New Year’s Day remains one of my favorite days of the year on the calendar.
Aside from being the very first day of the year, it marks what used to act as the most important college football day of the season. Memories of New Year’s meals with family in Baltimore’s Little Italy instantly flashback to me as I’m typing this blog entry. I was the kid with the mini TV under the tablecloth checking on the score of the Carquest Bowl. To an extent, I’m still that kid. They just pay me now.
As the Bowl Coalition morphed into the Bowl Alliance and transferred into the Bowl Championship Series, New Year’s Day became less and less relevant. The legendary band U2 was wrong in saying that nothing changes on New Year’s Day. They don’t decide a national champion in college football on January 1st anymore. Remember when the Sugar Bowl mattered?
Here’s where I may lose some of you. The Bowl Championship Series works.
Now in its 14th season, the BCS gives us something we never got when I was growing up. A true national champion. I still watch every college football bowl game and absolutely love the bowl season. Every college athlete should be rewarded for their season of hard work to go to a postseason game. I’m not dead-set against a playoff system either. When college football transitions into super duper conferences, I’m sure we will end up with a playoff involving eight teams.
We shouldn’t automatically jump on the negative bandwagon for potential flies in the ointment. The system, like most things in life, isn’t perfect. In a handful of seasons, quality teams were left outside of the national championship game. In the short history of the BCS only four teams with one or more losses has won the national championship game. LSU lost a pair of games in the crazy 2007-08 season. (And yes, all four teams came from the SEC.)
You can’t always get what you want. That’s a given in life and Rolling Stone lyrics.
We will get a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in Louisiana on Jan. 9. Don’t lose sight of that.
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