A Brief Side Trip to the "College" Gridiron

It's that time of year when the sports talk monkeys begin speculating about which for-profit Minor League Football franchises loosely affiliated with major universities will earn bids to the playoffs, with the promise of extra revenue and alumni support.

The conversation always sounds the same: "If (Team X) wins out, can they make the tournament?"

Let me just save them all a lot of time, trouble and hot air right here. The answer is yes.

Because, if these professional sports observers had actually observed "college" football anytime in the last 30 years, they would have noticed that teams don't win out. Upsets happen. Teams ebb and flow week-by-week.

Cases in point already this year:

• Three touchdown favorite Clemson, the defending national champs, fell to ... Syracuse?!
• Seventeen-point favorite Washington lost at middling Arizona State. 
• Oklahoma minus four touchdowns, at home, after a bye, came up short against Iowa State.
• Undefeated Washington State was a two-touchdown favorite over California when they got shellacked by 34 points. 
• Mediocre South Carolina handled otherwise undefeated NC State in North Carolina. 
• LSU lost to Troy. Troy! Their last big win against Sparta required a trick play. And that was, like 2,500 years ago, so that's a pretty old team. Probably a lot of redshirts and graduate students.
• And so on. And on. And on.

Anyone actually paying attention has noticed that it all shakes out in the end. There are very few big-time undefeated and one-loss teams left in December. 

So if you're alma mater's football franchise has one loss on its record and can survive the remaining gauntlet, yes, they're going to qualify for the playoff. The problem is, they probably won't.

There, that's settled. Now the sports talk monkeys can spend their time learning something about baseball.