Scooter Hobbs column: A silly challenge for the College Playoff

Published 11:46 pm Thursday, December 19, 2024

OK, College Football Playoff, the CFP, whatever you want to be called, but you’re on the clock, starting Friday night.

All 12 of you, an even dozen. Bigger is supposed to be better, you’ve told us this for years.

Yeah, I know, you haven’t even played a game yet in this new format, and already they’re clamoring to bulk it up to 16, 24, maybe 64 and some spare change. Who knows.

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Settle down and let’s see how this works out first. Give it a chance. I did, and I fought the notion for eons. Yet the expanded field did make for some high drama to finish the regular season, mostly good old-fashioned, college whining and theatrical cry-babying by those left out of the affair.

Looking at you, Alabama, but that’s not important now.

Speaking of “what do you want to be called,” the, uh, CFP? Is that the best you can do?

Get yourself a fun corporate sponsor, the sillier the better.

Try to avoid any sort of wealth management — boring — or certainly not some prescription medication warning of 734 side effects in the fine print.

Shreveport set the standard many years ago with the Weedeater Bowl, and now The Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl is keeping lawncare close to the festivities.

The possibilities are endless. But “CFP” ain’t gonna cut it.

Point is, you guys need you a Famous Idaho Potato to step up, maybe some more Duke’s Mayo, perhaps a Tony the Tiger (Sun) or — my personal favorite, ahem — the Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl (and I don’t even drink coffee).

Or, the new, most bestest bowl name of all — The Snoop Dog Arizona Bowl Presented by Gin & Juice and Snoop.

That’s quite a combination there, a recipe for mischief and also a pretty good mouthful. But our guy Snoop pretty well sponsored the Summer Olympiad by himself. So I guess it was nothing for him to ante up twice on this sponsorship.

He’s a big football fan. Maybe he’d be interested.

On a related subject, I’m afraid the trophy wars are over. Game, set and match. The Pop-Tarts Bowl has set the standard so high that the other bowls, let alone- the CFP, are in full retreat, waving the white flag.

The Pop-Tarts Bowl already had a 6-foot Pop-Tart mascot, absolutely perfect. Now there’s the game trophy, which at first glance looks like your standard, silver-plated football on a pedestal, is nothing of the sort.

The trophy is armed with an actual, working, fully functional, thermal-heating toaster with two handy toasting slots. It’s a blend of gridiron reward/culinary genius, is what it is. Just in case proud alums someday are perusing the trophy case and get a sudden inkling to fire up a couple of Pop-Tarts.

How you going to beat that?

But, CFP, admittedly maybe we’re getting sidetracked here.

Forget the trophy. You should also know, even though the current bowl season is in its infancy, that you already have a hard act to follow.

College football players are steady out there having two tons of fun.

You CFP guys should try to follow suit.

Playoff or not, it’s still just a game. And so far the games have been off-the-charts entertainment.

The guys playing in these games that supposedly don’t matter — the “minor bowls,” if you want to give them a stigma — are playing like their hair’s on fire.

We’re still early enough in the schedule, with very few power four conference teams involved, that opt-outs are the oddity more than the rule. And most of these guys who want to prepare for the NFL draft seem to have this odd-ball notion that playing actual football might be the best way to do it.

And play it, they are.

For the most part, it seems like these teams are intact. That will no doubt change as we get deeper into the holidays and the brand names, non-playoff division, start coming out to play.

For now, don’t tell these teams that their bowl games are meaningless.

They are having way too much fun with double-reverses, the backwards passes, your flea-flickers here, multiple end-arounds there, and a good old fat-boy touchdown in a pear tree.

What do we have to lose?

Did you happen to see my namesake Scooter’s Coffee Bowl – Memphis 42, West Virginia 37.

High entertainment at its frivolous best — and close games to boot, all of them. Just to borrow a phrase from the Tony the Tiger Bowl … These games are greeeeeaat!

Top that, CFP.

Truth is, you probably won’t get those hijinks once the stakes are real, the next round looms  and coaches start worrying about field position, eliminating turnovers and, mostly, the high and mighty Not Beating Yourself.

They’ll probably keep it close to the vest.

But it would be nice, just to get the first round rolling Friday night, if Indiana at Notre Dame could dial us up a Category-4 snow blizzard.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. You can contact him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com