NCAA football - the anonymous horde

So the interesting games stop around Thanksgiving, which is as it has ever been. But now you extend the season into past New Year’s Day with game after game that stretch into the wee hours of the night, and that seem utterly divorced from anything resembling amateur athletics played by passionate youngsters and entwined in the life of a university campus. And if you lose that, what you have is minor league football. Look, the college game is basically a few exceptionally talented standout players and a helmeted horde of anonymous, imperfectly skilled hillbillies and gangbangers (excuse me – scholars). The good matchups might pique my interest on autumn Saturday afternoons, but getting myself up for whole week of prime time games is something I simply cannot do.

This is where the misguided desire for fairness, commercialism, and disrespect for the binge drinker all converge. Just show them all on New Year's Day as was done in the past, on a day when everyone is hung over, has nothing to do, and is in sincere need of a reason to break their resolutions to drink less. I was sluggishly amenable to collapsing on the couch and hunting for the interesting games with the remote control. Hell, I enjoyed doing that - I don’t enjoy watching today's BCS. So I say do away with playoffs - let the polls decide the champion and let us go back to enjoying arguing about the decisions and nursing deep-seated bitterness after our teams are hosed. Believe it or not, we as human beings like that.