Image via Complex Original
1.
In a few days it'll be upon us, the only sport left in America that still gets the nips hard. On Thursday night the college football season kicks off, meaning every Saturday until December will give the masses reason to turn on ESPN for reasons beyond Johnny Football lunch updates or the other crap that panders to the lowest common denominator fan. You can blame ESPN all you want, but all it did was mirror the very leagues it covers in an effort to follow them all to the bottom. Because of this, it's no coincidence that one of the few things left that ESPN does unequivocally well is broadcast and cover collegiate football.
Now I hate to do it like this, but the easiest way to explain why college football is the last great sport standing is to explain how other sports went wrong. That’s because, on the surface, all leagues should be exciting. But one-by-one they fell for the allure of year-round coverage, massive playoffs, elongated seasons, way-too-long preseasons, and unrestricted, manufactured hype. In short: they all sort of blow.
Since I hate overly long introductions, I'll just jump right into it. After all, you know what the article's about, it's summed up in the headline. So with that, here's a point-by-point look at why NCAA Football is the last compelling league standing.
2.The Biggest Reason: It's The Only Regular Season Left That Matters
Most people would save their biggest point for last, but I know I'm competing against a world of viral videos and porn. I would probably choose those over me too. So if there's one theme to get across it's this:
The more games you play the less context each one has. Obviously there's a middle ground between one game and 162. The fact that the NHL and NBA put a majority of the league into the postseason makes an 82-game schedule completely pointless. In February and March, when things should be getting exciting, teams battle out for an eight-seed instead of fighting for the top spot. All the best teams are in at that point and just playing out the string hoping not to suffer a serious injury to a major player. It's an absolutely asinine way to run your sport, and as long as fans throw down money on what are essentially exhibition games, those leagues will continue to showcase a watered down product.
3.It's Unpredictable
To continue on that point, you want to know why the NBA stinks? Two words (not including “the”): The Cleveland Cavaliers. Barring injury, they’re your Eastern Conference rep for the NBA Finals. Everything between now and June is a manufactured storyline because of that fact. They might start off 7-6. They might be in position for a three-seed on Valentine's Day. Doesn't matter. They'll be one of the final two teams standing. It happened four years in a row with the Heat, meaning 14 cities were SOL before the opening tip (which is when hope should spring eternal). Then people debated whether a team winning four consecutive conference titles was a dynasty because to belong in that elite group you have to be even more predictable (see the: '60s Celtics, '90s Bulls, etc.).
Bottom line: As long as LeBron is an apex player on stacked teams this trend will continue. The only reason you should get hyped as an Eastern Conference fan is if LeBron blows out a knee, because that's the only way the season will get chaotic. That leaves you with two choices: accept that fate is predetermined, or root for an innocent person to suffer a serious injury. It boils down to what personality type you are: a defeatist, or a sadist.
College football is always one Hail Mary away from complete disarray. Almost every team loses to a program they should routinely handle. Instead of chalking it up to a bad night (like when the Heat would lose to Milwaukee) the upset shakes up the college football world. When you have to run the table, every game has consequences. You come out flat? You fall in the polls. You drop an open pass? You miss your title window. Star halfback knocks a guy out? So long National Championship. Nearly every play has consequences meaning any turnover could turn a season upside-down. It's all particularly nerve-racking since they don't get any tune-ups before the year which brings me to...
4.No Preseason
Let's chill on the NBA. After all the intro inferred that all major leagues are inferior to their prep competition. Let's instead take a look at an annual yawn-fest, the NFL Preseason (if you're somehow reading this in March, substitute this with Spring Training). Training Camp has already gone on for a month and it's still going to stretch out for a couple more (needless) weeks. Remember that movement for a two-game preseason and an 18-game regular season? Conceded due to the fact that it’d kill half the league. The only good thing we get out of Preseason is Johnny Football flipping the bird and HBO's Hard Knocks.
Contrast that with college football which will be two weeks in by the time pro Training Camp wraps up. It goes from nothing to season-defining in a matter of days. Over this first weekend, South Carolina plays Texas A&M in a conference match-up, Georgia faces off against Clemson, and Wisconsin goes to Dallas to take on LSU. All three games could potentially impact the inaugural playoffs and that’s just the opening salvo. There's no doubt in my mind that those three contests have more meaning than any pre-December NFL match-up. It could be an overhyped Monday Night game. It could be the annual Thanksgiving showdowns. Over the course of a pro season those games (individually) mean little yet it doesn't stop producer-created arguments over whether a Week Three match is a "must win game."
Individually none of those early NFL games have the same impact as the games those six NCAA teams mentioned above have to play right out of the gate. In fact, by the time the NFL rounds out their final cuts, a few of those teams could already be lame ducks.
