Fire Joe Morgan was always my favorite site on the internet.  As a baseball fan, I loved the analysis, but also how they hoisted “journalists” on their own petards, throwing their idiocy back in their face.  One favorite target was Bill Plaschke, whose columns reflected his appearances on Around The Horn, idiocy, arrogance, and bad jokes.  We got lucky, though, because Kurt Streeter, a colleague of Mr. Plaschke’s decided to write about the Rose Bowl, and I think Bill’s style rubbed off on Kurt.  Well, sorta.  I find it more of a rant about president-elect Barack Obama, a potential playoff system and the weather in Pennsylvania. We’ll let you decide.  This is a long read, but it should be a good one.  Streeter’s words are in italics, mine are in bold.

Since the Penn State Nittany Lions football team is due in town this weekend, let me be the first to offer it a warm welcome — and some advice.

Thanks Kirk.  As visitors to your fine city, I’m sure we could use an update on the local flavor.  What’s going on in L.A.?  Who’s gay, who’s cheating, where can I contract cheap Mexicans to do my landscaping…these seem like your most pressing issues.

At last check, the weather back in the land of the endless coal mine wasn’t looking too great — unless freezing temperatures, biting wind and relentless snow are your bag. So, Penn Staters, in case you’ve forgotten, that mass of blue above you is known as the sky. And, yes, that golden orb is called the sun.

Thanks a lot, Kurt.  You know, I actually forgot what nice weather is.  You know, Pennsylvania is so much like Alaska in that regard, I can almost see Vladmir Putin from my dorm room window.  And to be honest with you, I love the snow.  I love snowball fights and making snowmen and sledding and skiing, and I love Big Ten football in December in the snow and wind and cold because that’s how the greats used to do it.  But, hey, some sun never hurt anyone, right?  As for the coal mining joke?  Whatever, if our ancestors had to work hard for a living, that’s obviously an indictment on our football team.  Who’s with me?  I mean, coming from a place where men are-or at least were-men to a place where men wear make-up and play in a land of make-believe is obviously a step down in class.  Of course.

(Note: There may also be a touch of gray gunk mixed into this picture, and though some may call this smog, I suggest using a more hopeful term: Southern California Fog.)

Of course you would, Kurt.  How fucking cute.  It wouldn’t be like you to point out something wrong with a region, like, say the weather, and then sarcastically mock the people who live there.  Nope, never from a pro like you.  It’s funny, because I call a cloudy day “Pennsylvania sun” and snow “falling drops of melting awesome.”

Anyway, because this is surely the first time out west for many of you, it won’t take long to see that Los Angeles isn’t a city the way you might think of a city. You could fit Pittsburgh inside some Hollywood backyards. Borders are hard to find in this mega-town, but you’ll actually be able to spot a very natural one when you walk from your swanky rooms at the Santa Monica Loews Hotel. There you will find our westward boundary: the sandy beach, dotted with swaying palms.

I like that.  It’s definitely our first time out west, we’re so uncultured, we’ve never left central Pennsylvania.  Frankly, I’m even a little freaked out by Philadelphia.  Now I am definitely up for that last part.  Sounds pretty awesome, beaches and palm trees.  If I’m going to L.A. for a vacation, that’s why.  But as for the no borders thing, I guess that really explains all the Mexicans!

Hardy sons of JoePa: Because the Rose Bowl is Jan. 1, you’ve got roughly two weeks to suffer through this torture. Drink it in. Enjoy every last minute, because the way things are going, memorable times like these — weeks of L.A. bliss capped by a mind-blowing college football game that tops all comers for pageantry — will soon be but a memory.

Wait, what’s torture?  The snow and ice from our hometown that we are accustomed to and love?  Or the sandy beaches and palm trees?  You’re confusing me, Kurt.  Because now you’re saying the weeks in L.A. are bliss, which is more or less the opposite of torture.  If you’re saying that the waiting is the hard part, you’re right on that, but we should have that kick-ass game to look forward to.  I’m still not seeing where you get torture.

As we all know, there’s a heavy clamor for change in college football. “Playoffs or bust!” shout the naysayers. Even Mr. Change himself, Barack Obama, wants it, and when the soon-to-be leader of the free world starts harping as he has, you can bet that big-time college football will indeed have a playoff within the next decade.

Now this sounds dandy!  Why, every other sport at every other level has some sort of playoff system to determine its champion.  Why should football be any different?  Hell, it’s not just Penn State that has a gripe about being left our of some mythical national championship decided by reporters and coaches.  I believe a certain team from Southern California also whined about the BCS system.  And tell me why you’re picking on Barack Obama here.  I thought everyone from California loved the guy, just like everyone from Pennsylvania is a coal worker!  Oh wait, crude generalizations never work.  My bad.  And if we playoff-loving harpies are the naysayers, does that make you guys the freedom crusaders, fighting for the integrity of the sport?  Do you get a mask and a cape?  I want to be a superhero, damnit!

