People often forget the thing that made the first Rocky such a great movie:  Rocky loses.

He knows he can’t beat the champ. Apollo Creed is too fast and too strong.  Instead he resolves to go the distance, to stand toe to toe with the champ and take all the punishment he has to offer.  In the late rounds, Rocky, battered and bloody, finally gets inside, and hammers Apollo’s ribs with everything he has.

But he still loses.

We know how the underdog sports story goes.  We’ve seen it a million times.  There’s a team of rejects and losers, and they all band together to go on a miracle run and beat the champions on a miracle play by their miracle player.  The crowd cheers, the team captain gets the girl, and everyone lives happily ever after.

There are so many movies about the underdogs winning, that as soon as you sit down, you know that they’re actually favored.  The true underdog in the movies is the dominant team, since they’re the ones who are destined to lose.

That’s the beautiful thing about sports.  If Butler and Duke were playing in the movies, then we could all comfortably relax, knowing that the scrappy team from a small school in Indiana would find a way to beat the well-funded giants of the ACC.  But in real life, you just don’t know.

Most of the time, when the small school runs up against the big one, they get crushed.  For all the talk of upsets, the reason they’re special is because they don’t happen very often.  The dominant teams are dominant for a reason: they almost always win.

If David had to fight Goliath in a best of seven series or a 12 round bout, David loses.  The slingshot trick might get him the first time, but he’d be ready in the second round.

Many people have compared Butler’s run to the movie Hoosiers, where a small Indiana high school wins the state championship on a last second shot (almost …).  Easy to see the parallels, but they had the wrong movie.  Butler was Rocky.  They didn’t win.  But they stood toe to toe with the champ.  They went the distance: 13 seconds left, down 1 in the national title game, with the ball in their playmaker’s hands.

And that’s really all we can ask for.  So many people say “I want to be champion,” but that’s not possible.  There can only be one champ.  The most we can ask for, maybe even all we can ask for, is just one shot.

To be standing on the field of battle in the Valley of Elah, facing Goliath, slingshot in hand.  To be facing the champ in the late rounds and finally get inside and start throwing punches to the body with all the power in your soul.  To stand on the court, 13 seconds left, down 1, with the ball in your hands.

Because in real life, that rock from the slingshot has a habit of glancing off the helmet.  The champ wins by split decision.  The last shot bounces achingly off the inside of the rim.

Underdog stories are usually fantasy.  Butler showed us something from real life.  Few, if any of us, will every get to be a champion.  But maybe, if we work hard enough, if we sweat and bleed and claw, we might go the distance.  Maybe, just maybe, we might stand on the court, 13 seconds left, down 1, with the ball in our hands …

Photo credit: Getty Images

It’s easy to take the wrong lesson from recent events on Wall Street.  A bunch of greedy CEOs used shaky mortgages and fancy math tricks to make a huge pile of money in the housing bubble.  When the economy collapsed, millions lost their jobs, but the CEOs all got bailed out by the government.  As punishment for being greedy and wrecking the economy, the CEOs are now again getting million dollar bonuses.

So I can understand why people in sports are looking to Wall Street for a model.  They figure that maybe if they try to destroy a given sport, Washington will bail them out, and then they’ll get million dollar bonuses too.  What could possibly go wrong?

The NFL

The NFL is heading towards a lockout in 2011.  As opposed to a strike, where the players refuse to play, a lockout is when the owners refuse to let the players play, resulting in a cancelled or shortened season.  The owners opted out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which included a salary cap for teams and revenue sharing for small market franchises, at the end of 2009.

“On a scale of 1 to 10,” Smith said Thursday, “it’s a 14.”

With that, the executive director of the NFL Players Association painted perhaps the bleakest picture yet regarding prospects of labor strife in the league, which could be looking at a 2010 season with no salary cap and, if the collective bargaining agreement expires as scheduled in March 2011, a lockout that year.

While the players would suffer, the owners would get by just fine with the $5 billion in television contracts.  Still, some of the owners are crying poverty.

Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said Wednesday that several NFL owners are facing a financial shortfall that could create “long-term problems for the league” and ultimately result in a lockout.

Here’s where the greed comes in.  NFL franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  The Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins are worth $1.5 billion.  Many of the men who own football franchises are billionaires, and those NFL franchises have increased their wealth.

This chart shows the value, revenue and operating income of each franchise. [Operating Income is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization]

Of all the teams, only two, the Seattle Seahawks and the mismanaged Oakland Raiders, are losing money.  Even the perennially terrible Detroit Lions made $18.5 million.  True, they still have to pay taxes on that, but I can’t feel too bad about a team with $10-12 million left over.

It is true that the value and revenue of some teams declined in 2009.  Then again, we are in a recession.  Everyone’s revenue has gone down (except for those bailed-out bankers).  The NFL is still making piles of money.

The players also make a lot of money, but they do it by sacrificing their bodies, and they do it for a short time.  Retired players face the dangers of past concussions, which can lead to mental problems, dementia, depression and even death.  The wear and tear on player’s body can lead to a lifetime of medical problems.

I would suggest that they start by looking at the knees of Dobler, a guard for the Cardinals, Saints and Bills, who made three Pro Bowls and earned $450,000 in 10 seasons, ending in 1981. His knees are more road maps than functioning joints, part of the 34-surgery nightmare he endured to be a football player.

The NFL has a good thing going.  Billions of dollars in revenue, a rabid fan base, and a deep place in American culture.  The owners of 31 teams (Green Bay is publicly owned), the poorest of them still multi-millionaires, are willing to risk all of this to increase their incomes by a few more millions.

I, for one, will be watching college football in 2011, and more so if the NFL cancels or shortens the 2011 season.  When the NFL returns from their labor spat, I might still tune in.  Then again, I might not.  I expect a lot of fans will feel the same way.

The NCAA

March Madness is just around the corner, and it may be the only sporting event outside of football (and maybe the World Series) to truly capture the nation’s attention every year.  There will be office pools, upsets, Cinderellas, last-second shots and heartbreaking losses.  It’s the perfect end to the college basketball season.

The NCAA is well paid for putting on its yearly tournament.  It has an 11-year, $6 billion contract with CBS, which it can opt out of this year.

Far from content with having a lucrative sports icon, the NCAA is considering expanding the tournament to 96 teams.

There are plenty of reasons this is a terrible idea: it would make the regular season even less important; there would be fewer Cinderella teams because all of the weaker teams would have to survive an opening game (if you’re 15 seed Richmond, you don’t get to play 2 seed Syracuse in the opening round; you have to beat an 18 seed first); even more mediocre teams would get into the tournament (if you’re on the bubble, it’s probably because you suck- any team that goes 18-12 in a major conference cannot claim to be good); millions of people would risk carpal tunnel and writers cramp from filling in the enormous brackets; the brackets probably wouldn’t fit on one page, etc.

So why is the NCAA contemplating a major overhaul of America’s spring obsession?  It’s all about the money.

The NCAA is also dealing with the reality that its current 65-team tournament is unlikely to fetch as high a price tag as its current deal, struck in 1999 when both the economy and network television were in far better shape. While still hugely popular, the tournament has seen its viewership decrease over the years.
One way to maintain or increase existing rights fees is to move some or all of the games to a cable network, which isn’t dependent on advertising dollars like a traditional network.

It stands to reason, then, that the addition of a cable outlet would allow the NCAA to add more games, and in turn, presumably garner more revenue. A 96-team field would add 31 games, bringing the total to 95. It’s easy to envision ESPN spreading those games across its various channels, or CBS moving the surplus games it currently licenses to DirecTV (for its “Mega March Madness” package) to TNT and/or TBS.

Here, as in the NFL, we have executives looking to maximize their short term profits at the expense of the fans.  What they fail to realize is that if they destroy or dilute their product, or if they alienate their fans, then all their projected future revenue won’t mean a thing, because people will just stop watching.

