• JoePa may still be relevant as a figurehead, but, at this point, I have a hard time believing Penn State's wins should be credited to his ledger. When Paterno retires, if P.S.U. promotes from within (as I believe they will), the new coach shouldn't start at 0-0, he should get credit for the previous three or four seasons' worth of Joe's games.
• I apologize if I was unclear about the Virginia Tech/West Virginia thing; I know that Virginia Tech is in Virginia (and, as a Constitutional matter, I believe West Virginia is in Virginia, too, but that's a separate conversation). What I meant was, over the course of the last calendar year, Georgia and Georgia Tech have had the Hokies' number, while the Mountaineers have gotten the better of the Bulldogs and the Yellow Jackets. (On the plus side, as painful as it was to get behind to W.V.U. early, come back, and fall just short, it would have been worse to have been handing it to the Mountain Men before allowing them to mount a successful comeback. Not all 38-35 losses to West Virginia are created equally.)
• You are totally right about the Fox broadcasting crew. What Winston Churchill said about democracy may be applicable (in revised form) to A.B.C./Disney/E.S.P.N. . . . it's the worst way of covering sports, except for all the others that have been tried. Barry Switzer's references to Oklahoma as "we" seemed over the top even to him, and Barry's scruples are, shall we say, less than exacting. The rule should be that, if there is a building on the campus of one of the two teams named after you, you can't broadcast the game.

I don't want to be perceived as someone who is overly picky, but I don't think it's overly picky to insist that one refers to the symbol of our great University accurately.

Please accept this humble note with my sincerest apologies, but understand I am as earnest in my correction as I can possibly be.

It's a much bigger deal to me than even the disappointment caused by the fact that it is now acceptable to pronounce "dissect" as though it rhymes with "bisect". [shudder]

All that having been said, yours is a lovely story made all the more magical by the serendipitous appearance of a photographer to commemorate the occasion.  I congratulate you on your sense of romance, creativity, and (presumably) continuing marriage.

I am not sure why you conflate "dreadfully dull" with "meaningless." The N.C.A.A. basketball tournament is not boring, largely because its opening rounds produce many thrilling and cognitive dissonance-inducing upsets, but much of it is meaningless, for two reasons.

First of all, the tournament crowns a clear champion, but that clarity often comes at the expense of accuracy, much as the Bohr model of the atom is more lucid than the electron cloud model, but the electron cloud model's lack of certainty provides a truer picture of the atom it is intended to represent. Jimmy V's N.C. State team makes for a great story but a completely incoherent No. 1 ranking; the same goes for the 1997 world champion Florida Marlins and last year's Super Bowl-winning Pittsburgh Steelers.

Secondly, how many of those Gonzaga victories produce tournament titles? In a winner-take-all system (which is the only possible way to characterize the N.C.A.A. tournament), all victories are hollow except a season-ending win; otherwise, all a team can claim is that it lost later than anticipated.

Meanwhile, Boise State (a team most unlikely to run a three- or four-game playoff gauntlet to win the N.C.A.A. equivalent of the Super Bowl) has a B.C.S. bowl victory to its credit, which is a meaningful achievement. George Mason's final four appearance is a heartwarming footnote that pales to insignificance by comparison.

It is, of course, true that Boise State has no chance at the national championship. We know this because B.Y.U. didn't win the 1984 national title, just as the Zags didn't win all those tournament games. Also, I didn't write a posting offering a case on behalf of B.S.U.

I also am not sure how you are able simultaneously to acknowledge that I favor changing the system to restore the traditional bowl structure and to claim that I believe we currently are living in the best of all possible worlds. Doesn't my desire to do things differently indicate that the Dr. Pangloss comparison is obviously false? Is my desire to propose reasonable, historically-proven changes rather than roll the dice and accept much more radical revisions really comparable to a blind faith that all is well exactly as it stands?

Please note that I wrote that a playoff system would render games like the Fiesta Bowl "either impossible or meaningless" . . . one or the other, but not both.

Either a playoff system wouldn't have allowed such a matchup as occurred in the Fiesta Bowl (which might have been the case, despite Boise State's undefeated record, due to the Broncos strength of schedule . . . a key component of the R.P.I., which plays a role in the selection of a basketball tournament field whose seeding often is a good deal more murky, secretive, and baffling than college football's bowl pairings) or B.S.U.'s stirring win over Oklahoma would have been a precusor to one of two events: most likely, elimination in a subsequent round of the playoffs or, less plausibly but still possibly, a late-season tournament run culminating in a national title that raised as many eyebrows as the numerous N.C.A.A. tournament results in which a mediocre team's hot streak in March proved much more meaningful than a consistently good team's season-long performance, which was negated by a stumble in a single game.

