College Football is Over

Cecil and Cam Newton share a hug after the title game. Photo/Opelika-Auburn News

Say what you will about the BCS Champion Auburn Tigers and their exiting quarterback, Cam Newton.  The SEC champions are also winners of the BCS trophy.  With that, college football is over.  Not because of Cam’s season which was clouded with speculation over his father, Cecil Newton’s pay for play scandal with Mississippi State, but because it is technically in the books which is a giant relief, at least for my wife.

Football is the clear runaway sport in terms of television ratings and advertising revenue in this country, and it’s not even close.  With all the coverage of 30 plus bowl games, postseason awards and my own unhealthy obsession with my favorite team the stimulation from it all is staggering.

Cam Newton is on his way to the NFL, which in terms of ratings, money and fan support is becoming a giant among midgets in the sports world.  Last weekend the NFL Wildcard playoffs were watched by over 30 million viewers and overall, the NFL brought in over 200 million unique viewers over the course of the season.  The World Series this year lost out to a rerun of Will and Grace.

Not that I mind, I love watching the NFL.  And by all practical purposes, football is a built for television sport.  Of course going to the game is an “experience” but it’s almost better to watch on your couch than at the top of the stadium while you get rain/snow/beer spilled on you.  Baseball is all about going to the stadium, which shows why it struggles to even come near the NFL in terms of viewership.  The model is great in the pros, but will division 1-A ever take a page out of their book?

It almost makes you wonder where the breaking point is with amateur football.  How long before people stage some sort of boycott with the college game (FBS, specifically) because of incidents like Cam Newton?  Or just because not having a playoff makes the sport a total joke?  But how can there be any change with the status quo when more people show up to games and tune in to games in record numbers year over year?  Even during the last couple years when the economy was in the tank?

The fact is that we’ll never see a playoff in college football.  At least not like it is in the NFL or any other level of college football, which for the record is way more exciting.  People in charge of college ball and media pundits act like creating a playoff system is like splitting the atom, when any Joe sports fan has constructed a playoff with his buddies on a Saturday afternoon at the bar on a cocktail napkin.  And you know what?  It would probably work.

Auburn will go down in the history books as the 2010 national champion (well, until the NCAA takes it away in four or five years, along with Cam’s Heisman), but everyone knows it will always be a mythical national championship.  And the teams that came before the Tigers have the same claim.  Until a team like TCU or Ohio State can play Auburn next in a plus one system or have a full on postseason playoff, it’s all an exhibition.

An Exchange of Sorts

Papelbon costs the Sox their season.

I don’t remember this happening, but sometimes I do like to bargain with myself.  “If Nebraska can beat Missouri in Columbia, I won’t mind if Boston loses in the playoffs.”  Every sports fan makes weird bets or deals with themselves, or maybe it’s just me.  No middle ground on this one folks.  The two years Boston won the World Series?  The Huskers go 5-7 and have some of the worst seasons in the 70 some odd years.  This is no mere coincidence folks.  There is something cosmic afoot here, and I want to know what is going on.

It’s been happening on the flip side too.  The year Nebraska won the Big 12 North, Boston missed the playoffs completely.  Flying in the face of this nonsense is the fact that the 49ers have sucked equally well in this time period.  At least until they ran into the offensive juggernaut that is the Atlanta Falcons.

I know, this is payback for growing up and watching my two football teams dominate in my memory.  I remember starting to watch football from when I was about seven or eight, and up until I was 19 for the Niners and about 21 for the Huskers, both teams dominated and annoyed everyone that wasn’t a fan.  1994 will never happen again, I know this, but you never can stop hoping for a Super Bowl and a National Championship in the same year, right?

I wanted to believe in the way Boston was doing things, and part of me still does.  High priced free agents coupled with a great internal system that would dominate the baseball landscape for years to come.  Something Theo and company did not anticipate is in the offseason the New York Yankees would step up their payroll into the stratosphere.  I don’t play the David vs. Goliath card when it comes to these two teams because it is absurd.  But this season, it is different.  The difference between the Yankees’ $208,097,414 payroll and Boston’s $122,435,399 team salary is the difference (approximately $85,000,000) between the Soxs’ number and the Florida Marlins’ payroll of 35,774,000.  The Marlins have the 31st highest (or second lowest) payroll in all of baseball.  There is some perspective most people probably haven’t added up yet.  Baseball is a numbers game when you translate money into big time ball players, and the Yankees are king of the hill.

It’s a big market bonanza this year.  Only two teams outside the top 15 in terms of payroll (Minnesota and Colorado) made it into the postseason this year.  So with Boston out, the excitement of watching an underdog pull of an upset is not happening.  Warm up the stove, because I’m about to check out already.