Fiu's Daily Cavalcade of
Whimsy
The NFL Playoff vs. the BCS ... Jan. 12
a.k.a.
Frank Costanza's Festivus Airing of the Grievances ... or the obvious attempt to keep readers coming to the site on a
regular basis during the off-season.
By
Pete Fiutak
What's your beef? ... Fire
off your
thoughts
"Just because something's cool doesn't
mean that something else doesn't suck." ... I'm not apologizing for
the BCS. As I continue to drive home, there's no reasonable excuse to
not have an eight team playoff with the six BCS conference champions,
the top rated non-BCS league champion, and a wild-card (Texas this year,
Georgia two years ago, Michigan in 2006). With that said, if the goal is
to determine who the best team is, it still gets it right more often
than the other sports.
New England went unbeaten in the regular season last year, highlighted
by a regular-season ending win at New York against a Giants team that
came out with a maximum effort. That doesn't count, but that game a few
weeks later did, even though the Giants hadn't even won their own
division.
This year, the NFL proved once again that its regular season is
completely and totally irrelevant with the No. 1 seeds getting bounced
out in the first round by teams that shouldn't have been in the
playoffs, if you count anything that happened in the regular season.
Philadelphia backed its way in, didn't win its
own division, but now it's suddenly one of the NFC's two best teams?
Pittsburgh already beat Baltimore twice, and now it has to do it a third
time to prove it's the better team?! Can you imagine if Texas beat
Oklahoma twice and still had to win a third meeting to prove that it was
the better team? It's more insane than you think, yet the world has
bought into the gimmicky playoff ideas hook, line, and sinker. You want
it settled on the field? You think the college football system is
unsatisfying? Try letting the mediocre get chance after chance to come
up with an upset. It's not fair, and it's not right.
The
regular season has to mean something in the NFL, or else the sport will only be
about fantasy and gambling (which it sort of is) for the 17 weeks before
the playoffs. No, there shouldn't be a BCS, but the NFL should've made
it only a tournament of division winners with Tennessee hosting San
Diego and Pittsburgh hosting Miami in the AFC, and New York hosting
Arizona and Carolina hosting Minnesota. Otherwise, why bother?
Why bother with the long, drawn out regular season of baseball? It
should've been the Cubs vs. the Angels in the World Series after they
each proved to have the best teams throughout the year. Of course, they
each lost according to the gimmicky playoff system, and the sports world
just accepts this as the norm. Try watching college basketball ... it's
hard. I love the sport, but the games simply don't matter. They're all
exhibition games until March Madness.
College football needs a playoff, if for no other reason than to shut
everyone up. But it can't have one at the expense of the regular season,
with the uniqueness that makes the sport so special. The BCS might be
weird, but no one else has it right, either.
College football has proven it can get some things right, like the
overtime system and instant replay. Here's the chance to be the leader
in how to determine a champion once again. Again, six BCS conference
champions, top non-BCS conference champion, one at-large.
The NFL should only be so fair.