RE-evaluating the college football scene

I read an article the other day, where the writer proclaimed that Utah was the 2008 college football national champion and he stated there was no way to argue it. I’m not entirely sure what world that person lives in, but I’m almost positive that the ONLY thing to do is to argue about who the champion is or to accept the system that is in place and call either Florida or Oklahoma the national champion. I’ve actually seen a couple people write or say that they thought Utah deserved to be the national champions and I think you could make a very decent argument for that. At the same time, you may be able to make a similar argument for either USC or Texas to make the same claim.

That’s my main point here and part of the issue I have with people who like to complain about the system we have in place. The reality of the situation is that there is a system in place, and while most people don’t agree with it, the system is there and that is how the governing body has decided to declare a champion of their sport. Utah can print shirts that say they were undefeated and that they were the national champions, but on Thursday, January 08, 2009, Florida and Oklahoma are going to play a football game in Miami. The winner of that game is going to get a trophy that says they are the national champions. While the AP reserves the right to name their own champion, I don’t necessarily see them having Utah jump from 7th to 1st in their poll. Anyone can claim that their team is better than another team and people can shift numbers and situations to make them work for their team, but it really doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things. Professional football, college basketball, NHL hockey, college football all has a system in place to decide their “champion.” Just because you don’t like the system, doesn’t mean you get to name your own “champion.” (Sorry for the rant, but that bothered me)

But, that brings me back to my original point in tearing down the BCS system as it is currently constructed. What do the bowls really mean? And what is the significance of all these games? The proponents of the BCS system and the current college football postseason will tell you that the regular season is very special in that every game matters and that each bowl game has significance. Well, what significance did the Sugar Bowl have this year? Utah beat Alabama, fairly handily, in that game to finish an undefeated season. Congratulations Utes. You beat every team on your schedule and you beat a highly ranked team from a major conference in your bowl game, yet you will never really be seriously considered for winning a national championship, which is probably most teams ultimate goal entering a season. I’m not even arguing that Utah was the best team in the country or that they deserve to be the national champion. I’m asking what does that bowl game mean? To me, it seems like it meant nothing. It meant these kids got to take a nice little trip to New Orleans during their holiday break and played a football game against another good team and then went home able to say they won the 2009 Sugar Bowl. And that is a “BCS bowl” with two very highly regarded teams playing it. If that game has no significance, I can’t imagine the significance of the EagleBank Bowl between Wake Forest and Navy all the way back on Dec. 20th. (Wake won by 10 in case you forgot.) That would be the question I would ask the people involved in the BCS and the NCAA.



One other quick subject I’d like to address is this latest “promotion” that ESPN ran last night. In case you live under a rock or haven’t turned on ESPN for more than a 5-minutes span in the last week, ESPN flipped their announcing crews for a college basketball and NBA game last night. I know, pretty crazy stuff. Mike Tirico, Jeff Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson called the Duke-Davidson game and Dan Shulman and Dick Vitale did the Heat-Nuggets game. I assume the idea behind this was to add some buzz to the games or possibly draw a couple more eyeballs to TVs, but I didn’t really get it. Was there going to be much difference in the analysis given of a college game by guys who spend most of their time watching professional basketball. Their basketball announcers, shouldn’t it be pretty standard stuff?

I didn’t watch very much of either game last night as this wacky idea wasn’t enough to personally draw my attention from more interesting games on TV last night. I did however click over a few times during commercials to watch the games. The one realization that I made during my limited watching was how truly bad Dick Vitale is as a basketball analyst. Listen, I am admittedly no the biggest fan of the guy and I will in no way argue about his passion for college basketball and the excitement he has for it, but as a true analyst, he leaves a lot to be desired and that was very well on showcase last night.

If you look at announcing teams, you traditionally have one play-by-play person and then a color commentator, or analyst. The good analysts are the guys who stay out of the way of the play-by-play person and let them call the game and intermittently offer insightful analysis of the way the game is playing out or interesting pieces of information about the people involved in that particular game that people watching may not be aware of. Mr. Vitale really relies on feeding off the energy of the crowd and yelling a lot. He’s known for all his catchphrases like “Up, up, and away” or “He’s a real PTPer.” Try listening to someone say that stuff in a relatively cavernous arena with very little crowd noise behind it. It sounds pretty lame. The other thing that drives me crazy about him when he does a game is that he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about games, people, and things so entirely unrelated to the game he’s doing. I see more graphics pop up during a game about “Dickie V’s All Marco Polo Team” or “Dickie V’s 7 Super Sophs.” What about telling me why the one team’s style of play doesn’t match up with their opponents or why the star player is struggling to get open for his shots.

I understand that there is a lot of training and experience that is put in by people in this business and I’m not claiming to be an expert in any regard, but to me there are a number of other guys in his field that don’t get the respect he does who do a much better job than he does. He’s great as a cheerleader and as a PR guy for college basketball. He brings a lot of attention to the sport, but he doesn’t do a whole lot of analysis.