Are You Ready For Some (More) Football?

Well, tonight is the "big" night, as Ohio State and LSU get ready for the big BCS National Championship tilt.

Am I the only one who isn't really all that excited about this game?

Over the weekend, Shane wrote about the uneven performance of various teams in their bowl games, arguing that parity was wrecking the college system, which stresses the importance of regular-season records, writing

In such an environment, how futile is it to try to pick 2 team to contend for a "Championship"?

In thinking about it some more, I'm actually coming more around to the opposite side of things. I don't mean to go all George Will on you, but one of the beautiful things of College Football is the way people care about games that may not, in the 'grand scheme' of things, matter all that much.

There are plenty of examples of this - intrastate rivalries like Alabama/Auburn. Great September rivalries like USC/Notre Dame. Great annual end-of-season events like Michigan/Ohio State. Even when these games have no reference to the championship picture, people care. They're fun. Even half-way sports fans like myself tend to care about games like this.

When it comes to Bowl Season, the games tend to have less general appeal, but still - even if there's only a few tens of thousands of alums who care about, or are even aware of, the Poop.com bowl, that's still a lot more fans than are getting to cheer for the Cleveland Browns right now, to pick an example out of a hat.

And, of course, to completely contradict myself, another part of what makes those September games really exciting is how important they may be with regards to the final championship lineup. One bad week in September can completely ruin an otherwise perfect season, which really gives those early games meaning.

Compare and contrast to NCAA basketball, where the regular season has become nearly meaningless. Now, I'm not saying that an 8-team playoff would make every regular season game meaningless. Obviously not. But they would become a bit less meaningful.

Now, the down side of this system is what I was talking about earlier. Namely, since the championship game isn't the end of a tournament-style event, it feels fairly disconnected from the rest of the season. Of course, the 30-some day layoff between the end of the regular season and the BCS championship doesn't help.

I guess, to me, it comes down to a choice between two systems, one where every game is incredibly important but can end kind of disappointingly, and another where the championship game feels like a much bigger event, but reducing the excitement of more run-of-the-mill regular season games.

Personally, I think I prefer the first, if only because the NFL gives us a really good example of the second, and I'm a big believer in diversity. But, I can clearly understand how people might prefer the second, and that's cool too. They have the right to their opinions, even when they're wrong.