In College Football, Who Needs Playoffs? Playoffs?!

According to theherdsword.com: "Mack Brown made the best case for a college football playoff we’ve ever heard.  Brown said his players face so much pressure to win every game that they are looked at as failures if they lose one game."

Exactly, I agree, and that’s just another reason I am against a playoff.  I love Mack Brown.  But, I disagree with him and the majority of others who wish to see a playoff system in college football.

I love the 'everything matters on every play of every game' nature of college football, not simply does the play work, but, does it look impressive, does it get style-points?

If the Bears lose on opening day to Green Bay.  "Darn".

I might even miss a pro score.  "Hey, how'd the Bears do yesterday?"

I know how Notre Dame did.  I would never miss a Notre Dame score because I watch every game from a hospital bed!  Figuratively speaking.

EVERY FRICKING GAME is life or death.  As Duffy Daugherty (of Sparty Fame) put it, "...its not life or death.  It's more important than that."  It's stressful, but that's part of the joy of it, feeling the emotional energy we felt when we were college aged kids.

That’s one of the bittersweet differences of college football.  It's not relaxing when your team plays...even if they are playing Northeastern Delaware Polytechnic, it’s a CRISIS!  When your pro team is losing, its upsetting.  When your alma mater is losing, it's medical!

Playoffs would turn college football into mini-pros.  Playoffs make too much sense.

That's right, playoffs make too much sense.

Since when has being 19, surrounded by 50,000 other 19-year-olds made sense?  Youth is supposed to be a swirling mass of confusion.  Keep the playoffs in the boardrooms and professional ranks, where it's business.  Keep the playoffs where people wear ties on dates, not wear kids wear Iron Maiden t-shirts on dates.

Leave college a mess. Leave it a beautiful, smoking, drinking, fornicating, crying, laughing, change-your-mind-every-two-seconds, emotional breakdown of a mess. 

At that age, you stand utterly convinced that you know exactly whats going on, only to have it continuously made apparent that you have no clue at all what's going on.  That permeates right through to rankings and bowls, and it makes it a delicious mash of junk, garbage and nonsense to talk or argue about ad nauseam with all your buddies.

You don't have that in the pros; all that matters is the win, and the Super Bowl, and then the conversation is over.  Everything has been clearly, absolutely, and empirically answered with finality and chiseled into the history books.  Done.

College is never done.  We can still argue about rankings from ten years ago.  Beautiful...or would you rather discuss the layoffs at the electronics manufacturer?

We know the Bears won Super Bowl XX.  There is really nothing to BS, argue and debate there.  Done.  Final. 

The pro fan now needs to move on from the Super Bowl to discuss the proliferation of nuclear weaponry. 

The college football fan, on the other hand, is still wondering how Florida State leap-frogged Notre Dame even though Notre Dame beat them head to head.  It's still a crisis, its still something to get emotionally invested in and have fun with.

Playoffs would "institutionalize" the game, and we'd lose that "Smells Like Teen Spirit," gooey, wet dream, fuzzy-sweater cheerleader, sleeping in your own vomit, hiding your stash from the cops, ditching Chem class, youthful, messy, bleeped-up ambience.  Let it remain an intense, unfocused, emotional mess, Mack Brown.  Let it be a vomit-strewn, fall in-and-out-of-true-love-every-ten-seconds, uncontrolled erection of youthful angst.

They don't need EMPIRICAL champs.  Ninety-five percent of those players from those other 119 schools need their confusion and weirdness.  Those crazy kids will be in cubicles and teleconferences, wearing ties, and waking up to alarm clocks for the rest of their hum-drum lives soon enough.

Let it be one huge jubilee of youthful confusion, for the brief time that it lasts.  Just look at those nuts who fly the WASU flag at every College Gameday appearance.  They are still getting a retro-thrill of that ol' college spirit, regardless of the teams rankings.

At the end of a season, I can say to my friends (and foes), "Notre Dame defeated Stanford, who defeated USC.  Therefore, Notre Dame is better than USC."

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?