After all, I’m sure there are other sports out there.  Rugby is fun, although it could use a forward pass . . . there’s Australian Rules Football, that’s an interesting game . . . curling . . . lacrosse . . . jai-alai . . . professional badmitton . . .

I love college football.  I’ve been known on many occasions to sit down in front of any two random teams playing a game, and end up yelling at the TV.  So it is with great sadness that I make this comment:  The Bowl Season is anticlimactic.

During the regular season, every game matters.  If you’re a top team, then one critical loss can put you out of the national championship hunt (except for LSU in ’07).  Those upsets can happen anytime, anywhere (tell me you saw BYU over OU coming).  For teams lower down the ladder, a few key losses can make or break their quest for a conference championship.  For teams below that, there is often a very narrow margin between making and missing a lucrative trip to a bowl game.

Rivalry games matter regardless of the record.  When Auburn and Alabama or Ohio State and Michigan play, the stadium will be packed with raving fans and eyeballs will be glued to HDTVs across the country, even if both teams are 4-7.  As a Kansas fan, I want to beat Missouri all the time at everything.  If Mizzou was playing the devil himself, I would be yelling “Go Big Red!” at the top of my lungs.

Every game matters.  The teams are playing for something, be it the national title, conference title, bowl eligibility, or just plain hatred.

That’s why I generally prefer college to pro football.  In the NFL, if you lose a game, meh, it’s no big deal.  10-6 will almost always get you into the playoffs.  Losing a game to your rivals stings, but 1) you get to play them twice, so you have another shot and 2) most NFL teams are geographically separated enough that you don’t meet the other team’s fans on a regular basis.  In college, many rivalries are close enough that opposing fans live in the same neighborhoods, work in the same offices and eat at the same restaurants.

There’s a particularly sick feeling to walking into a bar after a big loss and seeing fans of the other team celebrating.

December and January reverse all of that.  Instead of playing for something, most of the teams are playing for nothing.  For example, Rutgers beat UCF in the St. Petersburg Bowl.  Is anyone going to remember that Rutgers proudly carried home the coveted St. Petersburg Bowl trophy at the end of the 2009 season?

On the other hand, the NFL goes to a playoff, which teams are fighting desperately to get into at the end of the regular season, and battling to move on to the Super Bowl in the playoffs.

[Playoff.  Hmm.  I wonder if anyone would watch a college football playoff?]

The teams you meet in a bowl aren’t very compelling.  Often teams play that are spread over the country.  There’s no animosity between teams, because they never see each other.  There’s no motive for revenge.  With the exception of that awkward post-game time when both teams fans are hitting the bars in team colors, the fans never see each other.  There’s no one to remind you of a loss, and no one for you to remind of a victory.

It’s important for a school to go to a bowl because of the exposure and money.  You can tell recruits you’re a bowl team.  That’s all it is: an exhibition.

The stakes are a little higher in the BCS games.  Unlike the New Mexico Bowl, people will actually remember who won the Rose Bowl.  Even then, winning or losing, while slightly more important, matters less than getting there.  This year Ohio State will proudly tell everyone that it won the Rose Bowl, and Oregon will proudly tell everyone that it went to the Rose Bowl (or vice versa).

The only bowl game that truly matters is the National Championship.  That’s the trophy that goes in the center of the case.  That’s the one that people remember.  But even the National Title game is marred by the process of entry.  This year Texas and Alabama are playing.  Are they the two best teams?  I tend to think so, but neither of them have played TCU, Cincinnati, or Boise State, all of whom remain undefeated.  Last year, Oklahoma got in, despite losing to Texas head-to-head.

