It really had to come to this, and you knew it, didn't you? College football xeroxed itself.
Alabama and Ohio State for the national football championship. Remember when they called it "mythical"?
That's because, of course, that there was no exact method of determining a champion. The writers and coaches voted in their polling on not only who beat who but how they beat them, and the buzz surrounding it usually culminated in the four major bowl games: Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Rose. I've always insisted that that was a much better way to determine a national champion, or two, and that it really doesn't matter.
That's because, of course, there still is no exact method of determining a champion. There's a playoff, of course, but that playoff is voted upon, too, in fact by fewer people than before. Some people call that exact, but it isn't; it's just less random, or perhaps it just looks like that. That has re-emerged especially this season, in the midst of Covid-19, when games were re-scheduled or downright cancelled because someone didn't have enough players to show up, or if they would have, they might have spread this awful plague to everybody else.
The pity party extended to Ohio State. At first, it looked like it was caught in the wrong conference. The Big Ten at first did the decent thing and flat-out cancelled the entire schedule so that it wouldn't cause anybody to get sick. Then it had second thoughts of guilt and deprived manliness and changed its mind, regardless of irresponsibility and intervention by meaningless phone calls from 45. Predictably, lots of teams did get sick and, due to weather and bowl concerns, had to cancel games (a policy determinant) instead of re-scheduling them.
Ohio State, thus, had only a six-game schedule to play, instead of the Southeastern Conference, that hearty band of devotees, which never twitched a muscle and played out its entire spate of games. Alabama won all it played, yawn, so they earned their spot in the semi-finals once again.
But that's always due to a vote from "the committee," made up of an anointed group of athletic directors, former athletes, professors (one is female, to achieve, uh, balance), a former Army Chief of Staff (whatever in the world that has to do with anything) and even politicians (Condoleeza Rice being formerly one, again the token woman, who really likes football) who deign to determine who the best teams are, sometimes regardless of record. After all, everybody knows that the Five Power Conferences ought to have, and indeed do have, the best and most powerful football teams, because, well, they say so.
So it's still mythical because there's no time to have a huuuuuuge playoff for this, because, well, it would begin to look like professional sports. Except anybody with two eyes and a flashlight knows very well that the whole thing really is professional, that it's a multi-billion dollar business, and that for some unknown reason, playing out the schedule with practically empty stadiums somehow preserves its essence and integrity, the latter of which has been highly questionable for decades now.
And let us not forget the payouts pre-arranged by the bowls, the names for which are beyond laughable. Army did not play in the Armed Forces Bowl despite a 9-2 record, but a fight did break out between Tulsa and Mississippi State at the end that likened itself to a preliminary skirmish. There really was a Cheez-It Bowl. And Wisconsin picked off four passes from an otherwise pretty good quarterback to defeat Wake Forest in the Duke Mayonnaise Bowl, Duke being in this case the name of a company and not the school in the same conference as Wake Forest. At least I don't think so, but I'll get back to you if I get more information.
It was symbolic of the endeavor that Wisconsin's quarterback, dancing with the glass trophy, nonetheless dropped it and it smashed to bits on the floor, emphasizing the meaninglessness of it all and reminding us what would happen if you dropped a jar of mayonnaise. I have never seen a jar of Duke Mayonnaise, but I understand that it's big in the South, thus justifying the playing of the game in Charlotte. Will that name brand be seared into my mind in another two weeks, and I yearn to buy several pounds of it to put on my BLTs? Doubtful. Has there ever been a Miracle Whip Bowl?
(Wait. Is Duke University named after the mayonnaise? Or vice versa? More research needed.)
But I digress. Much of the fundamental nature of things has been exposed due to the virus--doing work exclusively from home, for instance, and Zooming meetings that would take thousands in spending to have in person--that the basic nature of the college football season should also be discussed. So here it is: Alabama and Ohio State in a best-of-seven series, once a week starting the Saturday after Thanksgiving. That's the whole schedule.
You laugh. Or grimace. But you know, don't you, that since "the committee" has come down from Olympus to make its determinations, Ohio State and Alabama have managed to get into the playoffs a majority of the time. That's for a simple reason: They get the best players.
