The Hudsucker Playoff

Everything in college football's long, illustrious history has moved towards this day, this day and a playoff. The season, and all the seasons before it, have worked like one wide establishing shot, moving through time, tightening and tightening onto this moment of selection. It has looked something like this:





When one team falls, another rises. This is a rat race. This is very, very American. Bowl games are hoola hoops, which means they are--and were--very American too. This was all nonsense. It's now all cutthroat. It's nonsensical violence. We understand it, and we don't. There's data. There's theory. There's analysis. And, then, there are games.





There's gray. And there's steel. There's a metallic world. And a world of plastic. There's bursts of manufactured color. There's rivalry. And there's fun. This is college football. It walks along a ledge. It's atop the skyline. It's a step away from the abyss. It makes sense, and it doesn't. It's always moving to the moment, when the clock stops, when some things live and some things die.




Just watch ESPN and the committee decide who lives and dies, whom gets hired and whom gets fired. It's like standing on the sidewalk, waiting for fate, a fairy tale, and more of the same.


Bryan Harvey can be followed on Twitter @LawnChairBoys.