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'January Madness' just can't happen
Posted: Wednesday March 14, 2001 11:20 AM
Updated: Wednesday March 14, 2001 11:30 AM
Every year at this time we college football folks start to feel insecure. March Madness will do that to you. March Madness brings more delight than a The Simpsons marathon, but March Madness belongs to basketball, just like Keith Jackson belongs to football. That's not a suggestion that the term "Big Uglies" be applied to Stanford's frontcourt. Each sport has its own charms. A playoff could be developed for college football, but don't think for a moment it would be March Madness come early. Here are a few of the things that would be missing:
No bracket. How many people do you know who fill out a sheet for the NFL playoffs? NBA? NHL?
No bracket means no office pool. Take away the office pool and the NCAAs would be renamed the Great Minnesota Shootout. No one would care.
No bowl orgy. Speaking for myself, I love bowl week. Nonstop games. In the city of whatever bowl I'm covering, I become close friends with at least one room-service waiter, if not two. They stop by often.
No play-in game. Can you imagine a nine-team playoff? A 17-team playoff?
No cut-ins. The drama of March Madness is enhanced by CBS' ability to switch in and out of games in order to allow as many viewers as possible to track upsets, see buzzer-beating shots and crown heroes. Even if college football adopted a 16-team playoff, you're talking about only eight first-round games, not the 32 that basketball enjoys. Something else: Name any spectacular play made in any non-Jan. 1 bowl game in the last five years.
No cut-ins means no instant glory. No Valparaiso. No Bryce Drew. No Tate George. No Danny Ainge.
No Sweet 16 heroes. Let's face it. A double-digit seed simply advancing to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament means as much to that program as an ACC team reaching the Final Four. I can't tell you why Richmond deserved to get into the tournament this season (and didn't), but I know damn well the Spiders advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1988 under coach Dick Tarrant. That kind of thing sticks with you. In football, there would be no Richmonds and no Gonzagas. Those programs can't even get to the starting line in football's race.
No civic parties. There's no way Tempe, Ariz., has street parties before a playoff game the way it does before the Fiesta Bowl. It wouldn't mean the same thing.
No history. Here again, look at the NFL. Can anyone name any significant event that occurred in an NFL early-round game in any season?
No title sponsors. No goofy names. Part of the charm of postseason college football is trying to guess where the Music City Bowl is, or whatever happened to the Poulan Weedeater.
Hope for next season. After Eli Manning came off the bench and threw for three fourth-quarter touchdowns in Ole Miss' 49-38 loss to West Virginia last Dec. 28, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Mississippi who thought that the Rebels lost the game -- because none of them can wait for next fall. I can't think of a single instance where a basketball team played so well during March that the enthusiasm for next season outweighed the disappointment over not being national champion.
One final thought: Someday, the money offered for a football playoff is going to outweigh every argument ever made against it. Except maybe this one: How legitimate could a playoff be if Joe Paterno never would have won it?
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