College Football Fans Deserve Better Than Cupcake Saturday in November
For the first time in a long time, I left a college football Saturday completely unsatisfied. It’s as if this was only a tease—a warm-up, if you will—and the main act was still to follow, even with the schedule completely out of options.
There had to be more. Given all the intrigue and excitement that we’ve been treated to over the course of this season, there’s no possible way this FCS-laced, blowout-heavy installment could come with only a few weeks left.
There was no drama. No major upsets. No significant shakeups. Heck, we barely had any ranked teams going toe to toe. This was just another Saturday that came and went without generating much noise, which is precisely how it appeared on paper before being put in motion.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
And as a result, Week 13 reminded us that we still have a long way to go when it comes to seizing and sustaining momentum in college football. More importantly, it reminded us that we still have an FCS scheduling problem that stretches beyond the first few weeks of the year. Although you understand the reasoning to put Samford and Western Carolina on the schedule this week, before the final game, it isn't doing the viewer any good.
Selfishly, we deserve better.
For all of college football’s redeeming qualities—and it is a long, winding list—its inability to engage at the beginning and closing parts of each season remains a work in progress. This much was evident on Saturday, as you searched throughout the schedule for games that mattered.
That’s not to say that intrigue wasn’t completely absent. USC and UCLA's home uniform combination justified the price of admission for the weekend as a whole. At this same time, Missouri and Tennessee went toe to toe in a matchup with significant SEC East ramifications on the line.
Arkansas continued its rapid upward climb, beating Ole Miss with its second consecutive shutout. Florida State continued its cardiac push to the postseason with a game-winning drive and field goal to down Boston College. Samaje Perine, Oklahoma’s true freshman running back, shattered the mark for most rushing yards in a game that Melvin Gordon set a week ago.
There were highlights, but there are always highlights. We can turn any Saturday of college football into an event, because it beats the harsh, incoming reality of having no football at all. Football is better than no football; no one debates this simple truth.
With that necessary disclaimer out of the way, Week 13 was the least interesting weekend of the college football season. It wasn’t even close. We knew it had this potential coming in, and the scenario played out as planned.
It was a harsh right turn from what has been an exhilarating run of Saturdays, although this break in the action was not unfamiliar. It reminded us of how we started this whole thing in the first place.
College football often starts with a whimper. Although the season opens with a handful of marquee matchups that have us slobbering over schedules for months, these meaningful games are scattered in a sea of FCS-driven paydays and blowouts. As a result, the sport often stumbles out of the gate before hitting its stride.
Once we dive into the meat of the season, the product reaches its pinnacle. The 2014 season, in particular, has been nothing short of brilliant when it comes to conference play.
The matchups have been meaningful, the games riveting and the results have oftentimes been perplexing. This, especially in a year with a new postseason, has made our lives remarkably easy. We’ve sat back and allowed the quality football and unpredictable results to soak into our skin. The only difficult aspect of this stretch was finding enough television screens to house all of the simultaneous action.
That wasn’t an issue in Week 13. One television was more than enough.
FCS teams once again re-entered our football worlds. Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Clemson, Florida and others returned to the win-grabbing portion of the season, something we hadn’t seen (or missed) since the first part of the year.
Although a break in the gauntlet is understandable given the difficult path many of these teams have taken to reach this point, those matchups provided nothing more than an enormous paycheck to the team on the other sideline that signed up for the loss.
We are numb to this process, although after enjoying a stretch of football unlike any we’ve seen in some time—aided by elimination game after elimination game—the harsh reality hit like a ton of bricks.
It shouldn’t be up to one conference to carry the interest baton, and the SEC is not alone in its FCS scheduling practices. This, as it stands, is something just about every team partakes in at some point in the year; it just so happened that the latest batch of underwhelming games came at one of the season’s most important moments.
The College Football Playoff is consuming our every interest, and the release of the final rankings is now just a few weeks away. So why, with every bit of sample size seemingly more important than the next, are games being played that tell us nothing further about the teams worth discussing?
Better yet, why are games that add nothing to the sport as a whole still being played?
These games still matter for FCS programs and their bottom lines. The financial impact of these games can’t simply be dismissed, although it’s hard to justify their worth after days like this.
We deserve better. You deserve better. The sport, as a whole, deserves better as it inches closer to the finish line. The long offseason abyss is staring back at us in the distance, and instead of sprinting toward the end we hit pause for the sake of politics and athletic budgets.
Thankfully next weekend we will return to our regularly scheduled madness. Rivalry games will be played, conferences will be decided and playoff spots will be won and lost. It will be fabulous, just like it’s been for almost the entire year—except for Week 13, when the sport decided it needed a little time off.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
