[NU Sports] a correction and a comment

[Brad Wilson]

Correction: Dennis: "that traditional football
powerhouse" James Madison is just that, no quotes
needed; they were I-AA national champions just a
couple of years ago.

While I was as appalled as anybody by losing to New
Hampshire (I wouldn't have played them in the first
place), and I am as big a Big Ten fan as anyone, it's
evident to anybody who pays any attention to I-AA that
the best I-AA teams (maybe the top 30-35) can compete
with the bottom half of I-A, even teams such as Iowa
State, Stanford, Rutgers, Mississippi State, Colorado,
Indiana, and (sigh) NU. I think a I-AA team could --
on a one-game basis -- beat the MAC, Sun Belt or WAC
champion many years, and push the C-USA champs.

Time to lose the snob factor about I-AA football.
These guys can play. Schedule them at your peril
(directional Louisianas and horrid MAC messes are
better bets for cupcake wins.)

Commnent: No playoff for me. I really don't care who
is "national" champion -- there's never a good way to
tell. Imagine if there was an eight-team playoff that
excluded either Boise State or (say) LSU. Who's to say
either of them couldn't win? Would Wisconsin get in an
eight-team playoff this year? So the whining about
teams  left out means it expands to 16 teans, then 32,
and soon you have basketball: a worthless regular
season followed by a tournament 80 percent of the
teams involved in cannot actually win. 

I care about a regular season that matters every week,
conference championships, great old rivalries and then
a bowl season with entertaining matchups, 30 or so
groups of kids, coaches, alums and fans ending their
seasons wearing a smile from a win, and a few
blockbusters on January 1. This formula of college
footbal has produced one of the nation's true
"national" sports, filled huge stadiums from coast to
coast, generated enormous fan interest and terrific TV
ratings over decades of passion and intensity. It IS
NOT BROKEN, no matter what the people who want CFB to
be like the NFL say. Like the NFL's system, which
produces a scintillating Super Bowl EVERY SEASON
(uh...) better? Go watch it and leave CFB alone.

Too many bowls? Probably. But even the worst bowl TV
rating outdraws NHL Stanley Cup final games, and many
bowls draw as well as NBA or World Series games. Bored
by a bowl matchup? Then use that "off" button on the
TV and do something else! Other people are interested.
Uneeded and unwatched bowls will go away. But why are
people on this list so offended a surfeit of bowls,
especially when NU's the kind of team that
occasionally benefits (Motor City Bowl, anybody)? 

I think the NHL and NBA seasons are ridiculously long
and I find the NFL dull, boorish and corporate. So I
don't watch, and the world goes on. The bowls are the
same thing ... don't care about the Texas Bowl? Fine.
Don't watch. Go to a movie. Read a book. But don't
deny the many thousands that will care  the chance to
do so. 

A playoff will only benefit the Ohio States, USCs and
Auburns at the expense of everybody else -- though it
would unquestionably hurt N*** D***, the only reason
to be for it. So it baffles me to see an NU list
jonesing for a playoff -- it would not help NU at all.


I make no case for the BCS, but it does a decent job
of sorting things out. I can live with it because it
leaves me 99 percent of what I like about college
football, and its champion is always one of the 2-3
top teams, and that's good enough for me -- no
one-game situation, in any sport, can actually
determine who's better, anyway.

I confess to being the kind of reactionary who would
be very happy with the old system that produced my
most memorable day as a sports fan: January 1, 1996.

Brad Wilson


"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular." -- Edward R. Murrow, 1954.

"Quis ipsos custodes custodiet?" -- Juvenal


 
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