ESPN's Brett McMurphy landed himself an outwardly banal but actually notable scoop today: The new four-team college football playoff, the one emerging from the BCS's ashes after the 2014 regular season, will call itself the College Football Playoff. (We hope the marketing consultants billed at a discounted rate for that one.)
There's no flair to it, no—BCS boss Bill Hancock told McMurphy, "It will not be cutesy. And it will be descriptive."—but what's notable is the entity and product at its center. "College football." Not "NCAA football." There's not a whiff of "NCAA" in McMurphy's whole piece. And that's the point. We've said this before, but the only chance civilization has at overthrowing college sports's pesky, loathsome overlord comes with football. In college football, the NCAA has no good reason for its authority. There's no March Madness-type payout to lord over its member schools. Schools and conferences have all the power. Is a revolution imminent? No, not quite. But with this descriptive name, the playoff's new honchos have made it clear: The NCAA should look elsewhere for its authority.