FOUR What? (How ESPN is hustlin’ college football fans by screamin’ Playoff)

“Let the ESPN hustle begin bruh!”

Big Momma would always say, “Some folks ain’t satisfied with nothin’!”  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.

Well playboy, these cats at ESPN are givin’ me the runs right now because they’re runnin’ game on the college football world and nobody sees it. For years these cats have been tellin’ fans that the BCS was bogus and that it didn’t work. Every week all you heard was boyz sayin’ that it was gonna be Armageddon at the end of the season since 1998 but that simply wasn’t the case. Why? Because 99 percent of the time the BCS got it right. ESPN was just salty because it didn’t have control of it.

Now all of a sudden the Four Team Playoff is the best thing since sliced bread! Why? Because ESPN is in control of it. Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! The playoff is no better than the BCS system because it’s still subjective. Boyz are still votin’ on who plays and who doesn’t. And now you’ve got a committee of 13 duns that aren’t all football people. Who’s foolin’ who up in this piece?

If you’re still votin’ and you got cats like Condoleeza Rice who is just a Stanford football fan on the committee how is that better. She doesn’t cover the games and watches everybody play EVERY week. Just because she goes to the Cardinal (Stanford) games doesn’t mean she knows what’s goin’ on. I know cats that go to games every week that don’t know jack squat about college football. And that’s just one person bruh. I haven’t even dug off into the other cats that are Athletic Directors at current FBS schools. Are you kiddin’ me?

What’s gonna stop a boy from just droppin’ off $250K to a cat to vote for their school? Cuz you know it’s gonna happen. But you’re tellin’ the world that this system is gonna be better because you’re drivin’ the train, ESPN that is. The BCS was just fine bruh. Name me one time that the right team didn’t win the title? Exactly!

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 arguin’ 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 askin’ for with the BCS.

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 usin’ two of the existin’ Major Bowls as a national semifinal. Here’s why, the bowl games are held durin’ 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 askin’ those same fans to travel the followin’ 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 structurin’ 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. But ESPN is cool with that because they’re makin’ more bread as a result of it. Accordin’ to the set up the title game will always 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 on the open market and guess who will no longer be at the game? The REAL college football fan! Thanks ESPN!

And on some real talk, if the title game is goin’ to always go to the city that places the highest bid, Jerry Jones and Co. is always gonna host the game. The Cowboys are worth a cool $3 billion now bruh. If he’s got all of the bread then he suddenly owns the national title game every year. So the line that boyz ran on us sayin’ that the city that bids the most gets the game was essentially a lie.

In order to keep the game of college football available to the real fans I ‘ve always proposed startin’ the season a week earlier and then makin’ it mandatory that every conference play a title game the last weekend of November. Right now not every conference plays one (Big 12) and that isn’t fair to those that do. The Big 12 needs to add more teams to the conference to make that happen. Once the dust settles. On the first weekend of December there should be a Final Four taken from the Top 25 voted on by legitimate cats that have watched all of the teams play. Not some duns that have a vested interest in a particular school or conference. That’s crazy!! 

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 Title Game! The argument has always between #2 and #3 anyway. Then everybody else would play in the bowls as normal. I don’t wanna hear about #5 being left out because they’re too far down the turn pike to be relevant, anyway.

Havin’ a committee of 13 makes it way too easy for rich boosters to pay boyz off to get into the playoff. This system 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!

I keep hearin’ 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 givin’ up. That’s like askin’ 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 maybe just maybe 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 doin’ 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 great year what are those kids even playin’ for and what do those coaches use as a recruitin’ 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 takin’ the bowl games away we would cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff startin’ week one anyway. I still hear you sayin’ that those bowls are meaningless. Well… not to the kid playin’ 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 playin’ in those bowls. That bread is guaranteed just for showin’ up.

If you were fortunate enough to get to a former BCS bowl it was $17 million payday whether you’re playin’ 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 walkin’ away from that type of scratch.

So ESPN you can run game all you want by tellin’ boyz that the playoff is better with a committee of hand picked cats for college football. Just keep it real and say that it’s better for you and I’m cool with that. Because I know that the real college football fan isn’t goin’ to be able to go to two bowl games, two weeks in a row but the corporate suits will. Stop me when I start lyin’!