The NCAA Football Champions League

College football has a championship problem.  Fans are unhappy with the subjectivity of the poll system, but they still love the bowl games.  Rather than simply choosing a champion as it does in other sports, the NCAA has allowed the conferences to enter into a four-team playoff to be contested this fall for the first time.  This can only lead to an expanded playoff in future years, as there will definitely be several teams with a legitimate claim to the fourth spot (if not to the top spot).  And the selection committee approach promises to be both controversial and entertaining, which probably wasn't what the association was going for.

More on Defending the Read Option

Chris Brown wrote a characteristically excellent little post about an additional wrinkle for the read option: using a downfield pass as the "pitch phase" in the triple option.

 

In theory, having a downfield pass as the third option instead of a backward pitch or a stalk-block doesn't add any additional effectiveness to the play, since the receiver is accounting for the cornerback one way or another.  And none of these adds any additional numbers to the playside in the way that the pitchback coming across the formation in the wishbone does, for example.  Numerically, this play is the same as a quarterback sweep, not that that's a bad thing.  Probabilistically, though, there's an extra dimension here.