12.06.2009

Amerika's Game

Saturday December 5th ended the regular season of what one would consider the most American of sports: college football. It's a sport where student athletes obtain scholarships to get an education as well as play on the university or college football team. They don't have to pay tuition in return for their contribution to the program. The team then competes and the best two play in a championship game to decide who is the national champion. What could be more American than that?

Well, ironically, Russia is more American than that. Why? The biggest sport in Russia is soccer. The top 16 teams from the prior season play home and away against every other team and the team with the most points (3 for a win, 1 for a tie) wins the championship. Hard to say the team with the most points doesn't deserve it after that.

In the top division of American college football, a committee decides who plays whom for the championship and this year is a wonderful example of how America is becoming socialist/communist country.

This year 5 teams ended up undefeated. They are Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, Boise State and Texas Christian University. Instead of having say a 6 or 8 team playoff to see which team is crowned national champion, a committee decided which 2 of those 5 get to play for a title game. They decide based on complex formulae which includes "strength of schedule." This year the 2 are Alabama and Texas. They are considered more qualified then the others.

See each team must play the other teams in its conference for say 8 or 9 games. The other games they can schedule against anyone. But teams in "stronger" conferences generally don't like to play the likes of Boise State and TCU because they're good. They don't want to play their non-conference games against someone "low profile" that they seriously might lose to. So Boise State scrambles to find opponents outside their conference. This year they played Oregon, and won. Oregon is playing in one of the big money bowls because of their successful season but Boise State still isn't considered for the championship because of their "weak" schedule.

So why don't they have a playoff? Well my hunch is party members make massive profits on these kids who are paid nothing relative to their profit contribution so they don't want to upset the apple cart. They say they don't have a playoff because academic reasons but of course the 3 divisions below the top all have playoffs. They must have poorer academic standards but than they include schools like Yale, Harvard, and Dartmouth. But apparently they study harder at Ole Miss.

So a committee of party members decides which 2 of the 5 get to play for the championship. They call it the Bowl Championship Series. But it's neither a championship or a series by definition. It's a profit windfall for the select party members and those not involved, well, aren't good party members. Ironically the biggest sponsors in this post season include Citi and GMAC.

And before the football purists go off about "strength of schedule", remind me again how undefeated Utah did against far more fashionable Alabama last year in the Sugar Bowl? Oh yeah, the undefeated Utes won 31-17 against the Tide. But they weren't considered acceptable for the championship game.

The sad thing is that as we move towards this culture of socialism, nothing leads the way more than college football. Committees and party executives decide who gets to profit and who gets to compete for championships. Nothing illustrates Amerika better. Boy I wish we could have championships like they do in Russia. That would be so much more American.

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Happy Super Tuesday!