Wednesday, November 18,1987/The Battalion/Page 9 Whitwell (continued from page 7) San Angelo State and Southwest Texas State and come to A&M. “I think I probably could have gone academic if I failed to earn a fischolarship in volleyball,” she said. “Volleybau is a sport you go into knowing you’re not going to make much money out of once you’re Fin ished with college. So of course my primary goal in college was to get a good education and a good degree.” Whitwell didn’t play much her freshman year, so she said there wasn’t mucn to do except study. “I started out with some really grades, and from then on it’s ?en sort of a habit to try to keep up the good marks,” said Whitwell, who was the valedictorian of her graduat ing class in high school. “It’s not as though I set a goal to be on the academic Southwest Con ference team, but it came as a result of the goals I already had — just make the best grade I could and shoot for A’s,” she added. Although Whitwell led Cotulla High School to the 3A Finals of the Texas state high school tournament and was named to the all-state team, she didn’t receive any volleyball scholarship offers from Division I universities. When she made her de cision to attend A&M, she also de cided to walk on with the volleyball team. “I felt like I could play a sport at that level,” she said. “I wasn’t really sure whether I was going to play bas ketball or volleyball. I guess that I just had the faith in myself. “I hadn’t even begun to learn all the skills of the game well and the strategies of the game, but I had all the physical and mental ability to do that. I felt like I had the athletic abil ity to play, but that it would be an amount of dme before I would see the court.” 60 oz Pitcher $1°° Hall of Fame FM 2818 North of Villa Maria, Bryan 822-2222 Must be 21 years of age Thursday & Saturday with coupon ■ expires Nov. 28 | I I I Lack of college football playoff laughable j I I I I Large 16” One Topping Thin Crust Pizza Free Delivery 846-0379 Best Pizza in Town Northgate 99 $5 + tax By Doug Hall Assistant Sports Editor When the topic of a college foot ball playoff comes up in the next sev eral weeks, as it most certainly will, take some advice and tell people that a playoff format would be totally ig norant. After thor-. oughly upset- yflewpomt mg your oppo- ■ww. r » sition with such a bold thesis statement, use these points in de fense of your argument: First, should the NCAA instill a playoff format, it would be the First practical move that the incredibly mismanaged organization has made in umpteen years. Such a move un doubtedly would cause heart attacks and health problems among athletic directors and coaches across the na tion. Second, a playoff would allow players, not press members or coaches, to determine which team should be voted tops in the nation. In doing so, the playoff would vir tually eliminate all post-season whin ing, sniveling and bickering by the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 teams that “shou/d have been No. 1.” Finally, argue that a college play off would destroy the all-important bowl system. Imagine what Jan. 1 would be like if a Pac 10 team didn’t whip it’s Big 10 opponent in the Rose Bowl, or if the Orange Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl didn’t determine the national champion. By now, if your opponent hasn’t recognized the sarcasm oozing out from underneath your shoes, it’s time to Find someone else to sucker. Let’s be for real. The college foot ball Finale is really a college football Fiasco. In order to determine the best col lege football team in the nation, games stretch from late August through early January. Thousands and thousands of hours are spent in search of the elusive No. 1 spot. The same distinction, incidentally, that certain college basketball and base ball teams achieve through playoffs each year. So why doesn’t the NCAA adapt a football playoff system? Because it would make too much sense, that’s why not. The format for a playoff, as has been proposed by prominent ath letic officials across the country, is al ready there. Don’t change or elimi nate the bowl games, but use those as preliminary brackets just as the NCAA does in the Final Four tour nament. There, schools across the country are split in to geographic re gions, with top-ranked teams as the host team in each division. The current bowl system accom plishes virtually the same thing. The Rose Bowl matches the top Pac-10 team (West) against the top Big-10 team (Northeast). The Cot ton Bowl pits the Southwest Confer ence (South) winner against another team from anywhere across the na tion. Similarly, the Orange Bowl takes the Big Eight (South, Southwest) representative and an unspecified opponent and the Sugar Bowl takes the Southeastern Conference win ner (Southeast) against another un specified team. The Fiesta Bowl changes the format slightly by taking two top-rated, unspecified teams. Thus, the original pairings are set for the top five games (10 teams). Choose the best three match-ups from the remaining bowl games (six teams) and then determine brackets that hopefully will pit your top two teams against each other in the fi nale. True, this 16-team format would tack on three games for the eventual top two teams, but so what. The NCAA could force teams to drop one of their non-conference pre-season games that are incredibly one-sided anyway. By starting the season a week later, teams will look sharper, play better and eliminate worthless games. People who oppose the playoff idea say additional games hurt the athlete’s attempt to study and gain an education. That’s trash. The regular season for most schools ends in late November, al lowing bowl-bound players several weeks to prepare for the upcoming team, study for finals and spend Christmas at home before final game preparations. Furthermore, the post-bowl games would all be played in Jan uary before the semester starts or in the first week of the term. Nobody cracks a book the first week of school anyway. But don’t expect the NCAA to make such drastic changes any time in the near future. Knowing that it takes them at least two years to produce results from an investigation, such playoff changes are likely to be a turn-of-the-century occurrence. If they occur at all. If nothing else changes, the NCAA should at least step in and al ter the laughable bowl “bidding” process. Supposedly, bids can’t be officially offered until this Saturday. I guess that’s why Notre Dame is “definitely” coming to the Cotton Bowl, why Miami is “locked in” to the Orange Bowl and Clemson is “certain” to get a bid for the Sugar Bowl It’s a joke. But that's no surprise, because so is the NCAA’s No. 1 for- Small 12” One Topping Thin Crust Pizza Free Delivery 846-0379 Best Pizza in Town Northgate 99 -h tax Contact Lenses Only Quality Name Brands (Bausch & Lomb, Ciba, Barnes-Hinds-Hydrocurve) White's injury may place Pelluer in starting role $79 00 $99 00 $99 00