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

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> Teddy Greenstein has always been kind of a shill for the

Amen!

> 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

Yup - they were in regardless.

> 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

Exactly. And forget the "hot team and injury" argument as well, as injuries could play a role in reverse as some teams have a player injured at the start of the year and come on strong late but are out of the running - look at the Cowboys during their Super Bowl repeat year. Emmitt Smith was injured early and they got off to a slow start, but no one disagreed at the end of the year when they won that they weren't the best team in the NFL.

If the regular season was so important, LeBron would have won a title with the Cavs the last couple years. Playoffs aren't perfect, but they are how every other sport decides their champion - with competition on the FIELD! Sometimes you get the Saints and Colts, #1 vs. #1, other times you get two wild card teams playing for the World Series.

Will Michigan-Ohio State lose meaning if they're meeting again in Indy? College football will ALWAYS have great meaning in every game - there are too few games per year for it not to - but playoffs just add more.

I just don't get what the fans of the status quo are clinging to ... I love the tradition I grew up with as well, but that's gone. The B(C)S destroyed that and gave us an Orange Bowl three days after New Year's Day in front of 45,000 empty seats and a small school from Texas in the Rose Bowl. The bowl tradition is gone. Time to join the rest of competitive sports - no more trophies for everyone and no more phony titles decided via Urban Meyer's whining press conferences and CBS's SEC promotional machine.

Let's settle this ON THE FIELD!!!

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

> 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.

Bingo! We overthought it. We're like the celebrity couple who wants to be "different" and not go with obvious names, only to come up with "Apple" as a laughable designation on what to call their daughter. It's the worst marketing idea since New Coke!