Anti-College Football Rant

In the interest of fairness, allow me to begin this opinion by admitting something: in Old Dominion, I attended a university that did not have a football team.

You read that right; I spent my seven years as an undergraduate in a collegiate environment lacking in Saturday afternoon tailgates, September homecoming parades and marching band battles. Not once in my years of study did I find myself surrounded by tens of thousands of (probably) drunk students, hooting and hollering over a bunch of men pounding each other into the ground for a pigskin.

And I was fine with that, because I simply don’t care for college football. In fact, I daresay I just plain don’t like it.

I’m sure some of that has to do with attending a college that was sans team (though it is worth noting…ODU will begin fielding a Division I-AA team in the fall of 2009, where they’ll be playing in the Colonial Athletic Association). Why get excited over a sport I can’t walk across the street from my dorm room to witness in person?

Then again, my distaste for college football goes beyond that. Consider the following evidence (all of which is based on Division I-A, the big daddy of college sports and the division ESPN salivates over):

-College football cannot, under the current format, truly determine a national champion. The Bowl Championship Series (or BCS, though I think it’s just BS) is at best a flawed system; how can anyone in good conscience trust a computer to pick the two best teams in the country?
It can’t.

The BCS is about one thing: money. In fact, that’s pretty much all major college football is about. How much money can each school make? The NCAA added a 12th game to the schedule for that very reason; to give the schools more money. Major programs add cake programs to their schedule, guaranteeing a win for the big program and a big payday for the small school.

Does anyone really expect Buffalo to upend Nebraska? Doesn’t matter, because Buffalo’s getting a nice check out of the deal.

As far as I’m concerned, this is no way to run an athletic program. The point of sports is not to make money (okay, so maybe it is), but at the sacrifice of the on-field product? We’re honestly willing to sacrifice competition and athleticism in the interest of making a few extra bucks?

Not only does the computer-based formula do a bad job of determining the two teams to battle for a national title, it gives teams little, if any, room for error. More often than not, one loss ruins a team’s shot at the national title. I cannot get behind a sport where one loss automatically eliminates you from competing for a championship. It’s one thing to promote competition and excellence; it’s another entirely to promote perfection, which more often than not is unattainable.

-The “win at all costs” mentality permeating the sport is ruining the game. Imagine all the instances of fraud, all the cases of players accepting money illegally or coaches fumbling the rules in order to gain an edge. This is undoubtedly a by-product of the BCS layout—you know, the one where one loss renders national title hopes irrelevant.

This isn’t to say NCAA violations don’t happen in other sports—they most assuredly do—but I would venture to guess that more than half of all NCAA violators are football programs.

Coaches get fired for two- or three-loss seasons, boosters and alumni threaten to withhold donations if the football program doesn’t meet ridiculously high standards. No other sport is so strict when it comes to competing for a championship. You don’t see one-loss teams getting the shaft in the NFL or in college basketball.

Even Division I-AA is more forgiving. Teams with two or three losses can still compete for a national title, because Div. I-AA has an actual playoff system, one that pits the two best teams against each other for a shot at the trophy. It’s exciting, the way it should be done…and as long as major college football continues o ignore this fact, I’ll continue to ignore the game.

-The bowl games have to go. Or at least, most of them do. Do we really need over 30 bowl games? What’s the purpose of the Dec. 23rd Budget Rent-A-Car Bowl presented by Popeye’s Chicken? I mean, other than lace schools’ pockets with even more money. There are simply too many bowl games, so many the meaning of making one of these season-ending contests is diluted.

Also diluting the importance of making a bowl game? The fact that a team only has to win six games to be bowl eligible. With the 12th game added starting this season, that means we’re likely to have some 6-6 teams compete in bowl games. This is simply unacceptable; no way should a .500 team be facing postseason play.

It promotes mediocrity, which is in direct contradiction to the BCS’ credo of “win every single game, or else.” And mediocrity for the sake of a quick dollar? Please….

I cringe when an NBA team makes the playoffs with a .500 record, and it pains me to think an NL West team is going to the MLB playoffs this year. So why is it okay for some middle-of-the-pack football program to go to a bowl game? By this logic, we might as well let some .500 ACC program into the NCAA tournament come March.

I can’t deny the atmosphere of a Saturday afternoon leading up to the big game. It’s not something I’ve ever seen first-hand, but I admit I’m curious. When 2009 rolls around, I hope to be present as the Monarchs kick off for the first time, but I’ll do so knowing once ODU becomes competitive, they’ll be fighting for a true championship, and not some computer-generated BCS BS.

Maybe if the powers that be ever change the system and find some way to integrate a sensible playoff format, then I’ll pay attention to big-time college football. But as it is, I can barely watch SportsCenter right now—I’ve already had my fill of Ohio State and Notre Dame and Heismann talk.

Wake me when the NFL season starts. Or, even better, let me know when college basketball tips off. At least then, I’ll be able to trust the eventual national champion.