Unfair

Let’s say the NCAA decides that instead of all these football bowl game thingies, they’re gonna have something like a March Madness. All the top teams from the various collegiate conferences will go into the sixty-four bye tournament where after a month you’ll have the championship game of college football. Call it the Amateur Bowl, because we’re talking about kids under 21 playing a non-professional sport.

Kinda like the Olympics, right?

Now, let’s also say that the NCAA does this for a whole bunch of years to wild success. The college championship game, this Amateur Bowl, is televised to record numbers of folks. But in an effort to surpass what they think is possible, they decide to change the rules a bit.

For this year, the NCAA is going to allow the New York Giants and the New England Patriots football teams to compete in the college tournament. That’s right, Eli and Tom Coughlin and Tom Brady and Belicheck will be participants in the 2012 Amateur Bowl.

Why not? It’s football, right?

My question is, what’re the Las Vegas odds that the college championship game will be between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots?

How many times out of a hundred will those teams be playing in the final game? I mean, you have to allow for upsets an all, but my gut tells me that 96 or 97 times out of a hundred, the college championship game will be played between the Giants and Pats if you allow the Giants and Pats to play among a field of 62 college teams.

Know where I’m going with this?

Watching the Olympics these past ten days, I’m disgusted with the fact that certain sports (I’m talking to you, Tennis and Basketball) allow professional athletes to compete with earnest amateur competitors. I mean really: did you see the American basketball team slam dunkin’ against the Latvians? Really? Did we really expect no one but the Williams sisters would be in the female tennis finals? Really?

Is this what the Olympic spirit is all about?

Really?


Note 1: Me wife is sick of me spewing this message; I’m kind of a one-note-Johnny here, so I’m forbidden from mentioning this anymore in my home. But I have a blog, dammit! I do! So I shake my fist at the sky and say, it ain’t right, I tells ya, it ain’t right!

Note 2: Unfair. That’s a loaded word, isn’t it? Fairness in the public discussion nowadays takes on two dimensions – equality of opportunity and equality of results. Obviously, talkin’ sports, we’re talkin’ equality of opportunity. And I just don’t see it between the tattooed behemoths of the NBA steamrolling over the Svens from Sweden or the Fabiens of France.