This Year's College Football Playoffs Are Going to Be Awesome
College football fans are so lucky. This year’s 16-team playoff promises to be a humdinger. You’ve got the traditional heavyweights right at the top -- Alabama, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, USC. You’ve got other traditional powers lurking behind -- Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia. You’ve got three undefeated teams -- Utah, Ball State, and Boise State -- who will be relishing a chance to play Cinderella on national TV. You’ve got the four Big 12 teams -- Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech -- who played exciting, high-scoring games in the regular season and might get a chance to thrill us and their campuses again. (Texas beat OU, OU beat Tech, and Tech beat Texas -- so any of those three teams would have had to make an impossible argument in the old system.) Most of all, you have one of the most wide-open fields possible, with several teams that would have had some claim to be the more theoretical champion that the sport used to crown.
So we’re lucky that the powers that be finally shelved all the ridiculous arguments that once kept us from having a December stuffed full of football. They stopped arguing that they couldn’t possibly generate as much money or excitement from the Liberty Bowl if the game actually, you know, mattered. They stopped arguing that they simply can't have all but a few dozen of Division I football players ending their season with a soul-crushing loss, as if their feelings are more delicate than the field hockey players who have a playoff. They stopped arguing that a playoff would diminish the regular season, the way that Duke and North Carolina basketball fans can’t possibly take interest in a non-elimination contest between those teams. They stopped arguing, most ridiculously of all, that the players didn’t need even more distractions from academics -- Division II and III players are at least as likely (ahem) to be true student-athletes, and they manage to make it through a playoff.
I can’t wait for the round of 16 to kick off next weekend. Wait...what?
So we’re lucky that the powers that be finally shelved all the ridiculous arguments that once kept us from having a December stuffed full of football. They stopped arguing that they couldn’t possibly generate as much money or excitement from the Liberty Bowl if the game actually, you know, mattered. They stopped arguing that they simply can't have all but a few dozen of Division I football players ending their season with a soul-crushing loss, as if their feelings are more delicate than the field hockey players who have a playoff. They stopped arguing that a playoff would diminish the regular season, the way that Duke and North Carolina basketball fans can’t possibly take interest in a non-elimination contest between those teams. They stopped arguing, most ridiculously of all, that the players didn’t need even more distractions from academics -- Division II and III players are at least as likely (ahem) to be true student-athletes, and they manage to make it through a playoff.
I can’t wait for the round of 16 to kick off next weekend. Wait...what?
posted by JMW at 11:56 AM
2 Comments:
don't worry, john. obama's on it.
Amen brother. Amen. And this could be the true "southern strategy" that gets Obama all of the South--SEC fans have wanted a playoff forever. Oh, and OU Sucks. Now more than ever.
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