Most of you (okay,
really only Kurt) have been wondering where my annual BCS bashing post is. Well, this year the BCS pretty much did its
own bashing, admitting that the system could be improved and they were open to
suggestions. I predict that in a few
years, we'll have a "plus-one" format (like a Final Four), and then
once everyone sees how lucrative it is, teams will be added pretty
regularly.
It was pretty
obvious that this year's championship was the worst game ever, made worse by
the fact that it was the exact same game as 2 months ago. The ratings for this game was 10% lower than
last year's game, which is a pretty steep drop-off. Alabama and LSU fans will contend that their
teams were the best, and therefore, deserved to play. What we are all forgetting here is that,
despite whatever Lombardi said, sports is not about winning, it's about
entertainment.
Whether you're
playing or watching, the reason why you do it is to be entertained. Sure, there are side benefits, like
exercising or the false sense of superiority you get from handing your opponent
their own rump on a platter, but you play sports for fun, and you watch sports
for fun. The competition drives most of
the fun, but there's no reason to take it so seriously that you can't sit back
after a loss and admit that you had a great time watching/playing the game.
I learned this
pretty early. I'd much rather be a
starter on a bad team than a benchwarmer on a great team. I played AAA soccer (playing teams all over
Utah) when I was 10 and 11. When I was
10, I was pretty good and got lots of minutes and scored a few goals. When I was 11, my teammates spent the
offseason practicing, and I didn't, making them much better than me. All of the sudden, I was riding the pine and
watching our team win. I didn't care
that we won, I only cared that I spent 10 hours at practice every week, and
played only 10 minutes in each game. Not
only that, when I did play in the game, I was so much worse than the
competition that I didn't even WANT to go in the game. So I demoted myself to AA (playing teams only
in Utah County) and found the competition to be much weaker, but not so bad
that it was unfair. My favorite years of
soccer were between ages of 12 and 16, but our team never did better than 2nd
place, whereas we were winning Utah State championships at the AAA level.
When I was in 7th
grade, I played on an awesome Jr Jazz basketball team. Austin Berge, future Orem High star, was an
8th grader and the star of our team. We
won the Orem city championship. I rode
the pine and scored about 10 points the entire season. I hated it.
The next year, I was the tallest kid on a crappy team, but I loved it
because I played the entire game (until fouling out, since I had to guard the
other team's tallest player) and scored about 10 points a game. I think we won one game.
BYU intramurals does
this perfectly. You choose a division to
play your regular season in, which lasts 5 games, and then the scorekeepers
rank your team and you get assigned a division based on how good/crappy you
are. There were 4 divisions, and the
best was Division 1. The eventual
winning teams in Division 1 usually featured ex-college players like Mark
Bigelow and Nate Call. Thank goodness I
never played in that division. One year
we went to Division 3 and made it all the way to the Final 4.
Recently, I've done
my best to not dwell on the outcome of the game. In fact, for certain teams and sports, I will
record the game and only watch if my team wins.
That way, I'm never in a bad mood because "we" lost. Some may say that it takes the passion out of
it, and in my case, that's the whole point.
I found I enjoy my team winning regardless of whether I watched it live
or not.
I've also found that
winning championships isn't that great.
I, personally, have never won anything major, like a high school state
title or whatever. But I've won my fair
share of league and school intramural titles, and it's nice, but who really
cares? Even when my team wins the title,
like the Colts or the Cardinals, I found that it was a fun ride, but it's not
like my week improved substantially.
This last year's World Series was a lot of fun, and I watched all the
post-game celebration and analysis for the next couple of days, but then pretty
much stopped thinking about it after that.
It was fun, and now it's over.
Let's do it again next year.
I will admit that
winning increases the enjoyment by tenfold.
I always play to win, and I get steamed when I lose, but I always need
to remind myself after each meaningless pickup game that it's just a game, and that turd on your team who never
passes is actually a nice guy and you probably shouldn't have taken that cheap
shot at his knees. Those who know me
know that I play hard, and I play to win, and there's nothing worse than
someone ruining a perfectly good pickup game by horsing around. But winning's not that important, especially
after the fact. There's been many times
I've been embarrassed by my behavior in these games, so I need to focus on the
fact that it's only just for fun.
That's what this
year's championship game lacked: fun. I wasn't
opposed to the game from a "2 best teams" standpoint, although that
certainly is debatable. I was opposed
from an entertainment perspective. They
played each other already that season in the 2nd worst game of the year, a
snoozefest ending in 9-6. Why on earth
did we have to watch them battle each other again?!?! BOOOOORING!
So I didn't even bother watching the rematch, and when I found out about
the results, I was bored just reading about it and glad I didn't waste my time.
The only good thing about this year's game was
the controversy, which will probably lead to a playoff that will make finally
make the college football postseason entertaining. And that's what it's all about.
