Tag: football

State

Political Football

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At a time when we have two senators and one senate candidate from our one party state all trying to insert politics into college football (and all three claim to be conservatives – go figure) it seems appropriate to use a football analogy to describe the dangers of having one-party domination within the state or the nation.[quote]

Think of the worst NCAA Division 1A (FBS) football team in the country. Now imagine that team playing the best team in the NFL. It should be a no-brainer to figure out which team will win the game (or every game if they were to play multiple times). Now imagine that we make one minor rule change – the NFL team can only play defense – the only way they can score is a safety or an interception returned for a touchdown. Anytime they get the ball and don’t score they would be required to let the NCAA team play offense and keep trying to score. In that scenario it would be very rare for the NFL team to win the game.

The point that this should illustrate is that with such a rule change the football games would never give any indication about which was the better team or even how good each team was. So long as those rules were applied between teams more fairly matched than a middle school team vs professional athletes the outcome would be almost completely determined by which team was allowed to play offense.

[quote1]Living in a one-party state has the same effect on our political system. So long as one party has no opportunity to play offense the outcome of every political scrimmage is practically predetermined. Sadly the Democratic party in Utah seems resigned to a permanent minority status where all they can do is play defense and hope for some spectacular interceptions. (I don’t mean to imply that there are no democrats trying to play offense, but the party as a whole seems to have accepted the idea that they can’t win.) The result is that the values espoused by the Republican party as well as the values espoused by the Democratic party are never really explored or tested in our political arena. People who would otherwise be Democrats participate in the Republican party in order to influence the politics of the state and moderate members of the Republican party can be ignored by party insiders as they pander to more vocal and extreme elements of the party which are not representative of the core values of the party as a whole.

This sounds like a recipie for political decay.

Tags football, parties, sports, thoughts, Utah

culture

Playoffs vs Bowl Games

Before the BCS pairings were even announced yesterday I heard people talking about how this year should be conclusive evidence that we need to have a playoff for the National Championship in NCAA Football. I disagree. I think that Mike Lopresti got it right (again):

So ends an entirely captivating, wildly absorbing, deliciously unpredictable college football regular season. And now at the finish, what do we see?

Controversy. Mayhem. Protests.

Ain’t it great?

Here comes the BCS bashing, clanging like cymbals in a band, guaranteeing peace in our time — if only there could be a playoff.

Yeah, right. Put eight teams in a playoff. One would have to be Georgia, of course. Hottest team at the end, and all that.

Now go tell that to Tennessee, who won the division that Georgia could not, and beat the Bulldogs head-to-head by three touchdowns. And what about Hawaii? You going to have eight teams in a playoff and leave out the only team in the land with a 12-0 record? Or 11-1 Kansas? Or Missouri, which somehow fell from No. 1 to the Cotton Bowl in 24 hours? Just a few of many dilemmas.

The howls can be heard, though, now that the bowl pairings are out.

THE SYSTEM DIDN’T GET IT RIGHT!

No it didn’t, because there is no right answer. Not for the BCS. Not for a playoff. Someone will always feel shafted. Someone will always have another case to make. There will always be politicking, because if you need two teams, you can’t pick three. And if you need eight, you can’t choose nine.

He missed one thing there – college athletes are not professionals. I know, they work as hard as the professionals (perhaps harder) but thankfully they are still expected to be students and do more than take the field for our entertainment. The fact that we have an imperfect BCS system means that we as fans get to participate in a much more animated discussion surrounding what is happening, right or wrong, in college football. The fact that we don’t have a fool-proof way to declare a champion every year might serve to remind us that there is more to life than sports – no matter how entertaining those sports may be.

Let’s not ruin that by throwing together an imperfect playoff system that would concentrate more money in the big name leagues than we already have and give us the false sense that we really were getting the right champion every time. We’ll never be able to get a football playoff large enough (like the 65-team March Madness) so that the schools at the bottom of the pool will prove each year that while they might surprise us they still never win it all. Each time the lowest seeded team wins we have to wonder why not number 9, or 17, or 66?

Let’s just admit that the system is imperfect but the goal is entertainment, not clarity.

Tags entertainment, football, sports

culture

Title Game Follow-up

I thought I would follow up to my Title Game post.

Basically, the talk of a Ohio State/Michigan rematch for the title game is an embarrassment for the Big Ten Conference. Both of them lost their BCS bowl games. I think that rust was an issue in both games. Michigan got outclassed by USC but they would have made that a close game if they had not been off for over 6 weeks. After 7 weeks off, Ohio State had no business on the field with a well-rested Florida team. This really does not reflect the quality of football team that Ohio State had this year. The moral of the story is, any team that has any hope of playing for the national title should make sure to have a game scheduled after Thanksgiving. This is no problem for the champions of the SEC, ACC, or Big 12 with their Championship games, but the Big Ten, Pac 10, and Big East teams have to think about this issue as they schedule games.

This should also serve as a warning against any title game that only represents one conference.

My personal favorite story line for this title game is the Urban Meyer coaching career. he turned Bowling Green around in two years then moved to Utah in a better conference. Two years at Utah saw him crashing the BCS party and moving on to Florida in a better conference. Two years at Florida and he was in the National Championship game – which the Gators won by 27. This puts him among an elite group of coaches who have won a National Championship within two years of taking over a program – a group that includes Jim Tressel at Ohio State in 2002.

My final take on the season is this – Florida will be #1, USC might get a vote as #1 from someone – they are likely to be the pre-season #1 next season, and I think someone ought to throw a #1 vote to Boise since they are the only undefeated team left even though they did not have a schedule that would make them #1 – they had only one non-conference game with a non-BCS opponent, and that was Utah(8-5) – even Florida played a Div 1-AA team.

UPDATE: Thanks to Greg Archuleta of the Albuquerque Journal I got my wish. Boise State got a vote as #1. It’s too bad the Coaches Poll had them as #6 because they are definitely a top 5 team.

Tags football, reactions, sports, thoughts