Alabama vs. LSU Rematch: Long Layoff Kills Excitement for BCS Championship Game

Thirty-seven days. That's how long it will have been since the LSU Tigers last played—in a 42-10 romp against Georgia for the SEC title—when Les Miles leads his team onto the field at the Superdome for the BCS National Championship Game.

Forty-four days. That's how long it will have been since the Alabama Crimson Tide last played—in a 42-14 flattening of Auburn in the Iron Bowl—by the time Nick Saban tries to guide his players to their second crystal football in three years.

Sixty-five days. That's how long it's been since the Tigers and the Tide last met, in a 9-6 overtime thriller/stinker in Tuscaloosa.

In any case, it's been far too long, and not in a good way. This might as well be a new season for 'Bama and LSU, seeing as how neither has payed in a real, live football game in over a month. With that sort of layoff, no one should expect the quality of play to be any better than the first game of a given campaign or even an intrasquad exhibition. There will be jitters and mistakes galore, and perhaps a decent football play sprinkled in here and there.

What's worse, the public's sports attention is already being occupied by the NFL playoffs, the start of the NBA season, conference play in college basketball and even a bit of NHL action sprinkled in between.

And after nearly a month of meaningless postseason exhibitions known colloquially as "bowl games," doesn't anyone really care about watching another one? Especially one in which it wouldn't be a surprise if the teams combined for fewer than 20 points?

Is it any wonder folks are still clamoring for a college football playoff? Something to make the weeks between the end of the regular season and the one important game of the bowl season a bit more bearable, if not, well, also important?

Proponents of the current system love to proclaim how college football has the most meaningful, the most exciting regular season in all of sports, and they're right.

But at what cost? By putting the regular season on a pedestal, the powers-that-be have effectively sapped the bowl season of any and all real worth like pageantry-obsessed pigskin vampires.

How are we, as fans, supposed to suddenly care about a football game after slogging through so many that had little or no bearing on anything whatsoever? Really, how is anyone outside of Tuscaloosa or Baton Rouge supposed to get excited for an SEC football game after going more than five weeks without one?

Surely people around the country will tune in to watch the BCS title game if for no other reason than sheer boredom. It won't be the fault of LSU or 'Bama, even if they put on another field-goal fiesta in New Orleans.

Rather, the fault lies with the smoke-filled room of corporate masters who have hijacked America's sports passion for their own gain, attaching laughable sponsorships at every possible opportunity while squeezing what few drops of actual history and intrigue remain from the games that we all knew and loved.

And since there's really no going back, it's time to move forward with a playoff system.

Otherwise, who knows how many days we'll all go without caring about college football?

Follow @J0shMart1n