All of these factors cast a pall over the bowl season.  I’ll still watch; it’s still football, and it’s a long time from January to next September.  I can only compare the excitement and energy of the last weekend of the regular season, when Cincinnati edged Pittsburgh 45-44 in the snow (oh how I love watching football in the snow- from the couch), Alabama shocked Florida and Nebraska and Texas played a defensive duel that came down to the final second.  Even the Georgia Tech-Clemson game in the ACC was good; I didn’t see it because I ran out of room on the DVR, but it sounded exciting.

Those games had everything great about college football: passion, rivalry, and playing for championships.  With a few exceptions, the bowls have none of those.

I’ll still be excited come January 1.  Just not as excited as I was December 3.

Image Credit: Daily Double 84 .This post also appears at Heretical Ideas.

Every year, the Downtown Athletic Club in New York awards the Heisman Trophy to the most hyped college football player on a championship team.  In recent years, they’ve gone an even shorter route, and just given the award to one of the QBs in the BCS Title game.  You have to go back to Ron Dayne in 1999 to find a player who didn’t play in the championship game during his career, and the only running back to win since Dayne was the electric Reggie Bush in 2004.

Certainly, there have been magnificent individual performances by players for elite teams.  Bradford threw a gazillion TD passes in 2008.  Tebow was unstoppable in 2007, in a year that Florida didn’t compete for the national title.  Vince Young (who didn’t win the Heisman) and Reggie Bush (who did) were dazzling athletes.

Winning is not the only measure of an individual performance.  Football is the ultimate team game.  If you had Lebron James and 4 idiots, you would win games in college basketball (and maybe the pros).  If you have Tim Tebow and 21 idiots, you’re going 0-12 (maybe 1-11).  Winning in football is about having talent at every position, or at least enough of it sprinkled throughout your team that you can make plays on offense and defense.

Individual performances are captivating, but they are not a consistent path to victory.  When evaluating an individual, there are other criteria.  Here’s how I would evaluate who deserves the Heisman Trophy.

1)  Who is most critical to their team’s success?

What we’re looking for here is not total wins and losses for a team, but rather the difference in wins caused by the addition of a key player.  Certain positions, like QB for Miami in the ’80s or USC in the 2000s, have produced an incredible number of talented players.  Many of those players have won individual awards (USC has Heisman QBs in Palmer in 2002 and Leinart in 2904; Miami won with Testaverde in 1986 and Torretta in 1992).

The problem with these positions at these schools is that the QBs are often not big difference makers in the team’s final record.  There’s talent all over the field.  If they didn’t have that Heisman QB, they usually have someone waiting behind him who’s just as good.

This year, Mark Ingram for Alabama has a similar problem.  With a nasty defense and a big offensive line, that team would win a bunch of games whether he was there or not.

For a  true difference maker, you have to look for a guy who’s central to his teams success.  I’ve only watched Clemson play a couple of times this year, but from what I’ve seen, CJ Spiller is their entire offense.  He returns kicks and punts.  They hand him the ball on first and second down and throw it too him on third.  He even threw a TD pass.  Clemson went 8-5 and earned a trip to the ACC Championship game with Spiller; without him, who knows?  They certainly wouldn’t have that big win over Miami, and they might have dropped a couple more.  A player that takes his team from 5-7 or 6-6 to 8-4 is a difference maker.

2) The Wow factor

One of the big changes with the spread of cable television has been the huge increase in the number of games on TV.  Everybody’s on, and if not, you can see highlights.  That’s why one of the big factors for a lot of people, me included, is the highlight reel play.

When you look back at clips of old Heisman winners like Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker, they are still stunning.  I want the next generation to be able to look back at the Heisman winners of our time and have the same reaction.  The Heisman Trophy should go to a guy who makes jaw-dropping plays.

Oddly enough, some of the most recent jaw-droppers have not won the trophy, especially at QB.  Vince Young didn’t win, but he faced Reggie Bush.  Michael Vick (may he rot) made unbelievable plays.  Neither player has a Heisman.  Neither does Peyton Manning or Marshall Faulk.  Meanwhile, Ron Dayne and Gino Torretta do have one, which should tell you something about the nature of the award.

