Short of some grudge cheap shot in one of those assorted college all-star grunt and gropes that seem to go on from now to Super Bowl Sunday, nothing tactile can be done about this Michigan-Nebraska squabble over which team is No. 1.
I notice, for example, that on opposite sides of the ball in the East-West Shrine Game next Saturday will be Nebraska quarterback Scott Frost and Michigan defensive end Glen Steele.
Mr. Thumb, meet Mr. Hammer.
Otherwise, the issue will linger temporarily in bar arguments and on their illegitimate offspring, talk radio.
And then it will, as it did when Washington shared with Miami and Georgia Tech with Colorado, disappear into unread almanacs and alumni scrapbooks.
The fact that college football cannot reach a clear conclusion is what passes for charm and what gives the game its distinctiveness. None of us should look forward to the day when college football can be taken for granted.
The difference between college basketball and college football is the difference between a footrace and a footrace on soap.
College football is full of shape-shifters and thumb-suckers and self-servers, and not all of them are coaches.
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The aforementioned Frost generally is assumed to be responsible for changing the minds of two dozen adult football coaches, convincing them that Nebraska was the tougher choice, appealing directly to where coaches are most sensitive, job security.
“If your job was on the line, who would you rather play, Michigan or Nebraska?” Frost asked.
This was extremely clever of Frost, which belies the notion that football players do not get an education at Nebraska, though Frost did start out at Stanford.
This was the cheap way to go, however. I would have been more impressed if Frost had figured a plea to change the minds of the sportswriters, who, unmanipulated, did the right thing and voted for Michigan.
“If you had to ask for a press parking pass, whom would you rather beg?” would have done it for me, though I had no vote.
I have had to trudge miles from my car through Ann Arbor neighborhoods to do my job, but never once in Lincoln. So I might have been tempted, as some sportswriters were, to go for Nebraska.
On such silliness is our national football champion determined, and I say, let’s not change a thing.
Next year this is all supposed to be fixed, the final tinkering to include the Rose Bowl, so that No. 1 will absolutely play No. 2 at the end. The flaw in this arrangement is still that No. 1 and No. 2 will be determined by vote, and unless there are only two undefeated teams to rank, disagreements are as inevitable then as now.
Having an honest difference of opinion is as fine a way to finish as any other. The problem with this difference of opinion is that it was not honest.
The great and dramatic rush toward Nebraska from Michigan deprecates not just the Wolverines but all of college football.
It endorses running up the score. It holds grudges. Take that, Rose Bowl. Take that, Big Ten.
It condescends. Who was Washington State to give Michigan so much trouble? If Michigan beats UCLA, votes do not change.
It indulges its own. Coaches vote for coaches, and this was a retirement gift for Tom Osborne. It ignores the total season and emphasizes only the finish.
How could any voter forget that Nebraska is undefeated only because of a fluky, kicked (illegally, it turned out) pass against Missouri?
And as long as we are going on last impressions, I say North Carolina should be No. 1. Not only was North Carolina the best of all the bowl teams I saw but its coaching situation was much more typical of what college football is.
North Carolina’s coach did not retire. He left for a better job.