Wake me in September.

This past Saturday, the final three undefeated college basketball teams all lost their first games of the season. While any fan of the other three hundred plus D-1 programs should be thrilled, you have to remember that this is college basketball. The sport where you don't even have to be considered at top-25 team to be crowned National Champion at the end of the season (see:Villanova '85). Much has been said about the way college football handles crowning its National Champion, and the overriding theme this season seemed to be: every other sport has a tournament, so why can't college football? Here's a secret from us: we think we're better than you. You trade a thrilling regular season for three weeks (which I'll be the first to admit make even a football fan like myself make sure I save some vacation days at work for the first round). But you can have your tournament as long as I get to remember Herschel Walker run over Tennessee's Bill Bates in the first game of the 1980 season to score us a come from behind victory. No way a play that occurred before I was even born is etched into my psyche like this if we could have simply played "good-enough" throughout the rest of the regular season and put together a string of victories in the post-season tournament. Villanova won it all in '85 as an eight seed, which would put them in the 29-32 range in ranking before the tournament. Just for fun, let's look at the teams this year which finished 29-32 in the final regular season college football rankings this year: Fresno State, Nevada, California, and Northwestern. Fresno lost an early game to Oregon, received a ton of hype for playing USC close, then lost every game after the USC loss. Nevada was blown out by (read: scored at most half the points of) Washington St., Colorado St., and Boise St. Cal lost to every ranked team they played as well as the second-best team from Oregon, and seemed to be the only team that couldn't score against USC. Finally, Northwestern, who lost four games including three beatings, plus a one point win against Northern Illinois. I don't want to have to go through a season where these teams get to have these seasons and be National Champions. Villanova winning the National Championship was exciting, but not at all accurate. And what fun are bragging rights and memories when you know it's all a lie? Any argument between 'Nova and Georgetown fans would have to go something like this:

(Georgetown fan): "We still beat you two out of three times." (which they did)
(Villanova fan): "But we beat you when it mattered." (which they did)

What strikes me and most college football fans as odd is that these fans readily acknowledge that they played each other three times and only one really mattered. People complain about all of the college bowl games between teams with no hope of winning the championship, but no one complains about the fact that a team can lose twice to an obviously superior team, beat them once, and call itself the best at the end of the season. The teams that play in the Motor City Bowl have played well enough to deserve an end of season exhibition, but not nearly well enough to claim superiority over Texas or USC.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: congratulations Duke, Florida, and Pittsburgh; you're playing in a sport where Saturday barely mattered.


P.S. This is my first one of these, so I guess this is my introduction. Welcome. I'll let you know if I start updating this regularly.

P.P.S. If I do start updating this regularly, you can almost guarantee an annual list of the number 29-32 teams, at least until a 16-seed beats a 1-seed.