By: Bob Wolfley (jsonline.com) –
There are times you are convinced some people are viewing a world so different from the one you see that they must inhabit some alternate universe.

One of those times came this week.

E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University, told the Columbus Dispatch why he is against the plus-one playoff proposal made by Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive.

“We will not cross that line and get onto the slippery slope: the professional-ization of college football and a furthering of the arms race,” Gee said. “We simply have to say no. If we don’t say no to this, the horse has left the barn totally. I will vote against it under any circumstance.”

The problem here is not with Gee’s resistance to a four-team playoff format. Plenty of folks share that view, including Bowl Championship Series commissioners who dismissed the proposal at a meeting last week.
The problem is with Gee’s notion that college football isn’t already and irrevocably been professionalized and having a playoff will somehow make it become more professional than it already is.

The president of Ohio State suggesting Division I-A football isn’t already more professional business than amateur sport is like Tony Soprano insisting he’s in the waste management business.

The Buckeyes’ football team in the 2005-’06 school year generated $60.8 million in revenue, with expenses of $32.3 million for a profit of $28.5 million. This at a school where the athletic budget was the first to go over $100 million. If that’s not a conglomerate, nothing is.

College football became professional years ago. Adding a sensible playoff system won’t make it any more, or less, professional.

That horse left the barn so long ago we’ve forgotten we ever had a horse.