They get them because if you're one of the best high school players around, you want to play for the best. Can't you hear the recruiters say so in various living rooms? Never mind that north of the Mason-Dixon Line, everybody who isn't Ohio State hates Ohio State, and south of it, everybody who isn't Alabama hates Alabama (Yes, some football is played west of the Rockies, or at least that's what I hear, but rarely has it been considered important enough to entertain entry into the Final Four. Maybe the committee members are too tired to watch late-night football.). Never mind that both those schools are three- and four-deep absolutely everywhere on their roster, including the sausage vendors.
A few years ago, Ohio State went into the Big Ten Championship game against Wisconsin with their third-string quarterback. Normally, teams take their third-string quarterback, narrow the playlist to something less than a trip to the grocery, try to play ferocious defense, pray for a break, and hope for the best. At the very least, it creates trepidation among the faithful, who keep drinking.
Uh-uh. The guy came out flinging passes all over the place. He was about six-six and went down only after Wisconsin brought a Bradley armored vehicle onto the field. He probably should have started, except he said something funky that got picked up by the press. In such a program you do not do that without asking the coach, who will say no-no, bad-bad, mustn't do. So he had to wait his turn and got it against Wisconsin, which was quickly dispatched by the second quarter, except they had to play out the rest of the game. Final score: 59-0.
Would Ohio State's fourth-string quarterback have created a falloff in talent that would have narrowed the final result? What do you think? Wisconsin's first-string quarterback might have been Ohio State's fourth-string quarterback. Might. And he was pretty good.
Ohio State nearly blew it this year because had Indiana not started slow, that game would have at least gone into overtime, and it struggled with Northwestern in this year's Big Ten Championship game (It got Covidted out of its yearly match with Michigan, which was fortunate for Michigan.). Had it lost (gasp!), it might have created a new conversation about Cincinnati, the undefeated champs of the All-American Conference (?), not a power-fiver but not bad, with players who are good but get the letters from Alabama and Ohio State which tell them that they're not quite what they're looking for. But this season, Cincinnati was undefeated and looking like at least a potential participant in the playoffs, such that it would not embarrass "the committee." When the football gods descend from Mount Olympus, their main goal is not to be embarrassed.
It could have happened. Ohio State originally didn't have enough games played to justify its entry into any bowls, much less the national championship series, or so said the Big Ten Conference in a bold and decisive stance very much like the highly principled stance it took earlier, when it said it wouldn't play any games at all. So of course, the Big Ten backed away from that ruling, too, and Ohio State re-entered consideration from "the committee," which of course selected it.
The Big Ten must've figured that, if it maintained its purposeful stance, it might get forgotten by "the committee" in the future, and be relegated to college football's never-never land, in which scores no longer matter and it never will be good enough anymore. The whole conference might become Texas A&M (which rallied to whip North Carolina in the Fiesta Bowl, thus suggesting that since its only loss was to Alabama, it might have provided a better game the second time around) or even the Pac-12, for heaven's sake.
Cincinnati, meanwhile, bailed out "the committee" by losing the Peach Bowl (Oh, I'm sorry: the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl, screening for gay players notwithstanding) on a last-second, 53-yard field goal from SEC powerhouse Georgia. Embarrassing conversation avoided. Big-name teams preserved. Back to Olympus they went.
So with a just-barely-adequate six-game schedule played, Ohio State, either rusty from non-usage or rested and all revved up (take your pick), has just gone out and stuffed Clemson, with its cocky, garrulous coach. He reportedly had a vote in the now meaningless coaches' poll and ranked Ohio State eleventh, sparking a who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are slaughter, 49-28. It set up the inevitable showdown with Alabama, which everybody expected since all Alabama had was Notre Dame, which had lost its re-match with Clemson after barely having beaten them without Clemson's star quarterback.
So lacking a who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are demonstration from Cincinnati, Notre Dame was ranked fourth, deserved to be ranked fourth, and went out and proved they were fourth in a 31-14 loss which was played by Alabama with nowhere near the intensity and personal chips with which Ohio State drilled Clemson. So Alabama said to Notre Dame: Who the hell do you think you are, Ohio State?
The riff-raff has now been swept away, as it nearly always has been each year. Promises to be a great game, but why did we bother with the rest? Someone please tell me.
Let me suggest that Americans love to suspend reality: that someone else really has a decent chance to win the championship; that Covid really isn't a national menace; that someone other than Joe Biden won the presidential election. It's all the same. We bathe in nonsense. It's not the American Dream as much as Americans dream.
Stop the pretenses. Best of seven from now on. Let's get it over with.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
OINK!!
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