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Tom Fornelli - College Football is more than the Natty
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https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/for-all-the-sports-flaws-college-football-remains-better-than-its-own-national-championship/
For all the sport's flaws, college football remains better than its own national championship
By Tom Fornelli
College football is a sport with plenty of absurdity baked into it, and nothing better exemplifies this than its pursuit of trying to find the best way to determine a national champion.
As currently constructed, there are 133 teams on an uneven playing field asked to compete in 12 regular-season games every year. After playing those games and about a dozen more, a committee sits in a room and tries to determine which four of the 133 teams that played 133 different schedules in 133 different circumstances were the "best" or "most deserving" of opportunities to compete in a three-game tournament for a national championship.
It's an impossible exercise, one designed to create controversy and stoke division -- not because it "sells" but because it's far easier to produce.
So, allow me to make simple plea to you, fellow college football fan: Don't buy what they're selling.
Ever since the dawn of the BCS in 1998, we've been pushed down a path where we're being led to believe the only thing that matters in college football is winning a national championship. As we approach the era of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, this will only become more prevalent.
Don't let them do it.
Don't let them devalue conference titles. Don't let them devalue rivalry games. Don't let them devalue the feeling that you get every Saturday during the fall watching your favorite team.
Don't let them devalue the joy, relief, pain and misery you feel as you watch your team succeed or fail on any given weekend.
Those running college football -- rooms full of empty suits holding Zoom meetings trying to determine the best way to increase profit margins -- see the sport as nothing more than a product.
It's so much more than that to us.
It's a part of our lives. For many, it's part of our coming of age. It's part of who we are.
It's relationships that have been developed, and sometimes tested, through a shared passion for a sport where every game matters to somebody, even if the results don't to those in charge.
It's celebrating the highs and languishing in the grief. It's tearing down the goal posts after pulling off a stunning upset. It's staring in disbelief, frozen in full Surrender Cobra mode, when you're on the other end.
It's Gatorade baths, odd trophies, live animals on the sidelines and headsets smashed on the ground in frustration.
It's everything.
So, don't let them do it.
Don't let them convince you the national championship is what's most important about college football.
It's not, and it never has been.
For all the sport's flaws, college football remains better than its own national championship
By Tom Fornelli
College football is a sport with plenty of absurdity baked into it, and nothing better exemplifies this than its pursuit of trying to find the best way to determine a national champion.
As currently constructed, there are 133 teams on an uneven playing field asked to compete in 12 regular-season games every year. After playing those games and about a dozen more, a committee sits in a room and tries to determine which four of the 133 teams that played 133 different schedules in 133 different circumstances were the "best" or "most deserving" of opportunities to compete in a three-game tournament for a national championship.
It's an impossible exercise, one designed to create controversy and stoke division -- not because it "sells" but because it's far easier to produce.
So, allow me to make simple plea to you, fellow college football fan: Don't buy what they're selling.
Ever since the dawn of the BCS in 1998, we've been pushed down a path where we're being led to believe the only thing that matters in college football is winning a national championship. As we approach the era of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, this will only become more prevalent.
Don't let them do it.
Don't let them devalue conference titles. Don't let them devalue rivalry games. Don't let them devalue the feeling that you get every Saturday during the fall watching your favorite team.
Don't let them devalue the joy, relief, pain and misery you feel as you watch your team succeed or fail on any given weekend.
Those running college football -- rooms full of empty suits holding Zoom meetings trying to determine the best way to increase profit margins -- see the sport as nothing more than a product.
It's so much more than that to us.
It's a part of our lives. For many, it's part of our coming of age. It's part of who we are.
It's relationships that have been developed, and sometimes tested, through a shared passion for a sport where every game matters to somebody, even if the results don't to those in charge.
It's celebrating the highs and languishing in the grief. It's tearing down the goal posts after pulling off a stunning upset. It's staring in disbelief, frozen in full Surrender Cobra mode, when you're on the other end.
It's Gatorade baths, odd trophies, live animals on the sidelines and headsets smashed on the ground in frustration.
It's everything.
So, don't let them do it.
Don't let them convince you the national championship is what's most important about college football.
It's not, and it never has been.
Comments
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Too late.
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Not this year
I agree in principal but 12 teams is the mini NFL. If you don't make the playoffs there is no other reward
Media whines for years to fuck it all up and now whines that it is all fucked up -
It clearly was better for the sport as a whole to have NY6 games and then let everybody argue about the relative merits of each team vs the others without a conclusion ~ if that doesn't seem like the most obviously favorable overall regional outcome then I can't help you. And a big tournament with 12 teams is folly, too many games, too many teams and bowl games with irreversible coma names are now the solution to the madness.
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FTFYRaceBannon said:Not this year
I agree in principal but 12 teams is the FCSmini NFL. If you don't make the playoffs there is no other reward
Media whines for years to fuck it all up and now whines that it is all fucked up
Networks decided to make money and student-athletes wanted money, too -
Good kid. Too bad UW didn't have room for him -
The old bowl system of about 14 bowl games culminating on New Year's Day was college football at its very best.RaceBannon said:Not this year
I agree in principal but 12 teams is the mini NFL. If you don't make the playoffs there is no other reward
Media whines for years to fuck it all up and now whines that it is all fucked up -
Assuming a crazed Buckeye booster isn't giving him a $1 million bonus to play in the bowl (Hardy har har), this says so much about his character as a person.RaceBannon said:
Good kid. Too bad UW didn't have room for him -
totally agreeTheRoarOfTheCrowd said:It clearly was better for the sport as a whole to have NY6 games and then let everybody argue about the relative merits of each team vs the others without a conclusion ~ if that doesn't seem like the most obviously favorable overall regional outcome then I can't help you. And a big tournament with 12 teams is folly, too many games, too many teams and bowl games with irreversible coma names are now the solution to the madness.
