Pigskin Paradise

We
all know that big-time college football has long ago lost any credibility
as amateur sport or academic adjunct, or in fact as anything but a
wholly owned subsidiary and source of human raw material for Football,
Inc.

Befitting its position as the de facto National
Religion, monopolizing the major media weekly worship on Saturdays
and Sundays from August until January, the Football Field has been
increasingly entrusted to that other proto-sypical American Preisthood,
the Programmers.  From statistical and digital videbreakdown of
every play and player to player and team ratings, a techno-football
has evolved far beyond the comprehension of the average fan. No better
example of this cyber-deification of can be found than the Oracular
BCS computer-generated end-of-season college bowl matchups. And
who better to explain it to us all than the increasingly cyberized
New York Times….

Computers have been cranking out football rankings
for a generation – The New
York Times has published its version for college teams since 1979
– with the notion of injecting some objectivity into a weekly ritual
otherwise based on polls of sportswriters and coaches. For most
of that time (and for pro teams, even now), it has been merely an intellectual
exercise. But since the advent of the Bowl Championship Series
in
1998,
the computer rankings have been a major component, along with the
polls, in determining the matchups of the top four bowl games – and
the split
of about $90 million.

from the New York Times