Here’s a Voting Plan to Make Football Easier

I wholeheartedly agree with Chris Dufresne’s statement of Oct. 7, “The common goal, I think we’d all agree, is to prevent Kansas State vs. Virginia Tech for the national title.” In fact, I think we’d all agree that the national title should be decided by regional population and television ratings, rather than the skills of the athletes and coaches.

Until that happens, however, we, the people of the nation’s most populous state, should either put more political muscle into ensuring that there are more BCS “computers” like the Seattle Times (read “Go Pac-10”) or simply make sure that the NCAA follows democratic principles and allows us to vote for our national champions. With the national champion guaranteed to come from a population center such as Los Angeles, a greater percentage of the nation would be happier, which should in turn improve our nation’s collective self-esteem. Taking this one step further, if we were to vote for our national champions ahead of time, we could even skip the actual playing altogether, thus allowing athletes more time to devote to their studies.

If we find that “voting for our champions” works in football, we could extend the concept to other sports as well, even to the selection of our Olympic teams, thus happily sacrificing quality for better television ratings. Back in the late 1960s, the middle-distance runners of UCLA and USC knew the contour of Kansas miler Jim Ryun’s behind better than they knew his face, but if Chris Dufresne and I had had our way, world-record holder Ryun would never have been allowed to compete in the NCAA championships.

KEN MURPHEY

Desert Hot Springs

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Well, maybe Peter Warrick can still win the Heist-man Trophy.

FRANK CASILLAS

Mar Vista