Deloss Dodds: You're Either With Us... Or Alone

Via Team Speed Kills, we learn that Deloss Dodds has begun asserting some leverage in the ongoing discussions related to a college football playoff. Responding to a question about the Big Ten and Pac-12's desire to preserve the special status of the Rose Bowl, Texas' athletics director spoke from a position of strength, as he is wont to do:

If that's what is holding off a move to even a limited playoff -- and Dodds says he thinks it is -- then he advocates a parting of ways in the postseason. Let those two leagues cling to their more than six-decade partnership with the Rose, and allow the rest of the country to settle the national championship as it sees fit.

"The only way it's going to get fixed," Dodds says, "is for the rest of the country to have a playoff of some kind and let them do their (own) deal. And then after five years, their coaches would go berserk because they're not in the mix for a national championship. And they'd have to join it."

This is, of course, the most effective way to force the hand of a holdout where two sides do not hold equal power. "Capitulate, or we'll just go ahead without you." If going it alone is untenable, the opposition effectively has no choice.

This will undoubtedly bring a fresh round of complaints from the out-leveraged about Texas arrogance, but this needed to be said. Moreover, where the sullying of purity and tradition in the quest for evermore dollars is concerned... everyone's hands are dirty. Including the Big Ten and Pac-12.