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Baseball may be America’s pastime but football is America’s passion when it comes to sports. (I have a friend who has dubbed the summer sport as basebore. Wake me up when the world series starts.)
The NFL finished its preseason – and no one knows why they even hold a preseason in the first place (unless it had something to do with money). This weekend they keep real score and the games count in the final standings.
College football came out of the corner swinging last Thursday – literally if you check the video below – with Oregon visiting Boise State and losing on BSU’s Smurf-blue football field that makes TV screens and viewers’ eyes beg for mercy. By now everyone in the world that watches ESPN highlights has seen the sucker punch thrown by a frustrated Oregon player at the end of the game as players were exiting the field. Not quite the punch CFB wanted thrown on a weekend dedicated, ironically, to sportsmanship. (Note: This is real irony, not just the bad luck and tragedy masqueraded as irony by Alanis Morissette in her song Isn’t It Ironic?). But I digress. And despite a black eye administered to sportsmanship, there was plenty of on field highlights for football junkies who have been suffering withdrawal pains for the past eight months.
My Buckeyes played a less than impressive game against the Naval Academy – putting in the second string quarterback in the second quarter is not a recipe for maintaining momentum in what looked like an emerging blowout. But it was good sportsmanship – so count one for the Buckeyes – just like the way the two teams ran onto the field together before kickoff. This was a first ever happening in storied Ohio Stadium. All week leading up to the game head coach Senator Tressell had let it be known that he did not want servicemen being booed – a friendly tradition in Ohio Stadium and a couple hundred other venues each Saturday afternoon of CFB season. In fact, Tressell wanted Navy’s players to be given a standing ovation. Glad it worked. We’ve booed the home team before, too.
Based on one week of results, the sports guru pundits are pretty sure who is really good and who is really bad already. They’ll be wrong a fair amount of the time and by season’s end express indignation with teams that didn’t perform as they predicted. Of course the problem will be the team not their ability to predict. (Note: Only a few of the pundits predict any more. Most now pronounce. Better ratings.)
Not surprising, Lou Holtz has already declared Notre Dame as national champions. The term “SEC speed” was used no less than 300 times on ESPN. And then a thousand more times once the games started. Oklahoma got upset by BYU and lost their Heisman winning QB, Sam Bradford, for an indefinite stretch of games. Michigan looked like the Wolverines again – maybe they’ve been practicing extra. Speaking of which, I am all for eschewing the tie and deciding games in overtime, but it doesn’t mean I can’t still hope and pray that when Michigan and Notre Dame play next week they end with a 0-0 final score highlighted by 20 fumbles.
So who is going to win the national championship? And who do I think is going to be really good and bad this year? Rather than separate the sheep and the goats and impute or impinge character on the basis of winning, as a spectator, I’ll hide behind the words of Teddy Roosevelt:
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat.
On that note, all I can say is “Go Bucks. Beat USC!”
College football still packs a punch!
Utah knocked off Alabama in the Sugar Bowl a couple of days ago, lifting their record to 13-0. Shouldn’t that give them a claim as college football’s national champions? Or how about Texas who beat Oklahoma who is playing for the title against Florida?
I’m somewhat of a traditionalist – okay, a little mix of iconoclast and traditionalist – so I’ve never had a dog in the we-must-have-a-playoff-for-Division-I-college-football fight. I can see both sides of the debate.
The arguments against a D-I college football (CFB) playoff include –
There is an answer for and to every point above. I’m oversimplifying but here’s the quick responses in corresponding order: playoffs would generate NFL type of dollars; controversy is not good when the ‘best team’ gets ripped off due to system rules; you can still keep some form of the bowl system but some of the bowls would go away (and need to go away); sure CFB is healthy but so is basketball and people absolutely love March Madness and filling in their brackets; again, you can keep some of the bowls as part of the playoff system; hey, if athletes from the lower divisions of CFB can do a playoffs and handle the academic work load at some rigorous universities, why can’t the D-I kids?
Like I said, I have no dog in this fight – something Michael Vick wishes he could have said – so you pick the answers you like best and you won’t get me worked up. As you can tell with the associated arguments above, most solutions try to incorporate traditional bowls into the playoff equation. And this is where I have a problem. In fact, I would go so far as to say, dump the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) completely and return to stand-alone bowls with a vote at the end of the year or go strictly with a playoff for the top eight teams. But don’t mix the two.
Why?
Bowls were never set up to determine a national champion. Bowls were about rewarding kids with travel, gifts, and a televised game and giving alums and fans a warm weather place to go for a vacation. As a result the bowls have always favored warm weather schools and penalized cold weather schools.
Warm weather schools can recruit and play a style of football that doesn’t have to change as the leaves fall off of trees. (Texas Tech needs to bring their passing attack to Madison, Wisconsin, in late November to test my theory.) Warm weather schools often travel less distance (and many times stay in-state) for a near home field advantage in bowl season. (USC’s last home game every year is the Rose Bowl! Of course, if the mighty Trojans would stop getting upset by 30-point underdogs they would have to play for a championship instead of relying on ESPN to crown them as best-ever each year.) The pundits discuss and explore home field issues, including weather conditions, in-depth and ad nauseum in the NFL – no one wants to go to Green Bay in December I’ve heard – but college analysts conveniently ignore that reality.
Oh, you’re a Buckeye fan and are just making excuses. Let’s face it, the best football is played in the SEC and Big 12 South! Weather is a non-issue.
Uh oh. The topic of discussion just changed! And yes, I confess, I am defending my much-maligned Buckeyes and the Big 10 and its quality of football as evidenced by the last few bowl seasons. Realistically, I can accept that the Big 10 is down the past two or three years and the SEC is up based on year-end results – but there’s an even more telling statistic that argues against the kind of disparity being argued. It’s number of players in the NFL. The score card reads:
SEC – 263 players / 137 starters
ACC – 238 players / 121 starters
Big Ten – 234 players / 105 starters
Pac-10 – 183 players / 70 starters
Big 12 – 176 players / 72 starters
Big East – 84 players / 33 starters
So admittedly there is a power shift toward the southeast USA, but not to the degree it’s been propagated by fans who claim if you ain’t cheating you ain’t really trying.
But back to the question: Is it time for a college football playoff? I’m all for the top eight teams forming a bracket to set up a Super Bowl type climax to the CFB season – because we all know how great SB games are most years! (Sarcasm font on.) But not if all games are played in warm weather sites.
After all, since weather is just an excuse, shouldn’t Gator, Trojan, Sooner, Tiger, and Seminole fans get to experience football the way it was meant to be played … outdoors in December in Ann Arbor, Columbus, Happy Valley or other northern climes?
That’s a thought that warms my heart!