Saturday Reading Room -- A Pennsylvania writer questions if Penn State leaping Iowa for a BCS bowl would be right

Bob Smith blogs for pennlive.com, perhaps the best Web site for Penn State stories and commentaries.

Smith questions whether it would be right if Penn State were to get a BCS bowl berth ahead of Iowa. He notes the obvious fact that while both teams are 10-2, the Hawkeyes defeated the Nittany Lions. But that doesn't mean he isn't asking for flack at home for doing so. Some of his points in this post:

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I raised my children to believe that life is not fair. They learned quickly not to appeal to their father for relief on the basis of “fairness”. However, in general I do believe in a “level playing field” in sports. We should always strive to make sure that the outcome of any sporting contest is determined by the players on the field and not by some other reason. This is why I support instant replay in an effort to get calls right. We need to try and make any contest as fair as we can. Unfortunately, I don't believe that we can ever get all the way there, but it is a goal that should always be striven towards.

Nothing is more unfair than the Bowl system. For weeks we have been hearing how “this teams travels well”. Just because a bowl has the Big Ten #2 team; it does not mean that they take the team ranked second in the Big Ten. It simply means that they get second choice of Big Ten teams. Bowls are businesses and as such they look for teams that will sell out their stadium, draw big TV ratings, etc. This is why in the past we have seen a 6-5 Notre Dame team taken ahead of 8-3 teams. Notre Dame “travels well”.

Penn State “travels well”. The team has a national icon as head coach and will draw TV ratings. This is the main reason that Penn State would be selected over Iowa. Both teams have identical records and Iowa beat Penn State at Beaver stadium. If the bowl system were “fair” there would be no discussion of Penn State being selected over Iowa. But to quote myself, “life is not fair”. It could happen, but would it be right?

At Hawkeyenation.com, Jon Miller says he feels "90 percent certain" the Fiesta Bowl will tab the Hawkeyes if Texas beats Nebraska Saturday night in the Big 12 title game, as expected.

Jerry Palm, creator of collegebcs.com, gets a ton of attention this time of year. I don't know how he made himself to be the BCS-meister, but I mention him here just to use a quote of his that was in this story in the Allentown Morning Call.

''There are maybe five teams in the country that could push Iowa out of a BCS bowl. Penn State is one of them.''

Palm can sit on the fence with the best of us, though, as this comment of his suggests:

''It could go either way,'' he said. ''The Fiesta Bowl has a really good history with Penn State, and there's certainly the appeal that they may not get another shot at Paterno. Of course, we've been saying that for 20 years. But Iowa is the higher-rated team, it had a better year and beat Penn State on the field. That's not meaningless.''

I don't care if the FCS (I-A) ever has a playoff system, and don't expect to ever see one

given how powerful (and some might say corrupt) the six major conferences have become.

Oh, they're throwing TCU and probably Boise State bones Sunday in the BCS, but the big conferences with the big schools get the big money, and why share that with the little guy?

Besides, if you have a great scam going, why get rid of it?

But you hear the major-university presidents and conference commissioners spout their nonsense about the problems a playoff system would cause, and you wonder how stupid they think everyone else must be.

Every other division of college football has been using playoff formats for decades, and they work fine. Take FCS, for instance. That division (formerly I-AA) enters the second week of its four-week playoff this weekend. And guess what? They're going to expand their playoffs from 16 to 20 teams next year.

The concurrent increase in at-large and automatic berths (to 10 apiece) keeps the FCS on an even keel, and leaves the door open for more expansion in the future. So says Doug Fullerton, the Big Sky Conference commissioner.

“I actually think longterm, the growth in Division I football is going to be at our level,” Fullerton said. “I think our level is much more efficient.”

Here's a link to a fascinating Yahoo Sports piece on the effects of concussions on NFL players, focusing on Cedar Rapids native Kurt Warner. His 17-year-old daughter is worried about him.

“Honestly, I've gotten kind of tired of the whole football thing in general,” Kurt Warner's eldest daughter says. “I'm tired of the injuries, how difficult it is to go through the ups and downs, and just the whole business side of things. I've been dealing with it my whole life, and I'm just sort of done with it. The whole thing has been kind of exhausting.”

If you're assuming that those are the callous words of a disaffected teenager, think again. Jesse, a freshman at New York University, has seen her dad take enough beatings – literal and figurative – that her protective instincts are on red alert, especially in the wake of the concussion he suffered two weeks ago.

Remember that game effort Arkansas State gave Iowa in early October before losing, 24-21?

Well, Arkansas State finished their season Thursday night. And had Iowa gone 12-0 and been in the BCS title-game chase, it would have gotten no strength-of-schedule game from the Red Wolves.

Arkansas State went 4-8. It did close the year with a 24-20 victory at Western Kentucky, but almost was the Hilltoppers' only victim of the season.

Alex Carrington's fumble return for a touchdown with 3:49 remaining in game was the final and deciding score. ASU trailed 20-3 late in the third quarter. The following quotes are from the Bowling Green Daily News.

“Tonight was an example of how our season has gone,” ASU coach Steve Roberts said. “It is an example of the resilience of this bunch and how hard they have worked. It seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong from a lot of different standpoints.

“But we continued to work extremely hard and work our way back into the ballgame. I am very proud of this group and they were able to finish.”

Finally, I've told you this week about former Hawkeye basketball players Sean Sonderleiter, Erek Hansen and Kurt Looby playing in the NBA D-League. It's an apparent haven for ex-Iowa power forwards and centers. Doug Thomas has returned to the league.

Thomas was one of the last cuts by the D-League's Dakota Wizards a couple weeks ago, but signed Thursday with the Reno Bighorns.

The 2006 Big-10 Conference Sixth Man of the Year spent last season in Sweden. He has previous NBA D-League experience with the Iowa Energy, where he averaged 10.4 points and 6.3 boards per game in the 2007-08 season.