There's No Politics in Football!!!

Well actually there's a lot of politics in football, especially college football... but I digress.

A little while back I wrote about the much maligned BCS.  Now, I try to stay away from politics here on the blog because, well, it’s a football blog.  But I recently realized an interesting connection between the BCS and Obamacare… no seriously.

Hear me out on this one.  As I discussed back in my College Football Doomsday post, the BCS was developed with one goal in mind, to ensure that the #1 and #2 ranked teams played each other at the end of every season.  Numerous controversies have led to a lot of BCS hate over the years.  However, when we examine the BCS in its proper context, it’s fairly obvious that it accomplished the goal it was designed to tackle.  Every year since the start of the BCS, the #1 and #2 ranked teams have in fact played a National Championship Game and determined a “true” National Champion on the field instead of in the polls (except 2004, but we won’t talk about that).

Likewise, Obamacare aimed to accomplish a few simple goals as well.  It was designed to close the infamous “doughnut hole” in Medicare, insure young adults on their parent’s plans up to age 26, get ride of the policies that allowed for denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, and allow people who were previously unable to get health insurance the ability to finally receive it.  Therefore, it would appear that, when framed in the proper context, Obamacare has accomplished its goals (or at least it will once that damn website starts working).  Now, from the beginning it was made clear that this bill was not going to solve every problem facing the healthcare system in the U.S.  And from the beginning, Conservatives have complained that Obamacare goes too far, while Liberals don’t think it goes far enough.  Again, football blog, so we’re just going to stop there.

Which brings me back to the BCS.  Like Obamacare, it wasn't designed to be the end-all solution to a problem (in this case, determining a National Champion).  It was simply designed to be a step in the right direction.  Some traditionalists claimed at the time that it went too far.  Reformers, on the other hand, claimed that it didn't go far enough.  The latter seems to have won out since we’ll be moving to a 4 team playoff next year.  Still, make no mistake, even the playoff will be controversial.  There are many out there who want an 8 or even 16 team playoff.  I don’t claim to be psychic (just robotic), so I won’t speculate on where this will take us.  But in the meantime, can we all just acknowledge that some things are fine for what they are and the sky is NOT actually falling?  Here’s the thing, progress is almost always good.  Even when new things don’t work, they provide us with an opportunity to at least learn from them and continue moving forward.  So just let it happen and enjoy the ride.

Here’s hoping that one day we can all live in a world where this healthcare thing is figured out AND we know for a fact who has the best college football team in the nation!  I’m PSUOptimus and I approve this message.