[NU Sports] a correction and a comment

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

A couple conversations wrapped in one here, I guess :)
...

> Time to lose the snob factor about I-AA football.

Agreed. And it's also realistic to think that had NU
had a healthy Bacher at the start of the year, we
don't lose that game either. But those are the breaks.

> eight-team playoff this year? So the whining about
> teams  left out means it expands to 16 teans, then

Exactly - so you keep the "controversy" and "every
week counts" that people seem to love about the
present mess. But you also get a champion on the
field. Is it the best team? No - the NCAA Tourney
champ usually isn't the best team over the season, but
it's a heck of a lot better than the present mess.

> I care about a regular season that matters every
> week,

But did this regular season really matter? At the end
of Michigan's regular season, they were 11-1 and the
#2 team in the country. Then, without playing a game,
they were leapfrogged twice. Once by a team who looked
impressive beating a Notre Dame team that Michigan had
beaten BY MORE and ON THE ROAD in that regular season.

> a bowl season with entertaining matchups, 30 or so

And there's the other thing about the BCS - it's
lessened the meaning of the bowls. Instead of having
two or three games to flip between on January 1, all
with meaning in the national title race ... we get
only one game at a time, in a half empty stadium that
often features a matchup few want to see. Look at the
BCS bowls' history and for every OSU-Miami or
Texas-USC there's a Florida-Maryland or Pitt-Utah. Or
an FSU-Miami rematch. Ugh.

> blockbusters on January 1. This formula of college
> footbal has produced one of the nation's true
> "national" sports, filled huge stadiums from coast

I doubt it was the BCS formula that has created full
stadiums and a national sport. In fact, I would argue
that cross-sectional matchups like the Texas-OSU
series have become more rare since the inception of
the BCS because teams are not rewarded for scheduling
challenging games outside of league play.

College football would be a great sport, full of
controversy, action, thrills and excitement regardless
of the BCS. And I have yet to be convinced that all
those factors would be less if there were a playoff or
even if we had gone back to the old way.

> 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

Well, I don't think you have to scrap all the bowls
for a moderate playoff system ... but I think there's
calls for playoffs this time of the year out of sheer
frustration for fans of the college game, sick of
seeing this bumbling system churn out a lineup of bowl
clunkers year after year. 

The excitement of college football used to last
THROUGH the bowl season. Now it ends when the last BCS
poll is published. I'm not anti-bowl. I loved watching
football on January 1 in the old days when the Rose,
Cotton, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange all had good matchups
rich in tradition and playing a role in stirring
controversy and talk about who would be #1 after the
dust settled.

And as a fan of college football, even if you are in
the state of Florida, you have to laugh at the joke of
a system and how Michigan was jobbed this year. They
all but admitted that they didn't like the results
when the system set up kicked out a Buckeye-Wolverine
rematch on Nov. 19 and essentially had a do-over. The
hype machine went out of its way to make sure we
didn't have a rematch and when USC's loss threw a
wrench in things, it kicked into overdrive to sell
people on how good Florida suddenly was. Heck, if
Florida was this good the week before why weren't they
ahead of SC or Michigan?

> 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.

On that, we can agree.:)

Hopefully next year at this time we're talking about
the Wildcats' bowl opponents and not how this stupid
B(C)S system has actually made me feel sympathy for
Lloyd Carr!:)

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!


 
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