Last night, as I slumped back in a large chain in my living room, sluggish thanks to a full 85% of my total blood volume being directed to my intestines to aid in digesting the bountiful feast of the day, my mind wandered from the Green Bay Packers to the Badger football team to Halle Berry’s orange bikini in Die Another Day (Bond marathon on TV) to the Badger basketball team, and a warm sense of satisfaction swept over me. Truthfully, I am thankful for each of those things, but to say so distinctly on a Thursday in November might suggest my interest wanes in the other months. I’m thankful for the success each of those programs have achieved, even if the football team has been maddening at times, but I would still be paying attention (and likely defending their ability) even if losses were piling up. I’m thankful for each of you who may be reading this, the ones who justify the watching and the thinking and the writing we do at Badger of Honor. But more than anything, I’m thankful that none of you will be overly upset if I scrap this Thanksgiving theme.
Instead, let’s talk about logic.
We’re entering the time of the year when BCS mayhem is a major talking point because it combines two things America loves: football, and incessantly complaining about a system put in place by The Man and then voraciously consuming that product anyway. I often wonder if the men in charge of the BCS and NCAA experience emotion or flashes of rational thought anymore, but I can’t imagine they’re real bent out of shape about “controversy” when BCS money keeps pouring in. It’s unfortunate that the continued financial success of postseason college football pushes aside any real incentive to preserve the dignity of the “National Champion” title, but that seems like the case. While the system pans out alright in years when only one or two major-conference teams run the table all the way to the Championship game, there are often questions about who else deserves to be there, particularly in a season like this with a whole bunch of 1-loss teams with legitimate claims to the number two spot.
There’s a logical disconnect at work here. The NCAA has designed the BCS as a system to determine the best college football team in the nation, but the criteria used to do so aren’t well defined. As a result, we’re all forming arguments based on different premises. We’re reaching conclusions that might be valid, but only one can be sound.
Ranking teams or players based on undefined parameters is good for rabble-rousing, but it does little to settle the issue at hand. LeBron James is the best player in the NBA, but he doesn’t have a ring, so somebody might argue that he’s not the best player in the NBA. BANG, logical conflict, brought about because winning championships gets construed as the most important factor in individual greatness. It’s the kind of conflict that leads to Penn State falling outside the top-30 in Sports-Reference’s College Football Rater. The Nittany Lions’ performance on the field is undeniable, but their legacy and position in the hierarchy of college football these days is in turmoil thanks to the allegations surrounding the program.
All we really know is that the BCS is determined by some composite of other ranking systems, including human voters and computer algorithms. But human computers (you know, brains) are subjective, and even the automated rankings are skewed by owners and programmers choosing to include whatever quantifiable values they like.
How do we reconcile college football with logic? We stop accepting conclusions based on faulty reasoning. Hell, we could all decide that faulty reasoning is all we need, but we’d better at least agree on it. The whole sports universe could probably use a little more logic. For example, I wish we’d stop shaking our heads and passing it off as no big deal when Skip Bayless says Tim Tebow is better than Aaron Rodgers. Make the jerk explain himself, and when he says “Tebow is just a winner”, punch him in the face and tell him cliched sportspeak isn’t going to fly anymore.
No more stalling on a college football playoff because it will “cheapen the regular season, the greatest regular season in the world!”. If we want a National Championship Game that counts for something, then our argument’s conclusion (the best team in the nation) has to follow from its premises, and the only premises that are absolutely unassailable are wins in playoff games.
Sports are thrilling, emotional, and often ridiculous. That doesn’t mean we can’t show a little rigor in how we discuss them.