{"id":1801,"date":"2003-12-03T22:42:08","date_gmt":"2003-12-04T02:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2003\/12\/03\/pigskin-paradise\/"},"modified":"2003-12-03T22:42:08","modified_gmt":"2003-12-04T02:42:08","slug":"pigskin-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2003\/12\/03\/pigskin-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Pigskin Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

We
\n all know that big-time college football has long ago lost any credibility
\n as amateur sport or academic adjunct, or in fact as anything but a
\n wholly owned subsidiary and source of human raw material for Football,
\n Inc.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

Befitting its position as the de facto National
\n Religion, monopolizing the major media weekly worship on Saturdays
\n and Sundays from August until January, the Football Field has been
\n increasingly entrusted to that other proto-sypical American Preisthood,
\n the Programmers.  From statistical and digital videbreakdown of
\n every play and player to player and team ratings, a techno-football
\n has evolved far beyond the comprehension of the average fan. No better
\n example of this cyber-deification of can be found than the Oracular
\n BCS computer-generated end-of-season college bowl matchups. And
\n who better to explain it to us all than the increasingly cyberized
\n New York Times….<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

Computers have been cranking out football rankings
\n for a generation – The New
\n York Times has published its version for college teams since 1979
\n – with the notion of injecting some objectivity into a weekly ritual
\n otherwise based on polls of sportswriters and coaches. For most
\n of that time (and for pro teams, even now), it has been merely an intellectual
\n exercise. But since the advent of the Bowl Championship Series
\n in
\n 1998,
\n the computer rankings have been a major component, along with the
\n polls, in determining the matchups of the top four bowl games – and
\n the split
\n of about $90 million. <\/font><\/p>\n

from the New York Times<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know that big-time college football has long ago lost any credibility as amateur sport or academic adjunct, or in fact as anything but a wholly owned subsidiary and source of human raw material for Football, Inc. Befitting its … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}