Aren’t We Taking This Whole Situation Just a Little Too Seriously?

Was the penalty on the Sooner Schooner a miscarriage of justice?

Would Barry Switzer be riding back to Norman, Okla., in the back of the Sooners’ covered wagon?

These were the questions that were being asked here Wednesday, the morning after the night before, when everyone was still trying to sort out what had happened in Tuesday’s Orange Bowl.

What’s clear is that Washington beat Oklahoma, 28-17, in the happiest New Year the Pacific 10 has ever had. It’s also clear that Oklahoma is not No. 1.

The rest is a little muddled. Like the Middle East is a little muddled.

Washington Coach Don James was insisting Wednesday morning that the Huskies should be the No. 1 college football team. The voters, most of them anyway, disagreed.

Brigham Young is the national champion. It’s official. Even though BYU’s schedule might not challenge Burbank High’s. Even though winning the Western Athletic Conference title is not unlike winning the Utah surfing championship.

As the only unbeaten major college team, BYU got the votes, deserved or not.

How do you avoid such a problem? Well, a lot of people are calling for some sort of college football playoff system to determine the one, true national champion. You wonder if such folks wouldn’t be more productive citizens were they thinking about something more important.

I know I am.

I’m thinking that if we decided to have a playoff system and move the bowls around to accommodate the new order, we are playing with dynamite.

What, I ask you, happens to the Tournament of Roses parade?

I don’t want to see the Rose Parade on Jan. 8 or on any day other than New Year’s Day. Which means the Rose Bowl game has to be on New Year’s Day.

I’m sure people must have similar feelings in such cities as New Orleans and Dallas. I know they do here in Miami. You can’t change these bowls around. There’s too much at stake. There are parades, there is tradition. Oh, there’s even money.

Someone has come up with a strategy that would allow the traditional New Year’s bowl games to remain in place and still have a game that determines the national champion.

The plan is to simply take the No. 1 and 2 teams in the polls and have them play. Call it the College Bowl. Or the Super Dooper Bowl. Play it the week before the Super Bowl and give the January football feast yet one more course.

There are some problems, however. Don James, for one, says the system is not fair to the players.

“It’s not fair that we bring them back to school six weeks early out of their summer,” James said. “The season is so long. We play 11 games and then we play a bowl game. I’m just opposed to it. . . . If you play a 14-game schedule, you’re going to bust up a lot of kids.”

And a one-day championship?

“What do the players get out of it, three meals a day?”

There’s another point, too. What if there are three teams with legitimate claim to No. 1? That happens. Remember the season that Penn State was unbeaten and finished third in the polls? That was the year Richard Nixon wanted to pick the winner.

The only legitimate system, the one that would overcome any inequality in scheduling, would be a genuine playoff with, say, a 16-team tournament. But it’s unworkable and, as far as I’m concerned, also unadvisable.

What’s wrong with a little mystery in our lives?

Why do we have to have everything spelled out?

When the Nobel committee sits down to decide who gets the prize for chemistry, they don’t pick the top two chemists and make them have a Bunsen burner-off. They just pick a deserving chemist. Or they pick no one.

I like novels and movies where the ending isn’t always pat, where you don’t know what is going to happen to the characters after the credits roll. That makes it more, as the fictional Billy Clyde Puckett would say, like life its ownself.

In life, we don’t even know what the score is, much less who has won.

Maybe I’m an idealist, but college sports should just be fun. Tuesday’s Orange Bowl became one of my top 10, all-time sporting events when that wagon came out on the field and the horses, Boomer and Sooner, started to circle when the referee threw the flag. That was fun.

The next day, even Don James could see the humor. “We voted the game ball to the horse and buggy,” he said.

I figure that the Sooner Schooner would be next year’s first-round draft pick by the Stanford band.

To me, that play overshadows all the talk about who is No. 1. Now some of you may want to argue the point. That’s part of the fun of being a sports fan. Argue away until next season.

Don James says he’s ready to accept the verdict of the polls. I am too, although, like James, I doubt that BYU is really the best team in the country.

I know the system is imperfect. So’s life, but I’m willing to live with it.