Would Football Benefit from March Madness?
I heard a couple of sports talk radio hosts waxing enthusiastically over the interest so many people have for the NCAA basketball tournament. They noted how people are filling out brackets and watching games who normally don't pay any attention to college basketball. They asserted that college football ought to have a playoff so that the same attention and excitement would be generated.
WRONG! Regardless of the merits of a college football playoff, they are way off on this. The excitement of the first week of March Madness comes in large part from knowing that some of the big teams are going to be upset by a small school. With 32 first round games (Thursday and Friday) and another 16 second round games on the weekend, upsets are certain. In contrast, any college football playoff would be limited to only 4 or 8 of the biggest name schools. The whole dynamic would be different.
Another point to remember -- because of the basketball tournament in March, no one cares what happens in November, December and January. This year, Wake Forest and Illinois started the year as two of the top teams in the nation. Only hard core fans know who won that game or even care. It simply didn't matter. In football, a game between two of the top ten teams is watched by fans all over the country no matter what time of the season it occurs (see Florida-Tennessee or FSU-Miami over the last dozen years). Why? Because it matters tremendously.
Roy Kramer was right when he said the beauty of college football is that every game matters. That is not true of basketball. Over 100,000 turn out to watch the Vols play every football game. Only 15 to 20,000 show up for hoops. Perhaps hoops needs the extra excitement of the tournament to generate interest. And for anyone who wants to point out that the Vol football team is annually among the best and Vol hoopsters are not, note that traditional basketball powers Kentucky and Indiana always play football (quite poorly) in front of two to three times as many as see them play hoops.
WRONG! Regardless of the merits of a college football playoff, they are way off on this. The excitement of the first week of March Madness comes in large part from knowing that some of the big teams are going to be upset by a small school. With 32 first round games (Thursday and Friday) and another 16 second round games on the weekend, upsets are certain. In contrast, any college football playoff would be limited to only 4 or 8 of the biggest name schools. The whole dynamic would be different.
Another point to remember -- because of the basketball tournament in March, no one cares what happens in November, December and January. This year, Wake Forest and Illinois started the year as two of the top teams in the nation. Only hard core fans know who won that game or even care. It simply didn't matter. In football, a game between two of the top ten teams is watched by fans all over the country no matter what time of the season it occurs (see Florida-Tennessee or FSU-Miami over the last dozen years). Why? Because it matters tremendously.
Roy Kramer was right when he said the beauty of college football is that every game matters. That is not true of basketball. Over 100,000 turn out to watch the Vols play every football game. Only 15 to 20,000 show up for hoops. Perhaps hoops needs the extra excitement of the tournament to generate interest. And for anyone who wants to point out that the Vol football team is annually among the best and Vol hoopsters are not, note that traditional basketball powers Kentucky and Indiana always play football (quite poorly) in front of two to three times as many as see them play hoops.
posted by Stan at 1:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home