far as to say that OSU got to the title game by clicking the TV remote over the last two weekends.

The second charge is the easiest to rebut. It is an absolute certainty that Ohio State did not get to the title game by clicking the TV remote for the past two weekends. I myself have clicked the TV remote during this span and yet I was not given an invitation to the title game. My wife used the remote as well, and I am reasonably certain my friends, my sister, my two brothers-in-law, my parents-in-law and both my parents made use of the device. One could argue that I did not use the remote well enough to reach the title game, but I would counter that no one ever came to check. I think the true answer is that Ohio State reached the title game by going 11-1 and winning the Big Ten conference. It seems to me a more likely explanation. Admittedly, I do not know what formula the computers that comprise part of the BCS system use to rank the teams, but I can’t imagine that remote control use plays anything but a miniscule role, if indeed it is used at all.

It is the very same type of person who can look at the predetermined and scrupulously followed BCS system and refer to it as its opposite (i.e., anarchy) who claims that OSU backed its way into the title game, or got in by clicking the remote control. I am open to any reasonable argument that OSU is not one of the two best teams in the land (that sort of thing has proven difficult to determine this season), but I will not for a moment consider an argument which tries to cast Ohio State’s appearance in its second straight title game as fortunate or clearly undeserving. Yes, Ohio State needed other teams to lose to make it to the championship, but given that no serious contender went undefeated this year, EVERYBODY needed help from other games to have a shot.

Consider two teams which both go 11-1. One wins its final game on, say, December 1st and goes to the championship game, while the other finishes its season on November 24th and loses that day. We can imagine that sportswriters would take no undue note of the order of finish, praising the first team for a fine season and looking forward to the final bowl game. But now let’s reverse the order of finish. Say the first team wins its last game on November 24th and has to wait a week for the second team to lose on December 1st before it is assured of a place in the finals. Suddenly the first team has backed its way into the final game and – Heavens! – isn’t that a shame?

There is nothing different about how the team performed on the field, and consequently no reasonable basis for the difference in how it is treated in the two cases. Ohio State has not backed into the title game. It could be true that they had a soft schedule. It could be true that they are not one of the two best in the country. But they got in by winning 11 of 12 games, most of them by convincing margins over teams with winning records. The date when their regular season ended does not alter their performance during that regular season.

The first charge listed above is harder to counter. There are comparatively few inter-conference matches, and most of these take place at the beginning of the season, when many teams have not found their stride. Some teams start off hot – does anyone really think that LSU would beat V Tech 48-7 if they played right now? – while others struggle to find their form (let’s not pretend that Ohio State wouldn’t trounce Akron by eight touchdowns if they played today… and if Tressel had a mind to do it!). The very same sportswriter who accused OSU of manipulating a remote control to get themselves into the finals pointed out that the Buckeye’s lackluster 20-2 win over Akron happened on the same day that LSU beat eventual ACC champ V Tech 48-7. But rather than focus on one game or small set of games to the exclusion of everything else, why don’t we look at the whole picture and see what sort of conference the Big Ten is?

The Big Ten champ Ohio State had only one significant non-conference game, that being their 33-14 win over Washington at Washington. The Pac Ten is, in my opinion, the toughest conference this year, and the eventual Pac Ten champ USC could only manage a three-point win over the Huskies. No one beat them by more than 24, so Ohio State’s 19-point win looks pretty solid. Despite a poor record, I think Washington is actually a decent team with a killer schedule… you’ll notice that it took undefeated and BCS-bowl-bound Hawaii a last quarter comeback to defeat them by a single score.

Illinois, the runner-up in the Big Ten, spanked lowly Syracuse by a score that is pretty comparable to what the other Big East teams did to them. More importantly, the Illini took Missouri down to the wire on a neutral field and lost by a single score. So the Big 12’s number two team is slightly better than the Big Ten’s number two. No real shame there.

