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Why you shouldn't care

by Tony Basilio

Well, it's that time of the year again. College football season is in full force fury. Just like clockwork, all of those who want to destroy college football have already begun to rear their ugly heads. It's an annual early November occurrence.

Welcome to outcry season. Time for the Chris Fowlers of the world to whine and pine for a major-college football playoff. All of the national pundits and folks who care about trivial items such as who will win the Heistman (sic) Trophy begin to obsess as to who is number one. Who really cares? I don't.

College football is the greatest sport on the planet because of its ambiguity. A sport that has a truly meaningful regular season with virtually nothing to offer in the post. The best part? That's easy. No matter what the year, college football remains great fodder for fan argument and debate. Speaking for talk show hosts everywhere, I love this game!

How many other sports in America truly have meaningful regular seasons? Does the NBA? Half of the teams make the playoffs. Same with hockey. Who wants to watch a regular season hockey or NBA game? You couldn't pay me enough to sit through that tripe. Talk about going through the motions.

What about the NFL? A league where some teams play each other up to three times in one season. Who would want to watch Tennessee and Georgia square off three times in a season? What is the value of the first game, or the second for that matter? Now when those two teams square off, it is weighted. It matters. It's meaningful.

Most un-American pro-playoff types point to college football's NCAA counterpart basketball as the reason why we should have a gridiron playoff. Let's look closely at college basketball. When Tennessee and Kentucky played hoops back in the early '70s, were the games more intense than they are now? You better believe it. Why? One precious slot is all that existed for each conference member in the NCAA Tourney back then. Now, under the March Madness made-for-TV, 64-team formula, six, seven or even eight teams from the SEC can make it in a given year. This has simply devalued the regular season. College basketball in the regular season is mere entertainment. There is no consequence in losing during the regular season. Sure the regular season still holds some merit. It's akin to qualifying in NASCAR. It's a way to draw the field for the real season. Which doesn't begin until March. Just like the real season in the NBA doesn't begin until May. Same with the NHL. How about the NFL? Coaches in that league have an axiom "Remember November." What about September and October?

College football whiners who want a playoff don't get it. Every week is a playoff. Every week someone who has National Championship or BCS aspirations gets eliminated. That's so beautiful. Think about the pain of a regular season loss to Auburn or Georgia. There's pleasure in that pain because we know that we are watching something that matters. It's real sports-fan pain that can only be induced by experiencing something meaningful and truly painful. In a sports landscape overrun by relativism that's created by burgeoning playoff systems, Division I college football dares to be different.

Another thing the pro-playoff advocates don't understand is college football's war of words. Because it is a sport decided by intra-sectional competition and intersectional battles, much of the banter among schools exists between fan factions who most years will never see teams battle it out on the field. In a sports world that gives us instant gratification at every turn, college football's system makes us wait, perhaps forever. Remember the tension between Tennessee and Michigan before they played a couple of years back in the Citrus Bowl? Those two great teams, one who won the National title in '97 the other in '98, had never played. Fans of the Maize and Blue insisted for months that their program, of Charles Woodson fame/infamy, was better than the Big Orange. The two teams finally hooked up a few years later and basically decided nothing because we will never know who had the better championship team. Why? Because college ball isn't the NFL. Which brings me to the point. Who cares if the best team does or doesn't win the National Championship under college football's current system? How many years does the best team get upset in March Madness? Good point, isn't it? So consider this the next time you hear the fans and pundits pining for a college football playoff. Leave the game the way it is. In today's sports culture, the uniqueness of the maddening fall pastime we call college football is a beautiful thing. Now to the real question: Who's really #1?

Tune in and talk sports with "The Tony Basilio Show" each weekday from 3-6 p.m. on the network (670 WMTY-AM, 850 WKVL-AM, 1140 WLOD-AM, 1290 WATO-AM, or 1400 WGAP-AM).