THE PARTICIPATION TROPHIES HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED.

Last week, we had some fun with the college football cartel.  Before we take stock of the bowl bids for teams that would otherwise not be eligible, let us correct the record.  That post erroneously had Illinois preventing Northwestern from becoming bowl-eligible.  It was the other way around.  Northwestern was eligible; an Illinois win would have gotten them to six, and that didn't happen.  Northwestern will play Utah on December 23 in the SRS Distribution (not to be confused with Sperry Rail Services) Las Vegas Bowl.

On to the participation trophies, the teams we pay attention to, and the controversies and scandals.

Jacksonville State will be among the Opening Saturday, December 16, games, facing Louisiana in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl.  Some participation trophy, your opponent effectively has a home match.  James Madison will face the Air Force on December 23 in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl. Again, some participation trophy, a university named after a guy who had his Executive Mansion burned faces a service academy in a bowl sponsored by an aircraft builder.

Minnesota get to continue their tradition of losing to Mid-American teams, facing Bowling Green on the Feast of Stephen, December 26, in the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit.  Do I see a pattern? The Mid-American title game takes place at that field, and Bowling Green is not that far south of the Ohio state line.

We pay attention to Northern Illinois, and they will play a familiar opponent, Arkansas State, on December 23 in the Camellia Bowl at Montgomery, Alabama.  I like the idea of a bowl game that doesn't have an in-your-face sponsor the way we so often see these days.  I regret not having gone to that late-season bowl game at Mobile, which coincided with Three Kings and the start of Mardi Gras.  The stars never aligned for a return trip, what with the bowl organizers in Mobile calling it quits and the playoff system pushing all the also-ran bowl games into December.

Wisconsin, despite being underwhelming in the Big Ten this year, will play on New Year's Day.  They have a familiar opponent, Louisiana State (those two had a tilt at Lambeau a few years back) in a familiar setting, Tampa, although it's now the ReliaQuest Bowl, no more bloomin' onions for the winner.

Now to the controversies.  I was under the impression that the computerized rankings and all the rest of the playoff format was to come up with an unambiguous national champion.  The competition committee sent undefeated Florida State to the Capitol One Orange Bowl on December 30 to face Georgia, the winner of the Southeastern title game, while Alabama, the loser of the Southeastern title game will play Michigan in the Rose Bowl (that game has a title lacking only "Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith, and Keeper of the Golden Whistle" in it) in the unambiguous national championship final.  Got that?  "In its last year of having to break the hearts of one or two bubble teams (with an expanded playoff bracket, we can now count on 6-7 teams with broken hearts!), the College Football Playoff selection committee went for gold."

What was in the selection committee's wallet?

[T]here was another factor that seemed to weigh on the committee's mind - the strength of the current roster. Florida State was on its third-string quarterback and the team's lineup was riddled with key injuries. It is possible - perhaps probable - that whoever faced them would blow them out on that fact alone.

Is it fair, though? Probably not. As a squad, FSU earned that spot, even as the No. 4 team behind whoever the other choice would have been - seemingly Texas or Alabama - and, having found themselves out of the CFP, they are rightfully angry.

It's enough for ESPN scribe David Hale to have an E-T-T-S moment.

In the olden days, we had a beauty contest. The top team in the nation was decided entirely by the voters.

Then we moved to a better system, one determined in part by computers that at least added some math to the abstract rationalizing while also allowing two teams to decide it on the field.

Then we moved to a four-team playoff, and the whole point was to eliminate the hypotheticals and let a champion be crowned by the actual results on the field. If you won your games, you had a chance to win a national title.

Turns out, all of that was a charade. None of it mattered. The games are pointless. What happens on the field is less important than what a committee thinks might happen in a future matchup.

It is an absolute slap in the face to every player who has ever put on a helmet, laced up cleats and marched onto the field to battle for a victory, because a bunch of folks in a conference room in Texas decided their sacrifice was not as important as the Las Vegas line on a potential playoff matchup.

It's a joke.

And here we are, in the final season with a round of four, with the opportunity for lots of sports-bar and water-cooler arguments over who is really the best, the way it was when Milt Bruhn and Forrest Evashevsky prowled the sidelines.  And twelve teams next year?  I can't wait to see the overlapping of college and professional playoffs in January.

But so it goes.  Richard Vedder finds an apposite quote.  "As Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal so nicely put it, 'College football has long been an irrational circus thanks to the mammoth television deals of booster gazillionaires making moguls out of irritated-looking men in visors…'"  Yes, it all went to hell when coaches went to those visors instead of fedoras, and I'll forgive him the circus analogy, as the itinerant circus is anything but irrational.  He diagnoses a bubble, and suggests it will go the way of all bubbles.

I suspect America’s big-time college athletics is not sustainable for much longer in its current form. The vicious financial exploitation of star athletes has been only partly offset by new name, image, and likeness rules. Attendance at games in some locales has slumped, especially among students who are the rationale for the teams in the first place. The threat of successful big lawsuits over-long term health damages to former athletes is growing. Even changing sport interests among younger children (favoring soccer over football) may play a role. But for the moment, football is king, and the Jimbo Fisher’s of the world are laughing all the way to the bank.

Yes, and if anything that expanded Division I playoff format will hasten the day of that bubble popping.

Before that, we shall enjoy the adventures of Northern Illinois and Wisconsin.