Everyone Not Wanting a Playoff Is the Rose Bowl's Fault

Annoying 'Bama-bot Ray Melick:

The brick wall blocking a playoff will still be standing Wednesday afternoon.

But maybe - just maybe - the blockheads of the Big Ten and Pac-10 will begin to see the cracks.

Springing to the defense of his Pac-10 counterpart is Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who together with Hansen forms a kind of Axis of Obstruction.

Matt Hayes:

Please, everyone. No more questions about who runs college sports. We give you Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten.

Dick Harmon, man who does not watch college football:

A true college football championship is being held up by two conferences - the Pac-10 and Big Ten.

ESPN's Mark Schablach:

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen have long been opposed to any sort of playoff, as their leagues remain attached to the Rose Bowl like toddlers to a bottle.

In the immortal words of Buzz Bissinger: sorry, various media members, but you're full of s---. Why after the jump.

Here's why:

Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said if the proposed plus-one model for determining college football's national champion "looked like a playoff, smelled like a playoff and felt like a playoff," it probably was a playoff.

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe said his league's board of directors is adamantly opposed to any kind of "NFL-type playoff."

WAC commissioner Karl Benson ... said they were still "very pleased with the current system."

Even Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White... left a conference room at an oceanfront resort smiling and proclaiming, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The kicker... that's Schablach's article! The sentence after the Rose Bowl suckling one reads "More surprising, [Big 12 commissioner Dan] Beebe announced Big 12 schools voted in March to oppose the plus-one model."

This is only surprising if you can't read. Take this piece from January:

Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe said his presidents weighed postseason modifications last spring, were united against a playoff and reaffirmed that stance in the wake of Adams' proposal.

It apparently shocks the media when the Big 12 doesn't completely reverse its stance in a few months. The universal opposition to any college football playoff from not two but four major conferences and Notre Dame has been obvious for months unless you get paid to write about college football for a newspaper.

Yeah, the Big Ten and Pac 10 are opposed to a playoff. This is doubly unsurprising since they have a longstanding relationship with the Rose Bowl and the proposed "Plus One" guarantees that every Big Ten playoff game would be a road game. Even if the Rose Bowl didn't exist, the Big Ten would have to be the biggest bunch of saps this side of Kevin White to agree to Mike Slive's patently self-serving proposal.

So, in a sense, they are an "axis of obstruction." But that axis encompasses everyone except Mike Slive, mainstream media, so shut up about it. The correct answer to "who is preventing a college football playoff?" is "everyone." So says everyone, directly.

Sincerely,
Basement-Dwelling Troglodyte who, while unworthy to lick the soles of your feet, can actually read and stuff and thus humbly submits this correction