Friday, January 9, 2009

Friday Rant

Another college football season is in the books as Florida edged out Okalahoma in a thrilling National Championship Game to become the undisputed National Champions. The BCS is working perfectly. Nope, I couldn’t type that with a straight face.

Fuck you College Football, well at least division 1 BCS subdivision. Once again you presented us with shit, and we ate it up. But thankfully more and more people are getting fed up with it. Why can’t you do the right thing and have a playoff? I know all the arguments, and they are bull.

Students athletes have to be given time to study for finals in December.

Bullshit, 1st of all, you have the name backwards, its Athlete students. You know who is buying the line that these guys get more time to study during the break between the last regular season game, and the bowls. Fucking lame Asses who never strapped on a set of pads.

I played some college ball (DIII) and even there you were faced with an obvious truth from day 1. This is a business, and you are the unpaid day labor. If you don’t do your job you are expendable. This means not only the 2 hours a day allotted for practice, but hours watching film, rehabbing with trainers, and working out.

You know what we did when there was a bye week, we had extra team meetings, not extra study time. Not to mention that the majority of the players did better in school when they was the restrictive schedule of game week, than they did once the season was over.

That’s right, college age young men do better in a regimented schedule then when left to their own devices. Who would have thunk it.

A playoff would damage the longstanding bowl tradition, making lesser bowls irrelevant and lessening the impact of the major bowls.

Give me a break. The lesser bowls already are irrelevant. Nobody, save for the fans of the schools and true football junkies (me included) give a flying fuck about the Poinsettia Bowl. I just watch because I will watch football whenever it is on, not because it means anything.

As for the major bowls, well I recognize that in order to make a playoff work, you would have to include these bowls into the equation. That is not lessening the impact that is increasing their impact. Would the Rose Bowl not have been more interesting this year if it were part of the elite eight? Tell me the ratings wouldn’t have been higher, and more money wouldn’t have been made. Tell me that with a straight face.

The quality of play would suffer, as the teams would be playing too long.

The quality of play isn’t suffering now? Two potent offenses were reduced to pathetic bumbling for almost three quarters last night. Not because the defenses were that good (they are good) but because the timing had been thrown to shit by the long layoff these teams went through.

Not only that, but the NCAA has slowly added to the number of games played each year anyway, from 10 to 11 to 12. Knock it back to 10, and with an Eight-team playoff the championship is only the 13th game, hardly a stretch. Let alone they already do this with a 16-team playoff at every other level.

The regular season would be rendered meaningless.

Oh, its not already, try telling that to Texas or Utah. Who cares that Texas beat Okalahoma, some convoluted tiebreaker and voting system saw things differently. Who cares that Utah was undefeated, your conference is worth less than the Big East or Big Televen. Who cares that the majority of the football-watching world could see that USC was better than either team last night? IMO, Texas, Utah and USC all have as much right to call themselves the National Champions this year as Florida, they all have the same number or fewer losses, and nothing gets decided on the field.

We could go on, but what is the point. The arguments just get weaker from here. You can’t ask the fans to travel to more games, bullshit. How would you determine the number 9 (or 17 seed) in a playoff, who cares, win in the regular season and it takes care of itself. Besides we have something else to rant about.




What the fuck are you crying about fat ass? You are a band geek; you really have yourself so emotionally invested in your schools football team that you are shedding tears over a loss to Florida. Get the fuck over it. Your flute playing ass just got a free trip to Miami in January, what the hell do you have to be sad about.

This is something that always bothered me during my playing days. When we won we had people all over the school and in the community ready to go on about how “WE” won. No we didn’t win, the team (myself included) won. You showed up to the game and ate hotdogs. You didn’t sweat your ass off during two-a-days in August. You aren’t so battered and bruised that you can barely get out of bed the next morning. And in the community I grew up in, chances are you voted against funding for the team, since it went down time and time again.

If you don’t suit up and practice all week, if you aren’t sacrificing all of your free time, your health and possibly years of your life. Drop the “we” shit. I’m as big a Raiders fan as you will find. But we didn’t beet Tampa week 17, the Raiders did. I may be ecstatic when the team wins, and incensed when the team loses or gets a bad call, but I’m not going to cry over it. Crying is for when something happens to your family, or the dog dies in a movie (see I do have a heart). Not when the team you played the same fight song for 800 times a game loses.

Save me the story about how you played your heart out fat girl. Unless you are a player or their family (families give up a lot also, and can be forgiven for the we) you don’t know shit about the sacrifice the players made, you didn’t earn the right to call yourself part of the team, and if you are crying over it and are older than 13, you’re a fucking loser.

But if it makes you feel better, I laughed out loud when I saw your fat face crying on National TV last night, and was overjoyed to see it on the top of the page at deadspin this morning, since that meant I wouldn’t have to screen cap it myself tonight.