Play For What Actually Counts

With their win over Iowa last week, the Wisconsin Badgers Football team clinched a spot in the Big Ten Championship in Indianapolis in three weeks.  If they were an NFL team, and the Badgers had clinched their playoff position already, they would be free to rest their key players the last couple of weeks so they could come into the conference title tilt at full strength.

But because of the cockamamie playoff structure in college football, Head Coach Paul Chryst is instead pressured to put guys who are already hobbled or worn down out there for two more weeks in order to appease a "selection committee" that randomly selects the four teams that get to compete for a national title.

If the College Football Playoff were legitimate--and not a huge money grab conducted not by the NCAA but rather by ESPN and its sponsors--the champion of the Big Ten Conference--regardless of their record--would be in it.  The same would go for the winners of all the major football conferences.  Why else are we playing these conference title games if not to determine who is the best team in each of them this year?

You need not look any further than last year's "playoff" to see that it's nothing more than a beauty pageant.  Penn State beat Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game.  The College Football Playoff Selection Committee then chose Ohio State for its final four instead of the Nittany Lions.  What was the point of having a conference champion if a team that didn't even win its own division moves on to the "playoffs"?

As far as I'm concerned, Wisconsin should play only for the Big Ten Championship--and pay no attention to the ESPN Television Ratings Exhibition Games in January.  Let Jonathan Taylor sit in the second half of tomorrow's game against Michigan.  Allow some of the second-string offensive linemen and defensive players to get meaningful playing time against Minnesota next week so the units that are most responsible for any potential success against Ohio State in the conference title game are ready to go.  And make a statement to the rest of the sport that at Wisconsin, we only play for what actually counts.