Meaning of the Season

My bowl picks thus far have been meaningless. Overall or against the spread, it’s all one. 1-3 to be exact. Sigh.

You know what else is meaningless? The BCS’s argument a play off would render the regular season meaningless.

I used to be completely convinced by this stance. The play off is the regular season, you see. That’s what makes it awesome.

Until I realized how little sense that makes. If the bowls are the “championship,” and regular season is the “playoff,” then where is the regular season? College ball doesn’t even have exhibition games that we can pretend is the “regular season.”

Why do we pride ourselves on skipping the regular season—the meat of any sport? Why do we exult in punishing teams that, for whatever reason, get off to a slow start? Why do we cling to a system in which last year’s performance is more important to winning it all than the current year’s?

Even if not having a regular season made sense, that would still not justify their whining about the importance of the playoff/regular season. So what if it’s meaningless? The bowls, the precious bowls we must preserve above all else, are meaningless. Unless you’re primed for a Top 5 pre-season slot and get slaughtered, there are absolutely no stakes in the bowl games. Not even winning the “championship” is all that important since it is not, for all intents and purposes, a championship game.

And yet. We watch bowls in droves. Many of us travel and even more of us watch from the comfort of our homes. Once schools let out for Christmas break, my family and friends check the schedule. “Oregon State against BYU? I don’t really care, but let’s watch. It might be a good game.” Despite the insignificance of the games, we fans bring in the all important revenue.

So how does the BCS think a play-off will diminish our enthusiasm for the regular season? Even if it did, we’d still watch. But if anything, it would provide more interest. The way the system stands now, if your team loses its first game, any championship hopes basically vanish. It’s hard to get pumped for a team that is striving for a spot in an over-commericialized bowl. With a play-off, you lose a game or two but still have a chance to play for it all. Now the drama gets going.

But above all, a play-off will be as close as we can get to settling who really is the best team in the nation. The championship will become less beauty pageant and more battle of the best. That’s something any true sports fan should want.