If you paid close attention to last week's commercials for this week's Heisman Trophy presentation, you noticed a discrete disclaimer beneath the highlight clip of Stanford's Toby Gerhart plowing into the end zone against USC earlier this season.
The disclaimer said "Players Subject to Change", meaning the players whose highlights you were watching on that commercial might not necessarily be the players invited to New York for the Heisman ceremony this Saturday.

I find that both funny and fitting, because C.J. Spiller was on the commercial but has since been usurped from the Heisman guest list by Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. Suh's 4.5-sack performance in the Big 12 title game was indeed frightening, and while it's great to see dominant defensive tackles getting some love, Spiller's exclusion from Saturday's trophy ceremony is a travesty.
If Spiller isn't one of the two or three best college football players in the country, which is whom the Heisman was originally intended for, then I'm one of the three musketeers. Clemson doesn't win three games this year without Spiller, but Spiller's problem is that he plays for a smaller school in a smaller town and his program is not a perennial national title contender. Sometimes, however, even players from bigger schools in bigger towns whose programs are perennial national title contenders are mysteriously omitted from the Heisman guest list.
This year's example is Texas wide receiver Jordan Shipley, who has inexplicably taken a backseat to his quarterback and roommate Colt McCoy in the 2009 Heisman race. McCoy is the odds-on favorite according to many, but he wouldn't even be in the discussion without Shipley, who has been the Longhorns' foremost big-play threat on offense and special teams for two years now.
The Heisman-worthy players might be subject to change if the college football plantation wants them to be, but the teams in the BCS are not. They're manipulated and fixed behind closed doors in an undisclosed location. Instead of matching TCU or Boise State up with Florida or Ohio State or one of the college football blue-bloods, the plantation forced these two up-and-comers to face each other in a Fiesta Bowl death match where the winner gets nothing and the loser gets less than nothing.
It's basically the same thing Michael Vick did to his pit bulls, and the plantation simply couldn't live with itself if TCU or Boise were to beat Cincinnati in a New Year's Day bowl or take down Texas or Alabama in the national semifinals of an eight-team playoff. The plantation would never risk that, because when you have most of the money, you team up with whoever has the rest of the money to keep anyone else from getting any of the money.
Instead of splitting billions of dollars with all of college football, the co-cosnpirators would rather split millions of dollars amongst a dozen or so institutions. That's why Dick Cheney and the Bush family and their fellow cartel mates are behind closed doors in an undisclosed location right now stacking billion-dollar bills to the season.
I try my hardest to not subscribe to every conspiracy theory that comes along, but as was the case with the Cheney administration hijacking our country over the last decade, something criminal is going on in college football right now.
Why else would senators and representatives be spending their precious time looking into the matter? It's sad to see the real world intervening in the sports world as often as it does now days, but college football allowed itself to be kidnapped and now it can't get itself back.
Who or what exactly is the BCS, anyway? Why is there a contract with the BCS through the middle of the next decade, and who signed this contract? If the BCS is such a spotless solution, why did it recently hire a public relations firm to help it sort through all its smut?
I, for one, am going to keep beating this dead horse until it comes to life, or until the NCAA, the BCS, the CIA, the FBI and the rest of the acronyms that are in on this corruption come to their senses. I'm going to keep crying from the mountaintop until I have a loud enough cry or a high enough mountaintop to make a difference.
Tim Tebow was crying last weekend after Florida lost to Alabama because he knew he wouldn't get another shot at his third national title because of one single, solitary loss, and everyone knows that simply isn' right.
It's obvious to me at this point: the NCAA and the BCS want to make as much money for a few people as they can and do it as quickly and easily as they can. Whichever teams from a short list of blue-blood programs the plantation wants to play for the national title will do so, and whomever the plantation wants to win the Heisman Trophy will also do so.
Can you say oligarchy? And if you think college football hasn't devolved into the direct disciple of good old-fashioned confederate slavery, I've got two words for you: Cotton Bowl.
And speaking of bowls, it's slowly become readily apparent college football's cherished bowl system is the biggest block in the blockade between Division I and an eight-team playoff. The bowls draw sponsors; the sponsors pay the teams that go bowling; the 6-6 football teams that take in six figures please their university presidents; the university presidents control the commissioners, and so it goes as it has always gone.
BCS executive director Bill Hancock recently implied (on the Tony Barnhart Show) that bowl games are the main reason Division I has no playoff system when every other level of collegiate football does. He says the bowls are what works for Division I, and the BCS is obviously what works for his grandchildren's trust fund.
What worries me more than Hancock's predictable stance on this matter is TCU head coach Gary Patterson's comments last week. Patterson is opposed to a playoff because it's easier for his team to win a national title if they only have to win one game.
This is the same Gary Patterson whose Horned Frogs are not invited to that one game this year because of the current BCS monopoly, yet they would get a first-round home game and a fair shot at the crown by winning just three games in an eight-team playoff.
Patterson also fears the possibility of a playoff loss ending his team's season without his players experiencing the unique atmosphere of a bowl game, and this brings us face-to-face with the biggest piece of narrow-minded, near-sighted, tradition-addicted stubborn ignorance in this entire BCS/playoff debate.
Patterson, Hancock and almost everyone else is operating under the misconception they'd have to sacrifice their beloved bowls to orchestrate a playoff. That's simply not the case, and in fact, we can have the BCS, the bowls, AND AN EIGHT-TEAM PLAYOFF BRACKET all at the same time.
It would go like this:
Put the top eight teams in the final BCS rankings into a playoff bracket. Yes, I know there'll always be protests between the eighth team and the ninth or tenth-ranked teams in the country, but that's inevitable. Every other year in the NFL, there's a 9-7 team getting into the playoffs when a 10-6 team from another division or conference doesn't. That's life, and at least a playoff would give eight teams a shot at the title instead of two.
You can even give those eight playoff teams a weekend off to tend to semester finals, the Heisman Trophy presentation, Christmas shopping, R & R, and whatever else the university presidents and conference commissioners are using to prevent a playoff right now.
After you identify the Elite 8, send every other 7-5 squad to the Dot-Com.Com Bowl and all the 8-4 units to the bowl formerly known as the He Went to Jared Bowl, just as we've always done in Division I college football. From now on, however, remember to save a few spots in the BCS bowls for the teams eliminated from the playoff.
On the 2009 calendar, the eight-team playoff would begin next Saturday, Dec. 19, and it would look like so:

8 Ohio State (10-2)
@ 1 Alabama (13-0)

5 Florida (12-1)
@ 4 TCU (12-0)

6 Boise State (13-0)
@ 3 Cincinnati (12-0)

7 Oregon (10-2)
@ 2 Texas (13-0)

The first-round winners go onto play the following Saturday, Dec. 26, or perhaps the following Saturday (Jan.2) if you want to give them a week off for Christmas. The four first-round losers then accept BCS bowl bids, just as they would have anyway, and the two second-round losers (semifinalists) fill in the rest of the BCS bowls carefully so as to avoid rematches from the first two rounds of the playoff.
Let's say for argument's sake we had a playoff this year and the bracket went chalk: Alabama and Texas play for the title, first-round losers Ohio State and Oregon could meet in the Rose Bowl like normal while Florida and Boise State meet in the Sugar Bowl. Second-round losers TCU and Cincinnati would meet in the Fiesta Bowl, and we can even send Iowa and Georgia Tech to the Orange Bowl, just like they did in real life this year.
The national championship game could be Jan. 2 if you work through Christmas or Jan. 9 if you give the playoff teams a week off for Christmas. If Jan. 9 seems like a long time to wait for the title bout, let me remind you we're now sitting on our asses waiting 'til Jan. 7 for the BCS national title game anyway.
It will literally be next year before we see Texas and Alabama play for the championship, and it might as well be two totally different teams taking the field in Pasadena.
The madness in all this playoff method will come when the big upsets start happening, like an 8-seed taking out No. 1 in the first round, and that's the beauty of possibility. There is no possibility under the current system for anyone other than Texas and Alabama, and that's why college football needs a playoff. That's why every other sport at every other level already has one.