There are several guys who have made a number of incredible plays.  From just this weekend, Dion Lewis of Pitt seemed to vanish into hordes of tacklers and squirt out the other side time and again.  Mardy Gilyard of Cincinnati made several season-saving plays.  A week earlier, Dezmon Briscoe of KU and Danario Alexander of Mizzou staged a receiving duel in which both had over 200 yards with catch after incredible catch.

Few players have done it all year.

So which player combines the critical importance to his team’s success, and those elusive highlight reel plays?  Spiller makes a good case, but for me, there’s only one guy who should win the Heisman this year.

Very few times in my life have I seen a defensive player take over a game.  I saw Aqib Talib do it for Kansas in 2007. In the pros, I saw Derrick Thomas and Lawrence Taylor terrorize passers and force game-changing plays.  I’ve seen Ray Lewis terrorize the middle of the field.

But I’ve never seen a game completely dominated by a defensive tackle.  Ndamukong Suh destroyed the interior of Texas’s line in the Big 12 Championship game.  These are lineman at an elite football school, and he tossed them aside like they were children.  Texas couldn’t run, and they couldn’t pass because of the pressure of the D-line.

Not only did Suh destroy Texas, but he did it all year long.  Nebraska’s success is based entirely on their defense.  If you go 9-4 without scoring any points, you know your defense is incredible.  That defense is based around the interior dominance of Suh.  Without him, they don’t beat OU, and don’t come within :01 of winning the Big 12.

As for highlight plays, all you have to do is watch.  He moves sideline to sideline like a linebacker.  He shucks blockers, hammers running backs, and devours quarterbacks.

[I think it’s unfortunate Nebraska didn’t show some imagination and let him carry the ball in short yardage and goalline situations, because that might have given the Heisman voters enough of an excuse to vote for a defensive player, like it did with Charles Woodson in 97.]

So there’s my argument, and there’s my vote: Ndamukong Suh, DT of Nebraska, for the Heisman Trophy.

This article also appears on Heretical Ideas.

At the end of every season, there is a game of musical chairs as coaching vacancies open up and some assistant coaches and head coaches at smaller programs get called up to head coaching jobs at big schools. Every year the sports writers ask the same question: Why aren’t there more black coaches? Their inclination, of course, is to blame racism. Skeptics counter by asking why anyone should believe that racism would trump a desire to win and that even if racism persists it is unlikely that it would do so in such a self-defeating manner.

Recently on ESPN360, they ran a report at half time on University at Buffalo head coach Turner Gill, who has been turned down twice in the last two years for open coaching positions at more prestigious universities (Auburn and Nebraska). Charles Barkley and many others believe that the reason he was turned down was because he is black (or because he is a black man married to a white woman).

Richard Thompson Ford wrote a great piece in the aftermath of Barkley’s remarks, suggesting that while the athletics programs themselves would likely love the good publicity that comes with hiring a black coach and all athletics departments want coaches that will win, they are stymied by the uncertainty of knowing whether a new coach will win or not and the belief that a white coach that has a little bit of trouble will retain fan and alumni support more easily than would a black coach in the same situation.

As evidence of racism, Auburn’s critics point out that Gill’s won-loss record was better than [new Auburn head coach Gene] Chizik’s. But a coach has to do more than win games: He also has to schmooze the boosters and alumni who contribute money to the college. One might even say that, from the perspective of the university, winning is a means to the end of successful fundraising. A coach who can rake in the contributions might be a “better fit” than a coach who wins more often but can’t charm the alumni.

But couldn’t fundraising success be related to race? It’s not hard to imagine a good ol’ boy booster network that responds more generously to a white coach than a black one. If the school’s hiring decisions are driven by the racial preferences of their donors, that’s still race discrimination.

I got to see first-hand the interactions that can provide disincentives to hire black coaches a year or two back when my alma mater had a vacancy and one of the two finalists for the job was a black assistant at a successful program. The university’s message boards were rife with comments about how the coach would bring his “homies” down to our university and our program would be on probation in a couple years. There was no reason to believe that this coach was unethical and there is no reason to believe that black coaches are unethical as a group. Nonetheless, it was comments like this and suggestions that the only reason he was being considered was “affirmative action” that probably make some programs think twice before taking a chance on a black coach rather than taking a chance on a white one.

Unfortunately, the hiring of a head coach is one of those things that it is extremely hard to pin down as far as qualifications go. Some schools put more emphasis on having head coach experience while others on recruiting. For any given hire, there are literally dozens of candidates that fit the basic criteria, so schools are looking for that bit extra. Nebraska say they took a pass on Gill because they wanted a coach with stronger defensive credentials. Auburn’s hire was utterly baffling, but Auburn has a terrific program and there were more white coaches than black coaches that had a stronger case for the job than the guy they ultimately hired. In the ESPN360 report, a couple people said that the lack of black coaches proves that the entire method of picking coaches needs to be changed. But how? Every program’s needs are different. Programs hire their coaches in different ways.

But one factor left frequently undiscussed is the role that all of the kvetching journalists and black coach boosters play in the process. They’re not influential enough to get Turner Gill a better job, and because the hiring process for coaches can be so peculiar they have difficulty making the case that any specific hiring at any specific university is racist, but they are influential enough to give a program that took a chance on a black coach a real black eye if they decide to fire that coach later on.

The more high-profiled example of this is Ty Willingham, the former coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Washington Huskies. Notre Dame took a chance on hiring Willingham. To hear Notre Dame tell it, things didn’t work out and they decided that they wanted to take a chance on someone else. To hear the sports media tell it, either Notre Dame suddenly woke up one day and realized that it hired a black coach and fired him because he was black or, somewhat more reasonably, they held him to a higher standard than they would have held a white coach.

The second interpretation is not wholly unreasonable, but it is also non-falsifiable. Willingham had, at Notre Dame, the exact winning percentage (.583) that his predecessor, Bob Davie, had. Davie was given a couple more seasons than Willingham was given, but giving Davie a couple extra years didn’t help much and so they may have just figured that giving Willingham a couple extra years wouldn’t, either. Maybe what Notre Dame did was fair and maybe it wasn’t, but the amount of punishment that they took from the media was substantial. Three years later, the University of Washington had to make a decision about whether or not to retain Willingham, who had a winning percentage only one-tenth of one percent higher than his predecessor (.305 to .304) who was fired after only two years on the job. They gave Willingham another season and they were rewarded not only with a winless season (0-12), but a season where they didn’t beat the spread even once.

The perception that it takes an 0-12 record and/or four miserable seasons to fire a black coach makes schools much less likely to hire a black coach in the first place. That’s not to say that all firings are controversial, but administrators never know which will be. UCLA’s Karl Dorrell (.564 winning percentage) and Kansas State’s Ron Prince (.459) had stronger cases that they were mistreated than Willingham, but almost randomly Willingham became a cause celebre. Little noise was made in favor of Dorrell and none for Prince, but every bad season that Willingham’s successor has at Notre Dame (Charlie Weis’s winning percentage prior to the start of this year was .580) is proof of Notre Dame’s racism in the eyes of many and it has become a black eye that won’t heal.

And even if you can avoid the harsh eyes of the media, you can still face penalties in the courts. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette fired Jerry Baldwin after he failed to win more than 6 games in three seasons (6-27), he turned around and sued the school and won two million dollars. Now, one could argue that Louisiana-Lafayette shouldn’t have the expectation to win, but I am sure that the ULL AD would like to be the ones to make that determination. Baldwin’s successor isn’t doing much better (.390 to Baldwin’s .182), but he’s still doing better.

New Mexico got some good press by hiring Mike Locksley. Since then, he has been the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit, he punched an assistant coach, and has gone 0-5 with the only one of those games within twenty points being the first loss to annual rival New Mexico State in six years (UNM has a 66-28 record with NMSU overall with only 14 losses since 1940). Do you fire a coach after one season? That’s always a tricky question. Made even trickier if they fire the first black coach they ever had after one season.

As much heat as Auburn took for declining to hire Turner Gill, they may have saved themselves some headaches in the longer run. They had just fired a coach (Tommy Tuberville) with a winning percentage higher (.680) than Gill produced in any of this three years at Buffalo. Perhaps Auburn’s expectations are unrealistic or perhaps not, though ultimately Auburn would probably prefer to make that decision for itself. Maybe the Gene Chizik’s success at Auburn will continue or maybe it won’t. But by hiring Chizik they retained the ability to define what they consider success to be. New Mexico may or may not have that luxury.

The past two weekends have been big for those schools hoping to break into the lucrative Bowl Championship Series at the end of the season.  Some schools have made big statements.  BYU beat defending Big 12 champion #2 Oklahoma, Houston upset #5 Oklahoma State, and Boise State smothered Oregon.  Southern Miss and TCU both beat Virginia, but everyone is doing that this year.  TCU posted a tough win at Clemson, and Houston won a thriller over Texas Tech.

Utah carried the banner for the BCS busters last year, when they went undefeated and won the Sugar Bowl against Alabama.  This year did not begin as well, as Utah lost in week 3 to Oregon.

Just as easily as teams ascend to the top, they can fall back again.  BYU was the country’s darling after upsetting OU.  That lasted for all of two weeks before they were depantsed at home by Florida State, 54-28.  Southern Miss lost a close game to Kansas, which ended their undefeated dreams.

There is a yearly struggle for teams from the non-BCS conferences of the WAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, MAC and the Sun Belt, although in recent years only teams from the Mountain West (Utah) and the WAC (Boise State) have been able to earn an appearance in a BCS bowl.

It’s very difficult to know just how good these teams are.  These teams play in weaker conferences (although recently the Big East has been looking anything but powerful) and because of their conference affiliations, they play weak teams for most of the year.  There are only a few chances for a BCS buster to schedule a big name school.

A lot of programs don’t want to play teams like Utah or Boise St, for obvious reasons.  If Texas plays TCU and Texas wins, then no one is surprised, and Texas gains little in the way of prestige.  If TCU wins, it catapults their season, and Texas is embarrassed (Oklahoma did lose to TCU a few years back, and then did it again this year with BYU- apparently they didn’t get the memo about scheduling dangerous teams from non-BCS conferences).

The big school has nothing to gain and everything to lose.  That’s why many of the early challenges are against good but not great teams from major conferences: Boise St and Utah against Oregon, TCU against Clemson, Houston against OSU and Texas Tech, Southern Miss against Kansas.

Here’s another problem: anybody can get fired up for one game.  Most of the non-BCS schools circle that one big game against the major conference opponent.  They come out and play with emotion, and often win the game.  Then they go back to feasting on weaker conference opponents.

Almost any team can pull an upset on a given Saturday (just ask Washington and USC) but one game doesn’t make an entire season.  If a BCS buster were to play in a major conference, would they still make the BCS?  If a solid team from a major conference played in the WAC or the Mountain West, would they suddenly become a BCS contender?

Obviously we can’t play these scenarios out.  Even NCAA 2010 doesn’t let you do it (as far as I know-although that would be a cool feature).  All we can do is make projections.

For this little thought experiment, I took Kansas, the #20 team, picked to finish between 3^rd and 5^th in the Big 12 and a team I follow closely, and Boise State, ranked #8 and picked to finish first in the WAC.

