Make Hillary Secretary of State? Rescue the American car industry? Bail out the national banking system? Barack Obama may do all these things and more. But one thing he can't do: mess with college football.

Thus the shock waves when Obama, at the end of an otherwise uneventful debut interview as President-elect, suggested that college football might follow the example of every other major league and college sport in the US, and establish a series of playoffs between the top teams, to produce an agreed national champion.

The furore has yet to die down. "I don't know any serious fan of college football who disagrees with me on this," Obama told CBS 60 minutes. Well, he might start by reading the sports columnists who've been sputtering with outrage at the notion for the past week.

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Question: What's this all about? Is it important? Is it a distraction? Or is it just pre-inauguration banter that means nothing.

Michael McCarthy writes: Can you hear it, the great unlocking sound? It's the sound of the door swinging open at last after nearly eight long years of being bolted and barred, the door that leads to progress in the world's attempt to grapple with the biggest problem it has ever faced: global climate change.

Barack Obama's statement of intent about the coming year's negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol suddenly raises an electrifying possibility: the possibility of success.

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Every sign of change is pounced on, almost ravenously, as Obama gives signs of fulfilling hopes. But this is the easy bit. Do you think the idealism will sruvive the realities of office?
 

Johann Hari writes of Obama's chance to end the Star Wars programme:

One of Obama's first choices will bewhether to bring to an end one of the strangest episodes in American political history.

This is the tale of how a man with Alzheimer's Disease came up with a physically impossible fantasy based on a B-movie he once starred in – and how the US spent $160bn trying to make it come true. These billions succeeded only in making some defence companies very rich, and making Russia point its nukes at Poland and the UK once more. And if Obama doesn't decide to close this long-running farce now, it will make one more contribution to world history: the number of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world will dramatically increase.

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Will Obama take the opportunity to make a dramatic shift from the policies of his predecessors? Would it be the right thing to do or would he immediately draw criticisms over the state of US security?

Oh they've all changed now. Suddenly they all like Obama, so even Republican spokesmen are saying things like: "This great and truly memorable moment shows what a wonderful country we are.

"Sure, during the campaign we called him a sleazy Marxist terrorist dirty Muslim atheist thieving anti-American Arab anarchist lying cowardly darky, but let's not allow that to cloud this joyful, wonderful result."

Some of them almost slip-up and say, "Can I be the first to say how glad I am that this moment, which I've spent my entire life trying to prevent, has happened."