Can Nancy Pelosi tackle college football?

Think Americans don’t trust Congress? It turns out that an astonishing 45% of us want lawmakers to force colleges to adopt a play-off system to cap the football season.

Okay, okay — it’s also true that 48% of us don’t want Washington to get involved.

But it’s a measure of how much football fans loathe the BCS system for choosing bowl-contenders that so many of us are willing to let Nancy Pelosi’s bench get into the game.

It turns out Americans want pigskin reform more than we want healthcare reform.

And here’s the really weird part. Republicans want government intervention in college ball more than Democrats.

This from The Hill:

The numbers broke down party lines. 60 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans supported congressional action while only 37 percent of Democrats backed it.

It seems goverment is the problem, not the solution, except when it’s bowl season and your alma mater is slipping down the BCS rankings.

What would the Gipper say about all this? Hard to say.

But in the interest of solving yet another daunting societal problem, the In-Box has a two-part plan for reforming college football.

1. Yes, it’s time to create a play-off system. College dons say such a system would cheapen the regular season and diminish the value of bowl games. Yes and yes and good.

We have enough Frito Lay Bowls to cheapen any tradition already. And most teams pad their regular seasons with so much cannon fodder that it can be painful going to home games.

Watching a team like the Nebraska Cornhuskers drag the bloody remains of the East Wupton Bluebells up and down the gridiron may be entertaining on some level, but it’s not football.

2. College football players should work on a voucher system. Play four or five years of eligibility, get that fantasy of a pro career out of your system, and then come back and get an education.

The current system devastates young men, wrecking their bodies, denying them the dignity of a paycheck, and depriving most of them any real shot at a bankable education.

Colleges should grant players tuition vouchers and a stipend to return to school after their playing days are over.

It would remove the stigma of a plantation-mentality sport that shames academia, by enriching schools and coaches and TV networks, while treating student athletes — most of them black and poor — as disposable.

Players and fans getting a fair shake? Now that’s change we can believe in.