Imrem: Big Ten champions should qualify before Ohio State
Intercollegiate athletics become more absurd by the circumstance.
Take the College Football Playoff.
Actually, take the Big Ten wing of the CFP, a conference that long ago stamped itself as silly.
Yes, that's a reference to a league with 10 teams, then 11, then 12 and now 14 still calling itself the Big Ten.
Now back to the College Football Playoff.
It's almost certain that in Sunday's final rankings Ohio State will qualify for the Final Four and neither Penn State nor Wisconsin will.
Never mind that Penn State beat Ohio State in October. Never mind that the Nittany Lions won the East Division over the Buckeyes. Never mind that PSU will play Wisconsin for the overall Big Ten title Saturday.
Perhaps most of all, never mind that the CFP selection committee supposedly values league championships.
Ohio State still will advance to the four-team playoff and Penn State won't regardless of the outcome of the game against Wisconsin.
Maybe a Major League Baseball hypothetical can best illustrate the CFP madness.
A month ago the Cubs beat the Indians in a dramatic seven-game World Series.
At the end of the regular season, few considered Cleveland the best team in the American League.
If a committee was choosing only two representatives for the AL playoffs, Boston and Texas likely would have received nods over Cleveland.
Yet the Indians, the Central Division champs, wound up reaching the World Series.
Underdogs do make the most of their opportunities sometimes, you know?
Wild cards win Super Bowls in the NFL but don't get into the playoffs at the expense of teams that won their divisions.
The same goes for the NHL, where a conference No. 8 seed has been known to roll right into the Stanley Cup Final.
The common denominator in all these sports is division champions aren't passed over for the postseason.
Make no mistake about it: Ohio State is better than Penn State even though the Nittany Lions won their regular-season matchup 24-21.
Both the CFP committee and Las Vegas' pregame.com rank OSU No. 2 behind Alabama.
The committee has Penn State at No. 7. Pregame.com has the Nittany Lions as the most overrated in the CFP ratings and places them at No. 12.
Still, Penn State did win that game against Ohio State, did win their division and just might win the Big Ten.
Not only should Penn State take precedence over Ohio State in the national pecking order, so should Wisconsin if the favored Badgers beat the Nittany Lions on Saturday.
When winning a league championship doesn't matter anymore, the whole process should be blown up.
If national contenders depend on a vote of people in a boardroom, college football might as well go back to the days when coaches polls and writers polls chose champions.
The only valid way to determine a national champion is for league champions to be rewarded.
They might not be the four best teams in the country. Some years the country's two best teams might not win their leagues.
Maybe Alabama would beat Penn State or Wisconsin 56-3. But maybe Penn State or Wisconsin would shock Alabama 6-3.
Either way you'd have a national championship won more on merit than if Ohio State is involved in place of the Big Ten winner.
mimrem@dailyherald.com