Sam's Notes

Beyond weird

Cone says "let college football stay weird." I agree in principle, but we all know there's good weird and there's bad weird.

The BCS is bad weird. Big 12 teams in the Rose Bowl. The Orange Bowl on Jan.2. As I wrote over at Publius, it's crazy that Wake Forest won't be playing on New Year's Day after its historic season.

Michael Rosenberg makes the case for good weird:

Michigan should face Florida on the field.

No, not in a playoff. Florida should head to the Sugar Bowl as the Southeastern Conference champion.

Michigan should go there as the best available at-large team.

Ohio State? The Buckeyes should fly out to the Rose Bowl, as the Big Ten champ, to face Pac-10 champion Southern Cal.

If the Buckeyes beat USC, they would be undisputed national champions. If they lost, the door would be open for the Michigan-Florida winner.

That is how college football worked for a few decades before people decided to look out for No. 1 and only No. 1. Conference champions went to specific bowls -- everybody else went to the best bowl they could find.

The sport wasn't perfect. Last year's USC-Texas matchup never would have happened under the old system.

But it was better than the Bowl Championship Series because teams got what they earned, and the system never claimed to be something it wasn't.

Given the fact that the BCS has rendered the system beyond weird, I'd rather go ahead with a playoff system. Just one run by an underdog would make everyone wonder why they didn't do it years ago.

Truth can be stranger than fiction

I conjured up this Super Bowl scenario while watching the first quarter of the Panthers game, when there was nothing but bad passes and punts.

Cowboys vs. the Patriots. Not only would Bill Parcells be facing the last team he took to the Super Bowl, but you'd have Tony Romo, this year's version of Tom Brady, facing the master in the flesh.

The common denominator, of course, is Drew Bledsoe, who will be standing on the sidelines watching two guys who knocked him out of a job go at it. But wait: Romo gets knocked out during the second offensive series and Bledsoe is forced to take over. He beats Brady at his own game, driving the Cowboys down the field for a game-winning Martin Gramatica field goal.

Keep this in mind.

Not much of an appetite

R. Emmett Tyrrell piles on James Webb:

"Mr. Webb now takes his place with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Howard Dean, Al Gore, Jean-Francois Kerry, and so many other Democratic notables as a rebarbative blowhard with whom you would not want to share a gondola. Nor would a civilized American want to have any of these churlish cads to dinner or even as neighbors down the block. Just the other day one of Mrs. Clinton's neighbors turned up with a gunshot wound. I would not be surprised if it were self-inflicted.

"As it happens I did dine with Mr. Webb, sometime after his brief stint at the Navy Department. He is a pretty good novelist and in print at the time had expressed some ideas of which I approved, particularly his scruples against women in combat, though other of his references to women strike me as coarse.

"At any rate, I invited him to dinner for what turned out to be a gruesome evening. Mr. Webb is one of those people said to be uncomfortable in his skin. At first, I thought his discomfort might come from the fear he would have to pay his way. It was a classy eatery. I reassured him he was my guest. I went on to make clear I considered him a fine writer.

"Nothing I said reassured him, not even my insistence that he have dessert. I left baffled. Most of the military men I have known are gents. Many writers are cads, but I thought a writer who had also served high up in the Reagan administration might be civilized. After that dinner I never made the mistake of inviting him anywhere again."