As far as regular seasons go, College Football is King

I’d like to address the idea that college basketball’s regular season is more meaningful than college football’s. Seth Davis over at cnnsi was the latest to attempt this argument, and it was a pretty lame attempt at that. Look, there’s no question that the NCAA Tournament is the greatest sporting event there is. Nothing can match its excitement. I’m sure Europeans would argue for the World Cup, but until Gus Johnson calls a soccer game, there’s really no argument. Anyway, having the most exhilarating championship event doesn’t necessarily mean the regular season is all that special.

I should say that I used to be a believer. I used to be a college hoops junkie, watching and loving every week of the regular season. I’d watch every conference tournament I could. Hell, I remember watching Bryce Drew tear up the Horizon tourney before he ever hit that shot to beat Ole Miss. And then, there was the Big Dance. Who doesn’t love the NCAA Tournament? I used to stay home from school or work during those first two days of the tournament, just because I didn’t want to miss any games. Not that I still do that. My point is that I loved college basketball. Well, I realized not too long ago that the BCS has ruined all of that. And this is my reason for hating the BCS, not because it’s ruining football. But because it’s made college football so exciting that its ruined my love for college basketball.

Despite what Seth Davis and others like him say, the college basketball regular season is meaningless. It just doesn’t matter. Sure, it has some meaning when you’re talking about the evolution of a team, and how they build on each game and improve. But that’s how it goes in every sport. But, when you’re talking about championships, it’s all about the tournaments in college basketball. And yes, I said tournaments, plural. Because other than the Ivy League, every conference gives their automatic bid to the winner of their conference tournament. So winning your regular season doesn’t even matter. LSU beat out Florida to win the SEC in 2006. But, Florida won the National Championship. Still think regular seasons matter? Yeah, LSU got a nice banner to hang in the PMAC, but that didn’t get them into the tournament. They had to get an at-large bid, just like the 32 other teams in the field that didn’t win their conference tournament.

Of course LSU got into the tournament in 2006 despite not winning their conference tourney, because they were a great team. The fact of the matter is that every year, there are a handful of college basketball teams that are good enough to be National Champions. And some of them will win their conference, and some won't. Some will have amazing regular seasons, where they’re #1, or moving up and down in the top 5 all year. And some will have relatively disappointing years, and have to make a go of it in the tournament as a 3 or 4 seed. But all of them will make the tournament. No matter what they did in the regular season, every last one of that year’s elite college basketball teams will have their shot at the National Championship. And that’s why we love it, that’s what makes it the tournament so exciting. You never know which of those teams is going to win it all. Well, that and the upsets. And Gus, of course. But again, an exciting championship event doesn’t make the regular season any more meaningful.

Like basketball, every year there are a handful of college football teams good enough to be National Champions. But unlike basketball, in college football, only 2 will have a chance to win the title. Who those 2 teams are is determined week by week in the regular season. A basketball team can lose 25% of their games and still make the tournament, and have a “shot” at a championship. You think a 9-3 team is getting into the BCS National Championship? Not likely.

Actually, any non-Ivy League team could go the entire season without winning a game. They could start the postseason without any wins, and still have a chance to win it all. Of course, they’d have to win 10 straight games, 4 games to win their conference tourney, and another 6 in a row in the NCAA tournament, to win the whole thing. Wouldn’t that be an amazing and unprecedented feat? Amazing, yes. Unprecedented, not really. That happens pretty much every year in college football.

Florida won 9 games in a row to get to the BCS title game. Oklahoma won 7. If they had lost any of those games, they wouldn’t have made it. The same excitement and “win or you’re done” atmosphere that makes the college basketball postseason so special is exactly what we have in the regular season of college football right now. College football's postseason may not compare to the NCAA Tournament or even the NFL playoffs. But, no sport has a regular season nearly as exciting as college football's. And that’s why I’ve recently started to defend the BCS, and why I’m not all that interested in college basketball right now. So, somebody wake me up when the tournaments start. That’s when the real college basketball season begins, anyway.

On a scale of one to Gus Johnson, I give this post a Digger Phelps.