Brick City Boxing

By: Christopher Roche

The final NFL week in New York brought two NFL storylines: 1) “Giants’ Fans are Selling Their Tickets for the Regular Season Finale” and 2) “Should the Giants rest their starters because they cannot improve their playoff position?” Despite the Giants playing the undefeated Patriots, the game lacks any urgency beyond the symbolic.

Those two storylines exemplify a huge credibility problem for the League’s regular season, and most of this week’s games are completely meaningless. Unless your rooting interest lies in New Orleans, Cleveland, Tennessee or Washington D.C., week 16 feels like the last week of the preseason.

College Football’s Bowl Subdivision (Division 1) is the only major sport where every single contest has potential life or death meaning, and regular season victories are the gold standard. While this season has been wild, the importance of maintaining the Bowl system is evident, because under the current system, every game is must win, and losing one or two games clouds a team’s destiny and could prove fatal to title hopes.

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For example, the Michigan Wolverines entered the season as a Big Ten and BCS title contender, but their opening day loss to Appalachian State virtually ended their title chances. After Michigan’s upset loss, the Associated Press’ recap included the following line, “Carr will not get fired after this upset, but he might be wishing he had retired after last season when the Wolverines won 11 games before closing with losses to Ohio State and USC.” Michigan RB Mike Hart said, "It is one of the biggest losses ever, but give all the credit to Appalachian State.”

Could we imagine any regular season NFL game having as much meaning? National Title hopes, Conference title hopes and a coach’s legacy all went up in smoke after week one of Michigan’s football season. In the NFL, even disastrous losses deep into the regular season do not mean nearly as much as an opening day loss like Michigan’s.

Consider week 12 when Giants’ quarterback Eli Manning threw four interceptions, three of which were returned for touchdowns by the Vikings. The Vikings were 4-6 at the time, and the Giants were trying to secure their playoff spot, but they lost 41-14. However, that terrible loss by the Giants did not hurt them in the grand scheme of things. Giants’ DE Michael Strahan summed it up after the game, when he told the AP, “We're 7-4. We still control our situation and that's encouraging."

Division 1 College Football is the best thing going, because every week spawns spirited debate. As the first polls come out, pretenders and contenders are blended in, and once the BCS rankings come out, the arguing and posturing picks up major momentum, and the pretenders are weeded out. All twelve games on the College schedule are playoff games. There is nothing more important than finishing the regular season ranked number 1 or 2.

Contrast that with the NFL, where the top two seeds have not met for the title since 1993. If the Colts drop two or three games, it does not really matter, because they will still qualify for the playoffs as a no. 2 seed in the AFC. If New England finishes at 16-0 or 15-1, it makes no difference in their playoff position, and as history proves, finishing the regular season first in the conference does not mean very much in terms of the championship.

Because there are so many two-loss teams in Division 1 this year, the BCS system has its difficulties, but a “plus one” scenario will alleviate most of them. If the BCS took its top four teams, matched them up in two of the existing BCS bowls, they could then match the winners in the BCS title game. Thus, there would still be a BCS bowl derby surrounding New Year’s week, and the top ranked teams would get to play an extra game. This season would have #1 Ohio State vs. #4 Oklahoma and #2 LSU vs. #3 Virginia Tech, with the winners playing for the title. The integrity of the regular season would remain in tact, and the pageantry of the Bowl system would still be viable. The only difference to the regular season standings is that finishing in the top 4 would replace the importance of finishing in the top 2.

Further, some of the best games are played in the bowls, and if Division 1 went to a straight tournament, then classic contests like the 2007 Motor City Bowl would never happen. While Purdue and Central Michigan were not playing for a national title, the bowl banner clearly meant something to them, and both teams left everything on the field. As the result of a last second, clutch field goal, Purdue walked off the field as post-season winners. Under a playoff, Purdue never would have had the opportunity to experience the post season at all, and a classic game would have been lost.

If Division 1 scrapped the bowl games for a huge round-robin tournament, the integrity of the regular season and the pageantry and tradition of the bowl season would both be ruined. Currently Division 1 has the best of both worlds, and a minor “plus 1” tweak would make it even better. Scrapping the bowls for an NFL style tournament would be detrimental to college football, and instead of debating who is number 1 or 2, we could wind up debating whether or not a team like LSU or Georgia should rest their starters in the SEC title game because they do not want to risk injury before the playoffs. That scenario would be disastrous.