The Globe’s Christopher Gasper laments the current selection process for the college football playoffs, rightly arguing “myriad agendas, interests, and opaque politics of persuasion” dominate proceedings and end up angering jilted teams like Notre Dame. But, c’mon, unless the NCAA comes up with one nationwide regular season league and playoff system, a college version of the NFL, there will always be a subjective bias about who does and doesn’t get into the playoffs. Subjectivity will always reign at the cutoff point, whether it’s a four-team, 12-team or 68-team bracket system.

Hopefully, college football officials, who have already wrecked the once great New Year’s bowl games and regional conference rivalries, all in the name of the almighty TV buck, won’t expand the current subjective, 12-team playoff system to a larger subjective system, in the name of “fairness” to the 18 to 22-year-old players. But you never know. The adults running major college sports have been exploiting 18-22 year-old kids for decades now, squeezing ever more money out of them in return for “tuition” and NIL crumbs. The whole system stinks. The whole system is based on exploitation. And it keeps getting worse with each passing year and new multibillion-dollar TV deals.

Btw: From the NYT: “Who’s to blame for Notre Dame’s shocking snub? ESPN, the system, the ACC and yes, the Irish.” … And I’d add college sports writers at for-profit publications like the NYT’s The Athletic, the Globe etc. Right?

Btw II: Have you noticed how roughly the same for-profit trend, albeit at a much smaller financial scale, has been increasingly happening at the high-school athletics level, i.e., adults financially exploiting the freebie labor of kids?