The Florida State Seminoles defeated the Auburn Tigers 34-31 last night in the final NCAA football championship under the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The 'Noles thrilling fourth-quarter comeback ends their perfect season, bringing the first college football championship to Tallahassee in 14 years.
It's also the end of the BCS, which for years has been criticized by seemingly everyone, including President Obama a few years ago, as an insufficient system to determine who the best team in college football was. The cries for years from its critics was that every other sport in the NCAA has was a playoff system, why not college football?
But supporters of the BCS always argued that was really okay. Yes there were a few times when a team got screwed (like USC in 2003, Auburn in 2004). But most times it worked out pretty well, like the 2007 national championship game with Texas vs. USC, or last night. Did it not? Advocates always argued that the current system made every Saturday a mini-playoff, with one loss often killing a team's chance to play for the championship - but not if that one loss happened earlier in the season.
So we get a playoff system next year, and hey, people in the Tampa Bay are thrilled about that, since Raymond James Stadium will host the championship game in three years. But undoubtedly there will still be controversy, since only four teams will be seeded in the playoff. College basketball now seeds what, 68 teams? It's actually pretty ridiculous, but it all quickly gets to the Final Four in just a few weeks each March.
In any event, cheers to FSU and to the SEC, and to so many schools (USF and Florida notwithstanding) for making the recent college football season another memorable one. I forgot who said it, but while the NFL has better players, college football has better games. And that was proven to be the case once again last night.
You might recall how HART originally opted to reject ads submitted by CAIR last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. But when the Muslim civil rights group came back with a softer ad, HART agreed to run it.
Now HART has asked to run ads by a group that led by conservative activist Pamela Geller that takes a shot at CAIR, and fearful of being sued, HART says they will run one of the ads.
Speaking of HART, some members of the Amalgamated Transit Union say that morale has never been lower with the management of the Hillsborough County transit agency.
There's only a week to go before next Tuesday's GOP primary in the CD13 race. After David Jolly denied that he had ever lobbied for off-shore drilling interests, the DCCC seized into action, issuing a press release claiming that Jolly "lied" about that fact. But just as when Kathleen Peters claimed he had lobbied for Obamacare, Team Jolly says the DCCC got their facts wrong.