Naturally there are lots of great reasons division 1 college football needs a playoff, but one in particular really affects myself.  I can’t stay interested.  I simply don’t follow a team.  The product on the field is great, often much funner to watch than pro football.  But without a post season it simply feels like exhibition games. Two teams play a game but they do not have real meaning.  If a good game is on, and I’m watching TV, I may watch, or I may not.

This is similar to my feelings about the independent baseball leagues.  We take the kids to the park, and enjoy the game, eat a hot dog, and yell at the ref’s calls.  There is a chance the game is more entertaining than going across town to a pro game, especially given the huge payroll differences in pro baseball.  In the end it is a fun time, but the game is meaningless.  The winner may go on to some playoff, but only a select set of fans really care.

As all my college degrees are from regional (read division II) schools, I do not have a natural division 1 Alma Mater to follow.  In basketball I follow Kansas University, they have a post season… it feels real (I have earned credit at KU). Teams get there through on the court play, not selected by a few writers (well technically, but with 64 teams it doesn’t matter).  It is the only post season that sends every office in town into a frenzy.  Not even pro football, the number one sport in the country has that large of an impact at the grass roots fan level.  Even though basketball as a sport has less of a following than football.

What I don’t know is how many others feel the same meh.  With the exception of national talking heads that toe the company line, and apparently college presidents, most real college football fans want a playoff.  The real question is how many fans would they gain by creating a playoff?  There is only one way to find out.

Tell me what you think: feedback (shift-2) boldsunflower dott com

Many a blogster has begged Apple to build a netbook.  I believe most are simply wanting a high level notebook for $300.  They would probably also like a Porsche for $3000, but neither is going to happen.  That doesn’t mean a netbook is out of the question.

Apple is in business to make money with decent margins.  They purposely stay out of the commodity volume market for many reasons.  Their real business is software, and they leverage their software to add value to hardware.  Using this strategy, they even make nice margins on less expensive iPhones and iPods, something many large companies have not figured out how to do.  That leaves them out of the commodity netbook market, as it goes against their mission.

Steve Jobs stated it this way:

We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.

Considering the last generation iBooks had difficulty running Apple’s consumer software that ships with OS X, anything less would not meet Apple’s standards.  Apple has increased, not decreased, the screen size of notebooks in recent years.  I believe Steve Jobs simply does not like the user experience of the smaller screen, preferring to make them lighter instead.  That still does not rule out a netbook.

Apple does in fact already have a netbook, namely the iPhone and iPod touch.  They run a slim version of OS X, and use specialized apps from the iTunes app store.  Oh yeah, they retail at netbook prices.

With the recent acquisition of P.A. Semi, they now can work on manufacturing expenses, using specialized chips.  Consider what Sony has done shrinking the PS2 over several years, each time reducing chip count,  manufacturing complexity, and thus cost.  I believe the acquisition of P.A. Semi was driven by this underlying goal.

In lieu of the current incarnation of netbooks, what does make sense is other versions of the iPod touch, not aimed at the music market, but more of a portable computer.  Perhaps a 6″ to 8″ screen with the same resolution as the current touch.

There is room for small inovations that would not add significantly to the hardware costs, especially with P.A. Semi.  Personally, a gps antenna connector to use in flight (small aircraft) would open up some very nice apps, but since this is such a small market, simply a better gps antenna is more likely.  Perhaps even make mounts for bicycles and cars and the like, similar to what the gps manufacturers do.  The possibilities are wide open for Apples next netbook.