Well, it didn&#8217;t take president-elect Barack Obama long to disappoint me and remind me why I place little faith in politicians.</p><p>Given a chance to say something politically popular and totally devoid of substance, politicians just can&#8217;t help themselves.</p><p>Barack Obama wants a Division I-A college football playoff system. He jokingly said so first on ESPN&#8217;s &#8220;Monday Night Football,&#8221; and then he formalized his position during a light moment in a &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; interview.</p><p>I realize I&#8217;m one of just a handful of American men unpleased by Obama using the weight of the presidency to pressure college presidents to disband the BCS.</p><p>He knows this, too. It&#8217;s probably pretty much all he really knows about big-time college football. Fans &#8212; Republican, Democrat and Libertarian &#8212; are dissatisfied with the current system. There&#8217;s virtually no risk in bashing the BCS. It&#8217;s the equivalent of taking a potshot at Carl Peterson.</p><p>Yep, what I&#8217;m saying is that a week into the job, Barack Obama stooped to my level. What&#8217;s frustrating is that I&#8217;ve earned the right to crack unfair, mean-spirited jokes at The Artist Formerly Known as King Carl&#8217;s expense.</p><p>I&#8217;ve suffered through 15 years of his 20-year, unsuccessful five-year Super Bowl plan. When I savagely ridicule Peterson, I know what I&#8217;m talking about.</p><p>President-elect Obama doesn&#8217;t know what the hell he&#8217;s talking about, and he diminishes his high office and invites other politicians to join him by foolishly entering a debate that has life only because &#8220;Joe the Sports Writer/Broadcaster&#8221; can&#8217;t wrap his brain around sports issues of substance.</p><p>You see, despite America&#8217;s involvement in two wars and a rapidly swelling economic crisis, Rep. Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat, and two other congressmen wrote Obama a letter this week asking our soon-to-be president to destroy the BCS.</p><p>It just so happens that Utah and BYU, two potential BCS-busters, play in non-BCS conferences, and Matheson can see the political benefit to fighting college football&#8217;s national-title format.</p><p>Yeah, by lending his name to this non-issue, Obama has pleased every Bubba in America and pretty much ensured that big-time college football will continue an escalation toward professionalism and exploitation of &#8220;amateur&#8221; athletes.</p><p>Let me quickly repeat the argument I introduced in the mid-1990s:</p><p>Division I-A college football has the greatest regular season in all team sports, and a playoff system would ruin that distinction. For decades, coaches and players focused on winning conference championships and were quite satisfied with a &#8220;mythical&#8221; national championship decided by poll voters. The advent of ESPN and sports-talk radio created the fallacy that the lack of a playoff system scars athletes, fans, women and children, contributes to global terrorism and delays Santa Claus&#8217; delivery run on Christmas Eve.</p><p>There&#8217;s nothing wrong with college football on the field. It is America&#8217;s healthiest sport in terms of consistent entertainment value. This is not even remotely debatable.</p><p>Obama wants to fix something that is clearly unbroken.</p><p>But that&#8217;s not what really bothers me. What disappoints me is that I expect Obama to take positions more substantive than &#8220;Joe the Sports Talk Host.&#8221;</p><p>According to the hype, Obama is supposed to be smarter and more intellectual than President Bush. Obama was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He&#8217;s allegedly thoughtful and deep. When addressing concerns in the sports world, I want to hear &#8220;Thoughtful Barack,&#8221; not &#8220;Barack the Blogger.&#8221;</p><p>There&#8217;s a lot wrong with college athletics. Many football and basketball players are funneled through the system without receiving much of an education. Coaches and administrators are paid salaries that invite questionable ethics. Too many athletes arrive on campus completely unprepared to be educated and solely interested in the development of their bodies. The use of performance-enhancing drugs is out of control within most athletic departments.</p><p>These and other issues are worthy of discussion at the presidential level.</p><p>Who&#8217;s No. 1? How to set up an eight-team playoff format?</p><p>Leave that to the idiots. The Pimp in the Box, Big Sexy, Wolverine Willie, Bland and Blander and KK can bicker about the college football championship system on the radio. We didn&#8217;t get accepted to Harvard.</p><p>Let&#8217;s try this. Ball State grads fix college football. Harvard grads fix 401(k)s.