Random Tuesday Writings

The Lions won convincingly Sunday. It's kinda making it hard not to believe in them.

College football is now a type of professional football, with all the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) money going around. Ohio State for example paid around $20 million to its players. I'm not saying that's wrong. But it is causing athletes to jump around from team to team (Marshall couldn't play its bowl game because so many players had left the team for greener pastures) and ripping the game from its roots. So can we be spared the myth of the scholar athlete, the hype about how important 'the game' is to 'the kids playing' at least where the big revenue sports are involved? It's all about the money now, folks. Again, not bad. Yet decidedly different. I, for one, don't know that I like it.

I mean, it really just adds to the hype, the artificiality, of the whole thing. It's turning me even more off of a game which I've been slowly losing interest in for years now. Maybe I do know how I feel after all.

Glad we missed that big winter storm a few days ago. Winters haven't been bad in Detroit recently. Am I tempting fate bringing up the issue?

Well, there's a machine with an oil leak, another 'not saying nothing' as the customer related to me (I had no idea drain snakes might be sentient or self aware), and a third which needs a new motor table adjustment. I suppose I should get to them. 

Emotional Investment

I am an advertiser's nightmare, a destroyer of the hype machine, anathema to television networks. The older I get, the more I ignore both adverts and hyperbole.

I'm not trying to hit on anyone's favorites or foes, but only using Michigan football as an example. I watched most of last Saturday's game against Ohio State and did not enjoy a minute. I was more relieved than happy when the Wolverines won. I simply didn't have any fun despite, for me, a positive outcome.

Last night U of M won the Big Ten title game over Iowa. I did not watch a second. Indeed, I crawled into bed and was asleep before 7. I woke up around 1 to find they had won, and I was happy. I didn't stress the outcome at all in ignoring the game and felt better afterwards.

Perhaps, to be fair, it's only me, yet I increasingly find that high powered sports just aren't worth the emotional investment. I'm inclined to exempt baseball, for various reasons I won't get into here. I can't imagine myself not watching and listening to baseball. But football, well, too much hype, too much hyperbole, and a certain unsportsmanlike arrogance. It's not good for the soul.

We Don't Need A College Football Championship

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Beginning with the Big Ten Championship game tonight, and rolling through the various other conference championships to be played this weekend which then culminate in a select group picking which four teams will play for the National Championship means a big weekend of college football. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Yet we have just one little question about all the whistles and bows.

Why must we have a national college football champion at all?

It isn't as though championship games and playoffs aren't inherently flawed. At the highest levels of play any team could beat any other team in any given game. If Missouri beat Alabama in the SEC or Wisconsin upends Ohio State in the Big Ten, that doesn't mean that Missouri or the Badgers are better teams. It just means they won at the right time. And the same can be said about the winner of a four team runoff for what would actually be an engineered national championship, because not all teams which have a decent chance of winning it will be involved. Why? Because non players will choose who plays for the mythical ring.

That's not even an honest tournament, quite frankly. But do tournaments even give us an idea of the best team in a given year? Not as a matter of course. The best team might win, but quite often do not. And it's really kind of of a cheat, isn't it, to make teams plays long schedules only to say: what you did in the long haul matters not. To be vaunted you must win this one special game, special only because the powers that be say so.

What does a single game mean anyway? If the team which should win does, then accolades are shallow because that team should have won. If the underdog wins, they arguably were no more than lucky to have played well at the right time. That's hardly championship quality, and not at all really sportsmanlike.

The best team in a given season with most any sport is the team with the best record at the end of the regular season. With sports as far flung as college football, three playoff games mean little except to the monied types, schools and television networks who like the hoopla because of the cash flow. Because, let's face it: the new national championship won't necessarily crown a real champ. But it will certainly drive beer and pizza sales, and that's all that really matters, isn't it?