WISHES > PREDICTIONS

College football is full of predictive measurements; stars assigned to recruits designed to forecast how good they'll be at the next level, preseason rankings and polls, award watchlists. This season, of course, we add to that list the predicted participants in the four team playoff.

But predicting who those teams will be is boring. It's a primarily backwards-looking process by necessity, and it tends to become an exercise in naming some subset of the same six or seven teams. Predictions can't account for weird shit like West Virginia's defense shutting down Oklahoma State or Stanford losing to Utah because they decided to go pass-heavy.

Wishes, though? Wishes are awesome. Instead of being chained within the prison of reason and logic, you are free to roam in the poppy fields of your imagination.

Start small, just to get used to it. Wish for the Little Brother Playoff, for instance.

(If you're mad that your school is listed here, please note your disapproval by leaving no comment. The silence is what hurts us the most.)

Now go a bit bigger. What about an all purple playoff, so sumptuous and sexy that Prince himself will have no choice but to sing the national anthem, do a halftime show, and serve as the back judge? This is what it sounds like / Offensive P.I.

Or what about what happens when Coaches Shaw, Bailiff, and Cutcliffe are forced to deal with a very fussy Michigan?

You can also emphasize our collective need to use Earth's resources responsibly with this playoff group. The power is yours, UTEP!

And, of course, the most college football fan playoff of all.