The current bowl game system is criticized because it doesn't produce a legitimate national champion football team. A playoff system is proposed. But that scheme is badly flawed for these reasons:
- A playoff system can never satisfy critics who will always dispute the choice of teams and pairings.
- A playoff system involves not one but several post-season games, involving massive travel and time expenditures -A playoff system demands participation of staff, cheerleaders and bands in addition to teams, and this amounts to a huge investment in non-educational activity.
- A playoff system of, say, eight teams produces one winner and seven losers.
- A playoff system is based on the notion that a single champion is required for a meaningful season.
That is absurd. A more reasonable view is that with thirty-five bowl games there are thirty-five winning teams; the season ends in consonance with academic schedules; seventy campuses are involved for a single game only; athletes are adequately displayed and lauded; media networks are kept fully involved.
Disputes over pairings and timing will always abound. The Bowl System is still a sensible ending of the football season.
Friday, March 2, 2012
GOD
The first words of the Bible are these: In the beginning, God. Our human minds cannot fathom anything prior to that. And that flat- out statement is a leap into the unknown. it cannot be proved, it can only be an item of faith.
Our human minds like to deal with beginnings. That is why we are so taken with genealogy. We probe into record books and family Bibles to line up family history as far back as we can. But this biblical statement goes far back before time began.
T.S.Eliot put it simply: "Nobody likes to live with a mystery." Ancient Romans spoke of a "horror vacuum" or an abhorrence of a vacuum. Our minds crave answers to how life began, how the world began, how the universe began. Scientists can chronicle how it all developed, but there is no scientific answer to how or why it all began. That is and always will be a mystery.
Long before there was such a thing as science, human minds asked questions about those origins. Stories were composed, minstrels sang, wise men spoke, elaborate explanations grew over hundreds of years. But each one depended on some original creator whose being was simply stated. It was God.
There was no explanation of how God came into being. God had no family history.
God's actions could be described. God's nature resembled our human nature in such things as joy or revenge or sorrow. But who or what God is remained an unfathomable mystery.
There is one place in the biblical record where an attempt to define God appears. Moses is pictured as an exile from Israel when God confronts him with the command to plead with pharaoh on behalf of the Hebrews. Moses agrees to go but asks God: "Whom shall I say sent me?" The answer he receives is the most edited and re-edited phrase in the entire Bible. Familiar versions are "I am who I am" and "I am he who is." My choice is this "I am he who causes to be." That is, God is the one who makes something out of nothing, the creator.
God's being is self-evident in creation. And we make bold to say that this universe was loved into being. That is, God's nature is creative love. As human beings, we have the capacity to create and love and so align ourselves with God. . . . or worship God. Our highest reach as human beings is to create and love, actions that identify with God.
Our human minds like to deal with beginnings. That is why we are so taken with genealogy. We probe into record books and family Bibles to line up family history as far back as we can. But this biblical statement goes far back before time began.
T.S.Eliot put it simply: "Nobody likes to live with a mystery." Ancient Romans spoke of a "horror vacuum" or an abhorrence of a vacuum. Our minds crave answers to how life began, how the world began, how the universe began. Scientists can chronicle how it all developed, but there is no scientific answer to how or why it all began. That is and always will be a mystery.
Long before there was such a thing as science, human minds asked questions about those origins. Stories were composed, minstrels sang, wise men spoke, elaborate explanations grew over hundreds of years. But each one depended on some original creator whose being was simply stated. It was God.
There was no explanation of how God came into being. God had no family history.
God's actions could be described. God's nature resembled our human nature in such things as joy or revenge or sorrow. But who or what God is remained an unfathomable mystery.
There is one place in the biblical record where an attempt to define God appears. Moses is pictured as an exile from Israel when God confronts him with the command to plead with pharaoh on behalf of the Hebrews. Moses agrees to go but asks God: "Whom shall I say sent me?" The answer he receives is the most edited and re-edited phrase in the entire Bible. Familiar versions are "I am who I am" and "I am he who is." My choice is this "I am he who causes to be." That is, God is the one who makes something out of nothing, the creator.
God's being is self-evident in creation. And we make bold to say that this universe was loved into being. That is, God's nature is creative love. As human beings, we have the capacity to create and love and so align ourselves with God. . . . or worship God. Our highest reach as human beings is to create and love, actions that identify with God.
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