Michigan, who finished tied for second, is the best argument for Big Ten mediocrity. They lost to I-AA Appalachian State at home and got throttled, at home again, by Oregon, who finished fourth in the Pac Ten. But there are some nuances here. Michigan indisputably improved after their 0-2 start. They beat Notre Dame 38-0 the following week. Notre Dame might be pitiful, but they did play a bunch of solid teams and no one beat them worse than Michigan. Notre Dame went 0-4 against Big Ten teams even though they played mostly middle-of-the-pack teams from that conference. Meanwhile, they went 2-1 against Pac Ten teams, having played champion USC to the same score as against Michigan, and they beat UCLA who, on the last day of the regular season, was a win against USC away from a possible share of the Pac Ten title. It seems clear that Michigan, though they never turned into a powerhouse, got their act together in time for the Big Ten season.

Wisconsin finished fourth in the Big Ten, making them either the worst of the top teams or the best of the middle teams. They did have a poor showing against UNLV, whom they defeated by a mere touchdown, but they also doubled up Washington State 42-21. This makes the Big Ten 2-1 against the Pac Ten, and their margin of victory against WaSU is better than five of the other nine Pac Ten schools.

Penn State’s only game of note was a victory against the Irish of NDU. Again, they throttled them while UCLA could not.

Iowa split their important pre-conference games, losing by two points to Iowa State – Iowa always loses to Iowa State it seems – and blowing out Syracuse 35-0. Iowa was a middling competitor in the Big Ten this year, but their victory over the Orangemen was pretty impressive. Yes, Syracuse was a very poor team, but Iowa beat them worse than anyone but West Virginia, and Syracuse played in a decent conference.

Purdue stomped on NDU but played no other significant teams.

Michigan State, one of several teams tying for sixth in the Big Ten, spanked NDU pretty good and also defeated Pittsburgh. The Panthers’ upset victory over West Virginia notwithstanding, Pittsburgh was admittedly an average team this year. But their finish in the Big East was comparable to the Spartans’ finish in the Big Ten, and when they met head to head, the Big Ten team won by a small margin.

Northwestern went 1-1 in relevant contests, managing a narrow win over Nevada and narrowly losing to Duke. All three were near the bottom of their conferences.

The Big Ten’s record against the other conferences that matter, the ACC, the SEC, the Pac Ten, the Big 12, the Big East and, to some extent, the Mountain West and the WAC, is a healthy 7-4. This is tempered by the 2-4 record that emerges when one considers only those games where teams at the same level in their conference faced each other. But all of those games were won or lost by a single score, save for the Michigan/Oregon debacle. And Oregon was, in my mind, the best of the Pac Ten until their quarterback got injured and they dropped their last three games. It seems to me that the Big Ten is not the terrible conference that has been claimed, but rather is an average conference whose teams invariably beat lower ranking teams from other conferences and generally held their own against competition of the same level.

Finally, before this long-winded post comes to an end, I ask that the good unflagging reader consider a proposal for the reform of the college football post season.

Any good solution to the dilemma facing college football should preserve its uniqueness and its beloved traditions. By uniqueness I am referring to the crazy endings where teams’ fortunes swing back and forth, often without them taking the field. College football is interconnected like no other sport of which I am aware. No Sooner fan ever loved his team more than Buckeye fans did last weekend. Gator fans found themselves cheering heartily for the Bruins the season before. And by traditions I am, of course, referring to the rivalries between teams and conferences and the Bowl Games, even though there needs to be some decency imposed on their names. Also, it would be nice if the system had some way to deal with the fact that sometimes there are several teams worthy of fighting for the title, while other years there is an obvious pair of contenders.

By the old system, voters picked the National Champion, in effect saying that the season always sufficed to make clear who the best team was. The system we have now allows voters, along with a few computers to give an illusion of objectivity (I say illusion since the computer equations themselves are subjectively created), to choose the last two standing, essentially the same logic as before. We are now saying that the regular season suffices only to decide on the top two teams and these must play for the crown.

The old system was one extreme end of the spectrum; the other extreme would be to allow all 119 Division I-A teams into a tournament and decide it on the field. The problems with the first extreme have been made clear and are made clear anew every autumn. But the other extreme would demean the regular season, making games only worth, say, home field advantage in the playoffs rather than the actual ticket to the playoffs. One of the best attributes of college football is that each game is so important. Many years, a single loss is enough to preclude any possibility of playing for the championship, such as in 2005, 2004 and 2002, just to name the more recent ones. Even in an odd year like this one there are a total of only three losses between the two championship contenders.

