Playoffs or the BCS - College Football Rules!

Playoffs or the BCS - College Football Rules!
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (12-17-12)
[Click for Part Two]

TODD:   

I have always been in the small minority of BCS defenders. College football had a simple leg up on all other mainstream sports in that the regular season was paramount. A single loss oftentimes ruined a team's season. This happens in no other sport and things have swung so far in the other direction that, especially in the NBA or NHL, the regular season is almost irrelevant. 

Let's not merely single out those two sports where too many teams make the playoffs, since this has now become the case in pretty much every sport we hold dear. Major League Baseball is a "get in and see" sport through and through. Any team that makes the playoffs has an equally good shot at winning the World Series as any other team. The NFL has veered in nearly the same direction as well. Get hot around Thanksgiving and ride it through January. Woo!  The best teams during the first ten weeks of the football season become afterthoughts; it is simply too hard to be good that long. Even college basketball maintains a system where statement games during the year mean nothing as far as postseason play other than seeding.  Was my rant long enough?

Back to college football and my point. They had this "thing" that no one else had: a perfect regular season. It was peerless. Amazing.  The movers and shakers of amateur pro football decided to remove this in favor of a playoff. For now, the playoff is small and will keep in tact most of what makes college football great, but the slippery slope has gotten wet.  Remember slip and slide, well they just turned on the water so wait for it.

Do you also feel the pointlessness of regular season play in other sports?  Is it as bad a thing as I'm making it out to be?  And did college football remove their grandiose factor or simply trade a good thing away for something equally as appealing?

It's hard to debate three different questions at once, but I believe in you.

DAN:   

I believe in me too...

Personally I love being the only one doing something, or possessing a unique attribute which no one else can match.  College football has this, yet I can't help but think the BCS misses something.  Both your questions are big elephants in the room, so I'll tackle the African grey first.

I hate the watered down feeling of regular season sports, and yet I love it just the same.  It's not a problem; as the final month of the MLB season showed us there can still be hard fought drama to get in the playoffs even with an unbearably long regular season.  I also enjoy the fact that a poor week or month of play doesn't do in a team.  Although the Yankees poor July and August foreshadowed their poor October, it did not prevent them from winning the division in September.  The same can't be said for the NFL, where a bad month of loses can pretty much end a team's season.

I'm hopping between both sides of the fence here because I don't enjoy basketball or hockey enough to watch regular season games which each individually mean next to nothing.  You would think the NBA and the dead carcass of the NHL would try to fix this.  There's often still drama at the end of the  regular season however, so ultimately I'm perfectly happy the way things are.  The regular season is for diehard fans of the sport.  The last month of the season and the playoffs are for people like me, someone who doesn't mind having a few months of the year without meaningful sports.  Its refreshing actually.  Like peppermint schnaps in your coffee on Christmas morning.  Yum.

Back to football.  I'm starting to get annoyed with the NFL, as the regular season being only sixteen games should mean a lot.  It use to mean a lot.  It means a ton in college.  But now being healthy in December and January is all that matters if you make the playoffs.  This is a consequence of the bigger, stronger, faster phenomena and a money grab by the owners adding in Thursday, Saturday, London based and Sunday night games, basically screwing the players over with the schedules.  I hate where its going because the season is being made irrelevant.  Even if we know a team like the Browns is done by week four, we don't know whether a two loss Baltimore (now five loss) is actually good.  Sorry Cleveland, not sorry Baltimore.

I know you'd love meaningful sports year round, but you can put down the liquor bottle and stop drowning your sorrows.  The second elephant, BCS or playoffs, doesn't ruin anything.  

A four team playoff actually makes the college football regular season better.

[Click for Part Two]