5.The Hype Machine Takes A Break
Let's stick with the NFL right now because (until they inevitably go too far) they're the reigning American sports king. That means a year-round force feeding of a league that (should) only be relevant 16-20 Sundays a year. January is the Playoffs. February is the Super Bowl, then (already) the NFL Combine. March is Draft hype. April is Draft hype. May is the Draft. June is Draft hype for the next season. July, Training Camps. August, the Preseason. September-December the regular season. This has been a never-ending cycle for years.
When I was a college student watching Trey Wingo deliver NFL news over Spring Break, I assumed that it was temporary. Unfortunately it wasn't. He (along with interchangeable analysts) delivered endless speculation and schedule breakdowns, even before the official calendar was released. Where there was no story one was forced. Then it rolled over as the third, or fourth topic on PTI. You'd think that'd be where it ends but then the commercial break hits and BOOM...fuckin' Draft Day.
At some point the public will become fatigued and the NFL will eat itself. When they start asking Super Bowl performers for money, you know that day's coming. And when it does there'll be two types of football waiting to ascend to the throne. The first, the one the world embraces, the one that actually involves feet. The second, the one the American Southeast embraces, the one that actually involves entertainment.
6.Pro Leagues Have Forgotten Who They Cater To
I could use this to point to the Super Bowl, which is simply catered for the casual dickhead. Even if you disagree we can probably reach common ground by saying it's sure as shit geared more towards indifferent fans than it is to fans of the two squads duking it out for NFL supremacy. How else do you explain 45-minute halftime shows? Or breakdowns of the best ads? To point out how dumb the entire event has become is low hanging fruit. And besides I've already made my point on which version of football I prefer.
Instead I'll take a league that has gone the opposite route.
I've been backing Major League Baseball since I was a tyke but I'll admit baseball is boring. It is really boring. It is NASCAR without cars. People were telling me that on the elementary school playground and yet I ignored them because I was too busy with 10-year-old problems like saying "no" to rides from candy-bearing strangers, and learning how to casually conceal my boners behind a binder like it was nothing. That being said, I'll stick with baseball until I die because you can love something that's boring. But the modern culture of baseball is making the game even tougher to sell to your not-feeling-it friends.
You can go to a game and have one star sit, while another star goes 0-for-3 with three strikeouts and two walks, meaning he put nothing in play. The modern culture of the game has devolved into running up pitch counts and over-valuing the act of reaching base (meaning working walks is just as strategic as swinging the damn bat). All this is because baseball strategy has overtaken entertaining fans as the MLB forgets its only purpose is to distract us all from our sad little lives. Purists may nut themselves when discussing Sabermetrics whilst the commoner is left to look for something that won’t put him to sleep.
Those are two opposite sides of the same spectrum. College football meanwhile is easy to absorb. I was an NFL diehard for a long time until I wasn't. I preferred autumn Sundays to Saturdays until I gave Saturdays a chance. Now I view the NFL as the boring brand who pathetically compromises the quality of their game to squeeze every last dime while they're still riding high as the top dog amongst American sports enthusiasts.
7.Bloated Postseasons
I already mentioned how the NBA (and the NHL, as well) have ruined their regular seasons for massive, watered-down playoffs. November-March has become a preseason for April-June.
But the biggest postseason experience of all, the alliterative March Madness, overcompensates for the fact that Thanksgiving-February suck. Nobody (beyond Jay Bilas) talks about college basketball before the new year, because the masses attracted to filling out their brackets only like to focus on it as the season comes to its summit. It's just fun to guess and pick seeds based upon the work that analysts have done for you. That's why every office has a pool. But those 68 entrants into the Big Dance play a watered-down season as well, where they get half a dozen Mulligans before they need to even worry about being on the bubble.
Basically, college football is that tournament every week of the regular season, with new teams disappointing their fan bases every weekend from the summer until Christmas commercials clog the airwaves. Every win is one step closer to being "elite," in the only sport where it's still necessary to be "elite" to be a champion. Every nail-biting win means a few more days as a "Cinderella."
After this upcoming Saturday almost half the teams will have a tally in the 'L' column and will be in full blown panic mode one game into the year. That intensity is not even remotely rivaled by any other game. You might be able to point to the Olympics as a win-or-go-home, ultimate sacrifice, but that's only 17 days out of every four years, and (most importantly) 90% of all Olympic events are horrible.
8.Wrap It Up
So to recap, college football is the best because the regular season means something. Every game matters. There’s no preseason, they just jump straight into the action. And we get a break in the offseason as the sport avoids being smothered by ESPN and their counterparts (for now).
There will always be people pushing for expanded playoffs, or coverage of the sport when it has no business being discussed, but those are just steps towards jumping the same shark that has claimed so many leagues before it. As it is, we live in a small window where a sport is still easily accessible (check your cable listings on Fall Saturdays) and not completely ruined. We should embrace that. But as it stands, I realize there's a definite chance that outside influences will change the game (it's already started with that stupid playoff committee) and then it's just a downward spiral to beginning to suck like all the other leagues. Of course I don't expect every one of you to agree with me, but then again that's why we call this an "unpopular opinion."