Monday Night Ignore

So tonight in Arizona, the state so nice that, like radical Islam, I dare not mock it for fear of gunfire, the lords of college football settle things for once and for all. Will it be the Auburn team that has the Heisman Award winner who will be the next guy to have it stripped from him after the fact, or the Oregon team that has taken speed and costume changes to its logical, albeit suspiciously Broadway-esque, conclusion? And does that past sentence of hype and mockery mean that FTT has finally gotten on board and accepted the methadone fix that is college football?

Well, um, no. And the lack of a playoff is really making it far too easy on me.

See, here's the deal. There's been months, seemingly, since these teams have played. I have no idea what they have done to make it to this game, but I suspect it involves winning games and impressing computers. There's been no storyline of how they defended their home field, or went into Death Prairie and came out victorious against their hated rivals. I don't even have much hatred for their states.

It is, in short, really easy to ignore.

And if there was a playoff, it wouldn't be.

You see, I am the growth market for college football. Born and bred in the Northeast, I had no college team when I grew up; I kind of watched Penn State, but not to any real passion, and when Joe Paterno decided to appear at a GOP convention, then stop scheduling Syracuse when they had their brief run of competence (right around when I was a student there, actually), that wasn't going to happen again. While I liked going to games when I lived in upstate New York, the relationship didn't stick, because the football coach (the late great Dick McPherson) screwed me out of a story that would have made my career in journalism when I was interning for the local paper. I suppose he did me a favor in the long run, but in the long run, he was still a piece of guano.

I watch way too much pro football. I blog about it constantly. My NBA team has spent the last decade depressing me. I am ripe, ripe for caring about college ball.

And yet, well, I don't. And anytime I start to think that I should, if for no other reason to have an opinion on Draft Day or a theoretical edge in drafting my fantasy team...

Well, there's this BCS thing to just invalidate the whole exercise, and stop me cold.

So thanks, Lords of College Football, for your hidebound stupidity that keeps me from watching your game. Because of your intransigence and mule-headed stupidity, I remain married, with children that still know my name, during the ever-increasing NFL season. And while their ratings continue to climb, yours are more or less the same, despite the extreme market correction that more high-level football would provide.

You are doing great work, gentlemen. Keep it up.

And if the NFL self-destructs this year?

Well, get a dammed playoff already. Because we'll pretty much have to pay attention to you then, but not one minute before.