Personally, I'd rather know that all the games counted instead of arbitrarily selecting a few late-season games as the only ones that really matter. In any case, though, I appreciate your comments, as always, and I send my best wishes for a healthy and happy new year to your family and you, 34hawk.

Although I have to confess that I doubt it compares as favorably as BS's relish over winning a BCS bowl.

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore received something like 49.9% of the popular votes cast in Florida. (My math may be off, slightly or significantly; if so, I regret it, but it is of little consequence, since the point is that he came very close to receiving a majority yet fell somewhat short of it.)

Suppose, however, that, instead of receiving 49.9% of the popular votes cast in Florida, Vice President Gore received 0.0% of the popular votes cast in Florida. In other words, imagine that George W. Bush had won the Sunshine State unanimously rather than narrowly.

What difference would that have made?

If presidential elections were decided upon the basis of the nationwide popular vote totals, that distinction would have made an enormous difference. Vice President Gore received a majority of all of the popular votes cast nationwide, but, had he received no votes in Florida, he would have gone from winning the nationwide popular vote to losing the nationwide popular vote. In sum, the difference between 49.9% in Florida and 0.0% in Florida would have been the difference between winning and losing the presidency.

Under the electoral college system, however, the gap separating 49.9% from 0.0% is a distinction without a difference, because Florida's electoral votes were a winner-take-all proposition. If Governor Bush received more Floridian votes than Vice President Gore, it is of no importance whether the margin of victory was one or one million. Either way, Governor Bush received 100% of Florida's electoral votes and, hence, the presidency.

I maintain that tournament systems are winner-take-all propositions. For a baseball team to win its division is of no real importance; the Atlanta Braves owned the National League East for a decade and a half, but routinely lost in the playoffs, whereas the 1997 Florida Marlins won none of the National League's three divisions, yet still (and incongruously) they were the National League champions because they took four of the seven games designated for that purpose, rendering moot the 162 games that decided the division race. For Braves fans, the division banners flapping in the breeze over Turner Field are maddening symbols of frustration rather than emblems of unprecedented achievement.

Likewise, a Division I men's basketball team scarcely cares about winning its regular-season conference championship, because that season-long result is immaterial when compared alongside the importance of winning the postseason conference tournament, which, yet again, pales in comparison to the importance of winning what is called "The Big Dance" for a reason.

Because college football does not have such a winner-take-all mentality, a team may celebrate a championship season even if it loses its bowl game. The 1948, 1968, 1976, 1981, 1982, and 2005 Georgia football teams all lost in postseason play . . . but seeing the S.E.C. championship banner unfurled in Sanford Stadium at the first game of the 2006 season was not one whit less stirring than seeing the S.E.C. championship banner unfurled in Sanford Stadium at the first game of the 2003 season.

You are right that we cannot really know how exciting a Division I-A college football playoff would be, although it sure seems to me that an awful lot of the Division I-AA college football playoff games are routs. Last Saturday's Boston College-Navy, Iowa-Texas, and Georgia-Virginia Tech bowl games produced a better slate of back-to-back-to-back postseason games than I ever remember seeing on an N.F.L. wild card weekend.

Even if the games are just as thrilling, though, the diminished importance of the regular season in a playoff system cannot be doubted. Last year, South Carolina beat Florida in football and swept Florida in basketball during the regular season. The gridiron result was a big deal for all concerned; the hardwood outcomes are mildly interesting footnotes to the Gators' national championship campaign.

Had there been a Division I-A college football playoff in place in 1980, it simply would not have mattered whether Buck Belue completed the pass to Lindsay Scott, because a 10-1 S.E.C. champion would have made the tournament field, anyway. I, for one, like that the greatest play in Georgia football history mattered.

Maybe Al Gore feels good about almost winning the presidency. If so, good for him. If he takes solace in the moral victory of coming within a whisker of carrying Florida, or if George Mason revels in the moral victory of winning more games than expected before losing in the N.C.A.A. tournament, I applaud their ability to find the silver lining.

Boise State just won the biggest game in school history, though, and the significance of that result will never be diminished. Boise State, unlike George Mason, doesn't get a few days' worth of gee-isn't-it-cute-that-a-small-school-got-this-far media fawning before having its accomplishment reduced to dust by a subsequent, season-ending setback; the Broncos will be the undefeated 2007 Fiesta Bowl champions for the rest of time.

Postseason tournaments are premised on what Reese Bobby told his son, Ricky, at career day: "If you ain't first, you're last." Reese was high at the time, and, years later, when he sobered up, he taught his son the truth and Ricky Bobby learned the same lesson Lightning McQueen learned in another racing movie released that same year.

There's more to life than the crystal football or the Piston Cup. The bowl system recognizes and rewards that fact. Playoff systems deny and destroy it.