CRAZY COLLEGE FOOTBALL, FANATICS ARE EVERYWHERE, ALBERT BROOKS DOC & CHICK FIL A
My opinion hasn’t changed for decades…… I love college football, I hate college football. I love its beginning and its action throughout, but I routinely hate its ending. Does what happened this year surprise me? Absolutely not — the sport’s playoff system is set up to fail where, frankly, this postseason plan should have caused chaos for years but was routinely bailed out until this year when everything blew up. Can you name another sport that has this type of postseason? There isn’t one. Can you name another sport where you go undefeated, win your conference title, and you have no chance to play for it all? There isn’t one. Can you name another sport where you win 29 of 30 games yet are shut out of the playoffs? Again….college football is in a class all by its lonesome—-it’s insane, archaic, and thank god the Madness is almost over. March has the right madness. College football has been maddening for years, and it drove us all mad. How fitting the long-awaited 12-team playoff arrives next year but before then, this college football playoff exposes all of its flaws before escaping to the promised land. College football history is riddled with the idiocy of the split polls, then the BCS, and then we graduated to the four-playoff system (it was never enough). How are we in 2023 and still allowing this to happen? What happened this year was bad, yet we’ve been victims of a bad system seemingly forever. The ironic part is I think Florida State would have a better chance of beating the top seed (Michigan) than the team they will meet in the bowl game (Georgia)?! Chaos abounds! This shouldn’t surprise anyone—-history, as always, is a great teacher— look at the history of those Noles who have been on both sides of the insanity. Take you back to 1993, when FSU won a National Title after losing to Notre Dame late in the season. The Irish lost to Boston College afterward, where the Noles leapfrogged an unbeaten team in West Virginia! Was that fair? A few weeks later, FSU beats Nebraska, and Florida hammers West Virginia —-Notre Dame had a case to play the Huskers as they won head-to-head against the Noles—-should have had a 12-team playoff then to sort it all out. Just nuts! FSU won another title in 1999, their first perfect season—hard to argue there, but Marshall (with future NFL stars Randy Moss and Chad Pennington) was also unbeaten—don’t you think that team would have been fun to watch in a 12-team playoff? Like many years, we never got the chance to see it unfold….. Fast forward to 2004, Auburn is undefeated but is shut out of the nonsensical “BCS” (take the C out) system we lived through for years—the Tigers watched USC and Oklahoma play for it all. Consistently dysfunctional. Along the way, we’ve had undefeated Boise State and even UCF, who claimed to be national champs on the outside looking in—we have deserved better for a long time. College football has been a mess for years. It’s fitting it all blows up before they finally get it right. In an era where we can Zoom, Facetime, and create cutting-edge AI technology, why is college football still creating a playoff akin to the telegraph and the covered wagons? It is inexcusable this system is substandard to every other sport (even their own in the lower divisions that have had a postseason for years)? I feel for FSU quarterback Jordan Travis and my FSU friends, who likely wouldn’t have won it all but should have had a chance to see….? College football, you’ve been a wreck for years. We have missed out on so many priceless postseason moments a 12-team playoff would have delivered over decades of meaningless bowl games—finally, the insanity will end this year–2024 can’t be here soon enough. College football craziness, the first stop in another run around the Naborhood. As always, thanks for stopping by. ALL FANS HAVE THEIR “CRAZY: Speaking of college football, I can’t remember the last time I wore a T-shirt and hat of a team I was rooting for to a game (probably when I was in college at the University of Florida). It’s crazy that it was over 30 years ago. I always get a kick out of fans who say well, the Gators have the worst fans, or Bama has the worst fans, or have you been to Baton Rouge? Those LSU fans are the worst. You wanna know the truth? All fan bases “have their crazy”! I take you to the recent SEC Championship, along with my sister decked out in Bama gear to support my daughter, a freshman, and found our seats–smack dab in the middle of what felt like the Georgia Bulldogs fan club. I hadn’t felt that way in years, and it was fun at first—walking down the row, getting looks and a few light-hearted jabs. Then the Dawgs score first?! Then the crazy ensued….. A young fan in front of me (probably in college) starts flicking us off (I started laughing yet thinking, are you serious?!) For the next hour, for every penalty against Georgia, we heard, “can’t play 11 vs 18 all day. Those officials are taking over the game.” On and on and on clearly have spent too many afternoons in front of my TV or in a quiet press box where they require “no cheering.” I forgot how crazy some fans can get. But here is the thing—I saw the Georgia Bulldog crazy, I’m not naive—every fan base has the “us against the world, I drank too much in pregame, so I’m gonna flick off the opposition early” fans. There is Gator crazy, Bama crazy, Oregon St crazy…..and so on. The funny thing—-that little wipper snapper was pretty quiet in the second half—he left before I got to say goodbye?! ALBERT BROOKS DOCUMENTARY: There are so many moments I feel my late parents’ spirit—recently,