[NU Sports] The Big Ten's delusion of self-importance

[Eric West]

> I think it was Teddy Greenstein who pointed out that the lack of a playoff game
> is one of the things that made the last week of the regular season so
> interesting. With a playoff system, teams like Oregon and Auburn would have been
> "in" even if they lost that last week. As it was, they *had* to win.

Teddy Greenstein has always been kind of a shill for the BCS (for some 
reason), but there are two problems with his assertion. First, it was 
hardly a given that Auburn would have been out of the BCS title game 
even if they had lost to South Carolina. More importantly, picking out 
one or two games per season and saying they would have been meaningless 
with a playoff system ("meaning" pertaining only to a championship in 
this definition) ignores the fact that plenty of games have been 
"meaningless" under the BCS -- like TCU's entire season, or Auburn's 
season in 2004. If championship implications are a measure of meaning, 
far more of the last week of games would have "meant" something under a 
playoff system.

Not that I buy any of that "meaning" stuff. College football is college 
football, and the SEC championship is a major draw because SEC fans 
support it. It's got plenty of meaning just in and of itself.


Eric West
e-west at northwestern.edu


P.S. As cheesy as I think "Legends" and "Leaders" are, they are actually 
better than any other idea I ever heard. It's easy to say "anyone could 
do better," but as far as I'm concerned nobody actually did. The main 
problem was the division assignment in the first place, which made 
geographic designations moot.