If you have not yet read my College Sports Madness colleague Dan Levine’s piece on
this topic, check it out here. He describes the feelings held by
most…well, most people with a heartbeat.
Unfortunately for him and for all of you who agree, he is
wrong. It happens to the best of us. There is no shame in being wrong. It
happened to me once, back in the 90’s. I think it was a Tuesday. Anyways, the
College football powers that be making a playoff imminent seems like a fool’s
errand. They are destroying the one advantage they have over every other major
American sport going.
All you average sports fans, real quick, a quiz for you: who
won the Big 12 basketball regular season title this past season? It happened
literally within the past few months. You are thinking to yourself it was
probably Kansas but it might have been Missouri …or did Baylor
pull it out? You want to know the answer? The answer is: it doesn’t matter. It
never matters. Nothing in the regular season of college basketball ever
matters. The same goes for Major League Baseball, the NBA and don’t even get me
started on hockey. Could the regular season possibly mean LESS than it does in
the NHL? It’s almost a secretly, well concocted joke at this point.
It is debatable whether the NFL regular season is important.
It matters because you have to make the playoffs but ask the New York Giants if
they felt like they were the best team during this past year’s regular season.
College football has a monopoly on the Regular Season and that should mean
something.
As amateur football currently stands in division one, every
game means the world from week one through December. If you want to get serious
for a minute and think about it, with the exception of the teams in the literal
National Championship game in January, every other team’s LEAST important game
is actually their bowl game. It means squat.
So instead of banking on this week after week excitement,
college football wants to turn to a playoff system, relegating the regular
season to something between what the NFL currently offers us and what the NHL
drags out claiming to be professional hockey. No longer will that awesome
November weekend game between top teams matter as much. A team eliminating
itself from title contention with a single loss will be a thing of the past.
The pressure and subsequently the will of the best players to perform at their
peak execution game after game will dissipate. College football will
become…normal. And I for one would hate to see that happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment