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January means the blues, blahs, Panther disappointment and the usual BCS mess
(January 17, 2009) – I have never been friendly with the month of January.
Too many lingering maladies – such as post-Christmas blues, post-New Year’s Day blahs (or hangovers for some), post-BCS stress or post-Carolina tirades. And, of course, there is the doom and gloom associated with the economic woes of a recession.
January is a cold, cold month. Heartless at times. A time for sniffles, chest colds, sinusitis and the flu. I’m not certain, but there should be a phobia for January-haters. Like, januaryophobia.
January has to be a derivative of Janus, the two-faced Roman deity (I’m not going to look it up in an encyclopedia to be certain) who can be your bud one minute and your nemesis the next.
I’m sure about Janus because the rat-faced monster gave me false hopes that we Carolina Panther fans would greet February with a visit to the Super Bowl. Ha! The Arizona Cardinals seriously punctured that balloon and sent me plummeting into a three-day state of withdrawal pangs.
I had no football favorite in the Bowl Championship Series, so I channel-surfed during the bowl games to catch a score or two. The BCS is another January conundrum – a spatial anomaly, so to speak, in the time continuum.
How can the NCAA crown a champion in college football without a national playoff system?
Did Florida deserve to be the national champion? I think USC, Texas and Utah would shout a resounding “no way, Jose!”
In my Perfect World (where everything is done the elbertreble way), the top eight teams in the BCS would begin the playoffs. Top-seeded Oklahoma would have played eighth-seeded Penn State in the Gator Bowl; second-seeded Florida would have met seventh-seeded Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl; third-seeded Texas would have squared off against unbeaten and sixth-seeded Utah in the Cotton Bowl; and fourth-seeded Alabama would have tangled with fifth-seeded University of Southern California (USC) in the Rose Bowl.
In the quarterfinals (in my Perfect World), Florida and Utah would have met in Another Bowl One; and Oklahoma and USC would have played in Another Bowl Two. Then, Florida and Oklahoma would have met in the Bowl Championship Series game to decide the national champion.
What if Utah and USC had won their quarterfinal games. We’d have a different champion, right?
We just need a playoff system in which a team wins the national title on the gridiron – and not by a BCS ranking system. I think all those one-loss teams (and one undefeated team) should have had an opportunity to prove their BSC worthiness on the football field.
Speaking of seedings, there was a rumble of discontent in the National Football League’s playoff system. There were wild card teams – such as Indianapolis (12-4) and Atlanta (11-5) – that had to play on the road against teams with worse won-lost records (San Diego at 8-8 and Arizona 9-7).
That’s because San Diego and Arizona won their respective division – and the right to have a wild-card playoff game on home turf. Indianapolis had finished second to Tennessee (13-3) and Atlanta had placed second behind Carolina (12-4). Therefore, Indianapolis and Atlanta were road teams. Ironically, both teams lost.
The NFL has a simple playoff system. Four divisional champions and two wild card teams from the NFC and AFC divisions. Just because a wild card team happens to have a better won-lost record than their opponent in the first round of play should not give them an edge in the seeding scheme. San Diego and Arizona earned their first round home game.
The BCS could learn from the NFL. If there is no eight-team playoff bracket for a national championship, then at least devise a six-game system with the two top-ranked teams getting first round byes. It seems fair enough.
With the college football season now history and the road to the Super Bowl continues, I can turn my attention to basketball. January has not been kind to then-No. 1 North Carolina. The Tar Heels lost back-to-back Atlantic Coast Conference games to Boston College and Wake Forest. Oh, for a Duke fan, that’s good news – the only bright spot in January.
And finally, I watched William Petersen’s last act on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. It was a bittersweet occurrence – and I had wet eyes when the credits rolled.
As Gil Grissom, Petersen was the glue that kept CSI together, and top-ranked, for the past nine seasons. As we avid CSI’ers looked on as Grissom helped solve his last case, I was envisioning an appropriate ending that would soothe the imminent loss of a TV legend. I was not disappointed.
I suppose, after all, that January can be … at least interesting. Nahhhhhhh!
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