How sad. Sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone, and the glorious time your football team is about to have is one of the prime reasons why.

No offense, Kurt, but I hope my team isn’t out there for a vacation.  I’d love them to have a great time in L.A., but they should know the first reason they’re out there is to win.  I mean, how long are the guys even in L.A.?  Are they out there now?  Are they spending a few weeks or is it just me, the reader?  I don’t get it.  I mean, it’s not like the entire fanbase is going out there anyway.  The rest of us are stuck in your rendition of hell, fire and brimstone having been switched out for ice and snow.  Who’s your intended audience here, anyway?

Imagine, Nittany Lions, what it would be like if the playoffs were already a reality.

For starters, the way things work, a Division I playoff would probably begin as a tidy tournament with, say, four teams — and within a few years grow into a behemoth. Trust me, with all the cash involved, it would not be long until a Division I playoff looked exactly like the one played in what used to be called Division I-AA: a 16-team slog to the Promised Land.

Okay, Kurt, I’ll take your word on it.  A plus-one system would almost certainly be the first step, and though I doubt a 16-team playoff system would emerge, I’ll accept this premise.  So let’s see what else we have in this paragraph…a shot at the Division 1-Football Championship Subdivision (can’t put the word “championship” in there, it makes it sound good!), and the word slog.  If you hate month-long, nerve-racking tournaments to decide a champion, I’d hate to see what you call the 65-team NCAA tournament.  Clusterfuck to the Championship?  Yeah, I stole it from Jon Stewart.  You wanna fight about it?

If this happens, the glorious, granddaddy Rose Bowl would quite possibly be a quarterfinal game. That’s right, the final eight . . . wow . . . exciting.

Yes, history and paegantry have a place in college football.  But when you have a Pac-10/Big Ten rivalry, I never really understood why every game is played in Pac-10 territory.  Yeah, nobody really wants to come to Wisconsin in January, but to preserve a cash cow for Southern California is what college football is all about?  Maybe it would be a semifinal game, maybe the host to the championship.  I don’t know the logistics, but we’re not shedding any tears here in State College, or anywhere outside of Southern California for that matter.  Frankly, USC has a home game.  Is that fair?  You tell me.

Because it would be just another step on the way to a title game — and a monumentally expensive trip for such a step — tens of thousands of your fans would stay home. With far fewer of your fans, with less prestige and with the possibility that one day USC and its rabid fan base will not be the Pac-10 representative, it’s not hard to imagine the Rose Bowl played before a slew of empty seats. Imagine Penn State versus Arizona. Pomp and circumstance? Dulled and diminished.

Wow, that sounds awful.  I can hardly imagine what it would be like to play in front of empty stands.  I mean, I’m not a Pitt fan.  I can’t really argue against your hypothetical, except to say that Penn State has the best fans in the country.  You bet your ass we’d pack that stadium, and be loud and be proud.  We have the biggest alumni network in the world, Kurt, and we’d take over the Rose Bowl if we had the chance.  And if this is a national semifinal, first of all, what’s Arizona doing there?  Are we still doing Pac-10/Big Ten, or is this just coincedence?  I mean, I bet Texas would travel well, or even Florida coming out west.  And anyway, pomp and circumstance have been let go for a sense of finality, and closure in determining a real champion, and that’s a trade-off I’d make seven days a week.

Just as bad, because the Penn State athletic department would need to save cash for a game the following week, you’d probably prep as you have for all road games. The new itinerary: Dec. 30, fly to L.A., check into a less-than-stellar hotel near Pasadena. Dec. 31, light practice, head back to said hotel. Sleep. Jan. 1, play game, back to hotel. Jan. 2, fly home to the ice storms.

Not exactly the stuff of memories.

I see what you did there, with the ice storms.  See, because it sucks to be in Pennsylvania in winter, and because everything is better out West.  How could I forget.  And anyway, when did the Rose Bowl become about having fun?  I thought it was about tradition, Kurt, and pomp and cirumstance and all sorts of words like that?  Who knew it was always about the players?

And speaking of memories, if you lost that Rose Bowl/Quarterfinal Playoff game, it would be a tough loss, something akin to losing to Ohio State. But, seriously, it wouldn’t be that big a deal, just a defeat in the final eight. Does any normal human being remember any quarterfinal game from last year’s NCAA college basketball tournament?

