Where I Stand: NFL vs College Football, Pt. 2

Allow me to re-cap for you what has gone on before: My friends, Meldy and Ike have an on-going discussion with me about my preference for the professional football game versus the college game. In the previous part, I covered my first two problems with the college game and in this part, I shall cover the other two. All caught up? Great. Here we go.

Bowl Games. First of all, there's way too many of them (31). This means that there are 62 teams involved in some form of bowl game and it was just a few years ago where there was almost a crisis of one team declaring itself ineligible after being assigned to a bowl game so that there would not have been enough bowl eligible teams for all of the games. Why are there so many? It has nothing to do with any sort of final ranking of the teams. It's an insane way of making a team feel good about itself for what really amounts to mediocrity ("Congratulations! You're the 51st best team in the nation! Here's a ring from our sponsor!"). It comes back to the money. It's a way for the sponsors of the game to imagine that they're getting a bunch of publicity when really, for the most part, they're only getting a bunch of publicity in two limited areas (wherever the two schools are located). It's also a way for the schools to make even more money off of these athletes. The athletes get a trip to somewhere other than where they live (unless you have a case like Miami going to the Orange Bowl - then they get another home game).


National Championship. I know, I know. This has been hashed and re-hashed so many times it's become a cliché. However, it still bears mentioning. It was only in 2004 that LSU and USC shared a split national championship. LSU won the championship BCS bowl game, but USC was voted as the best team in the nation by the sportswriters. If a sport wants me to take it seriously, this sort of thing can't happen. It's exactly the same reason that I don't respect boxing as a sport; multiple championships held by multiple individuals (not talking about different weight classes). Through some sort of complicated formula, they come up with the two highest-ranked teams and they play in a bowl game to determine one half of a national championship. However, there almost always seems to be doubt as to what teams should be in the game. For instance, in 2005, three major teams were undefeated: USC, Oklahoma and Auburn. The computers spit out that Oklahoma and USC should play with Auburn being left out in the cold. Would Auburn have been able to show up at least a bit better than Oklahoma, who was stomped 55-19? The world will never know, and that's the issue. We have no chance of saying that Auburn was the national champion because they were never given the opportunity. The love of money from the bowl game sponsors has made it so that college football has controversy almost every year as it goes to try and crown its pseudo-champion. Again, let's contrast this with the NFL. Each division winner goes to the playoffs and the two teams with the best records who are not division winners also go. The teams are seeded and play until only one is left standing. Sure, there will always be debates about "if the ref didn't call this" or "if the idiot kicker didn't go wide right", but no one can doubt that the results were decided on the field, not by a computer or by a bunch of sportswriters, many of whom have their own agendas because they cover the local teams. College basketball can have a tournament and no one cries out about the kids missing time from class. It would add two or three weeks to a season that already has a gigantic gap between the end of the regular season and before the bowl season to the point that when the bowl games do come around, we're often "treated" to some sloppy football while the teams knock off some of their rust. Let the players decide on the field who the best team in the nation is. Division II and Division III football have playoff systems and no one complains about that. In fact, it gives us an un-ambiguous champion. How cool is that?

Allow me to re-iterate: There are many things that I appreciate about college football. I like the fan support. I like the tailgating. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are gigantic, glaring problems with the sport. The NFL has problems too, but they, at least, are up-front about admitting there is a problem. I don't see that with Division IA college football, and until I do, my choice will be the professional game.