Gosselin goosed by his own logic

I have all the respect in the world for Rick Gosselin. How could I not? I began my professional journalism career with UPI and from there went to the Dallas Morning News. Years later, Gosselin followed my example. Well, maybe not followed mine, exactly, but he did go from UPI to the Morning News where he became the world’s foremost authority on the National Football League, and I’m including the gurus in Bristol, Conn., as part of that world.

Rick Gosselin

Gosselin should stick to the NFL, however, because when he ventures outside of it he gets himself in trouble. Take his column in Monday’s News, for example, in which he argues only college football conference champions should be allowed to participate in a four-team playoff to determine the national champion. (Interestingly, there's no reference to this particular column on the paper's Web site. Did it embarrass enough people that the editors had it removed?) He supports his argument by saying a team’s regular season games should count for something, but then argues that, no, they really shouldn’t. What Gosselin is actually arguing is that only a team’s conference season games should count, not realizing that up to a third of a team’s regular season schedule consists of non-conference games.

He’s upset that last year the two best teams in the country were both from the same conference. According to his ludicrous argument, PAC-10 co-champ Oregon, which lost decisively to LSU by 13, deserved to play for the national championship, but Alabama, which only lost to LSU by 3 in the regular season (and it took LSU five quarters to finally win it) didn’t. You gotta be kidding me.

He tries to compare the college football season to the college basketball season, arguing that Kentucky didn’t deserve to play for the national title because it lost its conference tournament to Vanderbilt. His same argument would have also kept Kansas, the team Kentucky played for the national championship, out of the tournament. But, once again, Gosselin’s logic doesn’t hold. Kansas and Kentucky actually won their conference titles, which are altogether different beasts than the conference’s tournament championships.

Using Gosselin’s argument, the NFL should simply do away with its post season playoff and have the team with the best record in the NFC after the regular season play its counterpart in the AFC in the Super Bowl.

Here’s another problem with Gosselin’s argument: If only conference champs could play for the national title, then neither the Mighty Midshipmen from Navy nor the Mighty Mormons from Brigham Young could ever play for that title because they don’t even belong to a conference. They are independents and proud of it.

Oh, yes, then there’s that whats-its-name school from South Bend, Ind. It wouldn’t qualify either which would make for a stew of angry Irishmen and women.