CWS, but no football playoff?
Posted: Friday, June 22, 2007 12:37 AM
We can't have a playoff in college football because it would make the season too long and compromise academics. That's what college presidents tell us every time they vote to perpetuate the absurd BCS system of not choosing a legitimate NCAA football champion.
So where are these guys now to complain about the length of the college baseball season? Oh, I forgot. school let out a month ago, and the presidents are probably in Switzerland or Vienna, recharging their batteries after a busy year of moral rectitude.
Meanwhile, college baseball goes on, with players who have already graduated and technically aren't even in school anymore still at least three days from ending the longest season in college sports.
USC played its first game this year at the end of January and its last game at the end of May.
Here's the schedule for Rice, which was finally eliminated Thursday in the College World Series semifinals. Note that the Owls' first game was on Feb. 3, more than two weeks before the major leagues began spring training and nearly five months ago.
North Carolina, which beat Rice to get to the finals, started play on Feb. 16. Oregon State, the other team in the finals, started play on Jan. 25 – in Hawaii, which isn't a bad road trip. After four games in three days in Hawaii, the team came home, then few to Georgia for three days ending on Feb. 11. Five days later, the Beavers were in Arizona for another three-day weekend. The following Friday, it was a three-day trip to Southern California. Then it was out to Texas for four days.
This sort of schedule continues to the end of May, with teams playing about 14 games a month for a total of 70 or more on the season, including playoffs. You have to figure pre-season practice starts well before the first game, so we're talking about a six month season that continues well after school's out.
And the college presidents think that the football season's too long?
In football, you've got 12 or 13 games in just over three months, with at least half of those games at home, meaning that teams travel only five or six Fridays a year, come back to campus on Saturday night, and have a day off before classes resume on Monday. Then there's five to seven weeks off before one bowl game.
And the presidents tell us that's too much.
But the baseball schedule is just right. Every weekend is Friday-Sunday games with a few Mondays and Tuesdays thrown in, and maybe a Thursday here and there. And when they're not playing, there's practice.
The beginning of the season is ridiculous for the cold-climate teams, with long plane flights every Friday to get to the warm-weather opponent, a long trip back Sunday night, and then classes on Monday.
I'm not going to say it's too much season, because I'm not playing it. But I am saying that if you can play baseball for five months and continue almost until July, then you can darned well have a football playoff.
And if you don't want to have a football playoff, at least have the decency to say it's about the money and don't preach to us about the importance of academics and the welfare of the student-athletes. If you're worried about the kids, why play them during their vacation, the only time they're allowed to get a job and make a little money? Why play them so long the kids who are drafted into the pros arrive late for the beginning of the paying careers?
It's about the money. Just like football.