Okay, so we’re still on an 16-team playoff thing.  Well, Kurt, it would be a kick in the balls to lose in any playoff game like it is to lose any regular season game or any bowl game.  I can’t necessarily remember any given quarterfinal game, but I remember opening day games, and upsets like Siena and Western Kentucky, and George Mason all the way to the Final Four.  And you really think losing to Ohio State could be brushed off?  We’re still bitching about losses to Minnesota from 1999 and Michigan in 2002, Kurt.  We actually care about our football team.  That is, when we’re not avoiding hail the size of basketballs.  It’s quite scary out here, what with us being the second-safest metropolitan area in the country.   But no crimes are committed in L.A., I mean that’s got to be #1 on the list.

Yet the average college football fan will long recall a boatload of big games from the 2008 regular season.

What’s your point, Kurt?  I remember a whole boatload of big games from any sport, an the basketball regular season too.  We’d have to forego the regular season to make it to the playoffs?  Then how would we pick the teams?  Kurt, I don’t get it.  The race for the 4th or 8th or 16th spot would be just as tight as the race for the 2nd!

Playoffs? The entire season has been one massive playoff. Penn State, even after your single loss, there were slim chances that you could crawl back in the BCS mix. So after the heartbreaker at Iowa you kept fighting, kept playing as if every down was your last. That kind of effort created a season of unforgettable memories.

Not really.  We dismantled Indiana in a half-hearted effort and crushed Michigan State.  Not much there, except celebrating a fantastic season and a Big Ten championship.  It didn’t really take much effort after that.  Sorry.  I mean, I know offhand that after USC lost to Oregon State that you demolished the Washington schools, struggled against Arizona and won late over Stanford, but a little homework is too much for you to do, Kurt.

Add “plan Obama” to the mix, and soon enough everything changes. One loss? Big deal. Two? Ho-hum. A trio of losses still gives you a good shot at the big dance. Among the top 16 teams in the latest BCS poll, three teams had three losses and four teams had two. In short: With a playoff, college football seasons where every week is hot and highly charged will cool considerably.

Plan Obama.  I like that.  It’s not like anyone else had ever thought up a playoff system for college football, or even like OBAMA HIMSELF ADVOCATED AN EIGHT TEAM PLAYOFF (again with the no research, you’re like a broken record, Kurt).  And yes, there would be some kinks to work out.  Maybe we take every conference champion, maybe we cap the number of participants each conference can have, the point is, we’re arguing hypotheticals to a system that might never come about.  Yes, it wouldn’t be perfect, but nothing in life is!  And again, teams will still be fighting for the conference championship or to become that 4 or 8 or 16 seed.  Kurt, are you telling me that regular season NFL games don’t really matter?  Or that nobody cares about the NCAA basketball regular season?  Those kids at  Duke who are doing Paternoville, and that wait line a hundred thousand people long in Green Bay tell you how dead wrong you are.

Nittany Lions, if there had been a playoff this year, yes, you would still have a sliver of a chance at a national title — if you could first beat the Trojans and then, say, Texas and Florida, every game on the road. But as happens with March Madness, if you’d failed to win the big crown, nobody one mile south of Delaware and a hundred miles west of the Alleghenies would ever remember you existed.

That’s fine, Kurt.  You think John Q. Randomguy, of Omaha, Nebraska knows who won the Rose Bowl in any given year?  Because I don’t.  But do you think he knew about George Mason, or could remember a few big NCAA tournament games that weren’t the final?  I bet you he could.  And if we had lost that one more game, and we were playing in the Capital One Bowl instead of the Rose Bowl, do you think more people would remember that?  Being in the playoffs wouldn’t take anything away from this team, it would give it more gravitas, and the chance to be the only true champion in college football.  Kurt, you’re so wrong.

So be glad for what you have. Enjoy our weather, enjoy our marvels — after practice, go to Pink’s for a bacon/chili/cheese dog, hit the Malibu beaches, flirt with the Pepperdine coeds. Drink up every part of the coming two weeks and then play like everything depends on it in the Rose Bowl. Nittany Lions teams of the soon-to-come future, pawns in an effort to take all uniqueness from college football, are probably not going to have it so good.

See, there you go.  That first part is what I was looking for from the beginning, a little bit of inside info about your great city.  Are the Pepperdine coeds notoriously skanky?  That would be awesome.  And either way, we’ll have an awesome time at the game, even if we are just counting down the seconds before we’re back home in that icy cold state of hell you call Pennsylvania.  Let the Rose Bowl be a great one, let the best team win, and let a college football playoff come sooner rather than later.

Thanks for reading, guys.  I told you we’d be back!  Here’s a present for staying with us for approximately 2800 words, one Pepperdine coed, as brought to you by Google Image Search!

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