Stanford win creates a beautiful mess

Stanford will not play in the BCS championship game, and why? Because they got jobbed at Notre Dame, and because they jobbed themselves at Washington.Never mind that, though. The Cardinal jammed a pool cue in the spokes of the national championship, and still has at least one more chance to rattle it around for maximum chaos.And I dont care who you are, or who your favorite team is. If you dont like this level of chaos in a system that begs for it every year, you are a tight-bottomed buzzkill with shoes.In fact, by that definition, David Shaw, Kevin Hogan, Jordan Williamson and the rest of the Cardinal did more for college football than any Stanford players ever.Ever.Oh, youll bleat about Bill Walsh and Jim Plunkett and Andrew Luck and a dozen other great names in school history, but college football needs as many sharp knees in the nethers as it can take between now and the end of the ballot-stuffing era. In two years, there will be a crappy playoff system which wont screw the No. 3 team, but the No. 9 team (and trust us, the playoff will have eight teams because that means four more trees with fruit to shake free), and nobody cares about the No. 9 team.But this year -- in fact in the next eight days -- we get to care about:1. Kansas State, crushed by the precocious yet mediocre Baylors.
2. Oregon, stifled and then smothered by the Stanfordii.
3. Notre Dame, which finally beat a bad team at home by a convincing margin in Wake Forest.
4. Ohio State, the only other unbeaten team which cant play because Jim Tressel forgot to pay attention to his players for . . . well, years.
5. USC, which faces Notre Dame next week with national punch line Lane Kiffin as the first one out of the tunnel.
6. Alabama, which lost to Texas A&M last week to be eliminated and now are resuscitated because it didnt look past Western Carolina.
7. Georgia, which could beat Alabama and get to the big show despite losing by four scores to South Carolina.
8. Florida, which might face Alabama as well, but only if it beats Florida State while Georgia loses to Georgia Tech. And Florida struggled to beat Jacksonville State.
9. Northern Illinois, which is 10-1 and ought to at least have the gumption to ask, Well, why not us? We could lose to Stanford in overtime too.Now theres a playoff system, and then some, that happened organically, without some committee full of hyenas who have history with one conference or another and are always available for influence peddling in the time-honored NCAA way.And that works for all of us. At least it should. I mean, if youre going to make a mess, make one that requires the intervention of the county health department.To that end, David Shaw had better learn to drink so that he can lean back with a snifter of the finest brandy and a cigar (he doesnt smoke either, the candypants) and say, I guess thats a good years work in one day. And who were you people who thought I was a nitwit after the Washington game?This is a victory for him, for Stanford, for the notion that chaos beats order, that piefights are more fun than math, that fair is for middle school vice-principals, and that nothing beats a day like this.Nothing whatsoever.