Most arguments about a tournament bog down in questions of how many teams should be admitted. What number of teams ensures that all the serious contenders get in – the ones too good to rule out as possibilities – without allowing so many in that the regular season loses its importance? I propose a unique kind of tournament that preserves the Bowl Games, preserves the conference rivalries, introduces a tournament of sorts, excludes all but the very best teams, augments the interconnectedness that makes college football so wildly addicting and handles in a way no rigid system can the differing number of top teams each year.

My system would require a ranking of the teams. This could be done any number of ways, including with the current BCS calculations or perhaps by simply using the AP poll. For this example, I’ll use the BCS system for my rankings. At the end of the year, the Big Ten champ and the Pac Ten champ would meet in the Rose Bowl, as they did for half a century. The Big 12 champ would go back to appearing in the Orange Bowl, to be met by the ACC champ. The SEC champ would take its traditional place in the Sugar Bowl, while the Big East winner would head to the Fiesta Bowl (because that’s what is left). The other slots in the Sugar and Fiesta Bowls would be filled by at large bids determined by the ranking system.

If this system were to be used this year, Ohio State would play USC in the Rose Bowl, LSU would play, let’s say, Missouri in the Sugar Bowl, Virginia Tech would play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl and West Virginia would play Georgia (rematch!) in the Fiesta Bowl. Kansas, the #8 team in the BCS rankings, misses out because there were two at large bids ahead of them, something made possible by the fact that conference champ West Virginia is #9 in the BCS. These BCS Bowl contenders would be ranked as follows:

1. Ohio State
2. LSU
3. Virginia Tech
4. Oklahoma
5. Georgia
6. Missouri
7. USC
8. West Virginia

The other lesser bowls (which, by the way, would be drastically reduced in number) would be played soon after the season ended, nixing the long-established but absurd break between regular season and post season. The BCS Bowls would be played in the middle of December. The championship game would be played on January 1st (because who wants to lose the connection between college football and the New Year?) and would feature the two highest ranked winners from the BCS Bowls.

This means that OSU and LSU control their own destiny, that USC and West Virginia can only act as spoilers, and that Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Georgia and Missouri need help from someone else. If Missouri beats LSU, they have to sit back and cheer hard for USC and West Virginia. I think this system would accomplish all the goals listed above. It would maintain the championship level as an exclusive club but allow more disputes to be settled on the field. It preserves the sacredness of the Bowl Season as well as the traditional inter-conference match ups. It throws a bone to those slovenly pigs – you know who you are! – who think that 16 teams deserve a crack at the National Championship without giving them the entire turkey.

And more than anything, it deals with the variability of college football. Some years, it’s obvious who the best team is. Other years, like this one, it could be any one of several teams. In years where there are two clear-cut contenders, they will most likely win their Bowl Games and meet in the finals. In years when there are several contenders, this is likely to be expressed in the Bowl Games where upsets will allow heretofore lower ranked teams into the final game.
On a final note, I would like to point out that sportswriter Ivan Maisel, in disagreeing with Illinois’ selection to the Rose Bowl this year, said it reminded him of the days when “a 6-4-1 UCLA would upset Ohio State.” Leaving aside the question of why this reminds him of that, I have to wonder if Ivan Maisel has been watching the same NCAA football as I have. Using the conditional tense for the past – UCLA would upset Ohio State –means that it was an action that was repeated; something habitual. If he is referring to Rose Bowl upsets, Ohio State and UCLA have met only once in the Rose Bowl, and while UCLA did score an upset, the Bruins finished 9-2-1 that year, a far more impressive record than 6-4-1. If Ivan Maisel is referring to any UCLA upsets of Ohio State, I have to inform him that no 6-4-1 UCLA team has ever beaten Ohio State. Even if we take his declaration to be a vaguer, more symbolic reference to a time when middling UCLA teams used to upset superior Buckeye teams, there still is nothing in the record books to suggest such an epoch ever dawned. Indeed, Ohio State and UCLA have traditionally played home and home games in successive years, only infrequently, and every time they split the series. When they met in the Rose Bowl in 1975, it was during one of these series, which added an extra game so a winner could be determined… except that the following year they tied the third game. Playing loose with the facts might be good enough for Fox News, but Mr. Maisel should hold himself to a higher standard than that.