Annual BCS Bashing (not really, though)

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.