Here are their schedules:

Kansas

9-5 Northern Colorado

9-12 @ UTEP

9-19 Duke

9-26 Southern Miss

10-3 Bye

10-10 Iowa State

10-17 @ Colorado

10-24 Oklahoma

10-31 @Texas Tech

11-7 @Kansas State

11-14 Nebraska

11-21 @ Texas

11-28 vs. Missouri in Kansas City

Boise State

9-3 Oregon

9-12 Miami (OH)

9-18 @ Fresno State

9-26 @ Bowling Green

10-3 UC Davis

10-14 @ Tulsa

10-25 @ Hawaii

10-31 San Jose St

11-6 @ La Tech

11-14 Idaho

11-20 @ Utah State

11-27 Nevada

12-5 New Mexico State

It looks like Kansas will probably lose to #10 Oklahoma, #2 Texas, probably Texas Tech on the road, and maybe #25 Nebraska at home or Missouri in Kansas City.  That leaves them at 8-4 with a solid bowl bid.

Boise State, having beaten Oregon, looks to run the table, and, barring an upset, they will be 13-0 and vying for a possible BCS bid.  The main danger is that another school like TCU or Houston would run the table as well and jump ahead of them in the final BCS rankings.

What if they switched?

Kansas, playing at home in a loud environment, could probably get past Oregon.  If they do, they too would be heavily favored to run the table and finish 13-0 and win the WAC.

Boise State has a strong team, but I don’t think they would be favored against Oklahoma, even on the blue turf, or on the road against Texas.  It’s hard to tell, but between at Texas Tech, home against Nebraska, and a neutral site game against Missouri (would they still be a deeply hated rival?) they would probably lose at least one, and maybe as many as 3 games.  With losses to OU, Texas, Texas Tech and maybe Nebraska or Missouri, Boise State would finish 8-4 with a solid bowl bid.

You could play this scenario out with a variety of different teams.  Switch TCU and North Carolina and see what happens.  Trade Houston and Nebraska.  Flop Utah and Oregon State.

In most of the examples, the solid team from the major conference is going to have a very good chance of finishing with an equal or better record than the BCS buster.  In a big conference, the BCS buster is likely to lose several games.

Or would they?

This is the central problem with the BCS busters.  If you go 12-0, know one really knows how good you are.  At 11-1, you can clearly say that you are worse than one other team.  But 12-0 presents a special set of problems.  Maybe the BCS buster is just a solid football team with a weak schedule.

Or, maybe they really are an elite team and deserve to compete at the highest levels.  After all, Utah is 2-0 in the BCS, and Boise St is 1-0.  A loss by Hawaii brings the non-BCS conference schools to a 3-1 record, showing that they can compete with the elite teams.

The point is you can’t tell how good a team is unless you play the games.  Non-BCS teams don’t have a legitimate shot to play for the national championship, mostly because it’s difficult for them to prove how good they are (proving how bad they are is easy- just lose to Idaho or UC Davis, and we’ll know you suck).

[James Joyner has an interesting take on a related college football problem playoff (12 teams is the correct number).  Let Utah and Boise State and Houston step onto the field and see how many games they can win.  If they can beat 3 or 4 good teams at the end of the season, then they can have a national championship and stop whining about it.  If they can’t then, there’s no shame in that.  Most schools couldn’t beat 3 or 4 good teams in a row either.

That way, we won’t have to rely on silly thought experiments in online articles to find out who really deserves a shot.

Image Credit: Washington Post. This article also appears on Heretical Ideas.

In vacuum-tube news, have you heard the big story? ABC will televise the new upstart American Football League. With one NFL game on NBC each Sunday and another on CBS, if there’s also a game on ABC, that means three pro football games on TV in the same week! Add the one college game, and that’s four televised football games weekly. Plus, ABC says it’s going to bring two complete camera crews to each game, instead of the standard one fixed midfield camera. Good golly Miss Molly! Football on television has reached nirvana — it can’t get any better than this. If only my set’s rabbit ears would bring in CBS. But don’t get me started.

Alex Massie argues that college football is America’s greatest sport.  While I’m a huge fan, I personally prefer the NFL game.  Steven Taylor points out one reason why:  absurd mismatches scheduled to give big powers an easy win.

Alabama's Robby Green (23) knocks the ball away from Virginia Tech's Davon Morgan (2) during their NCAA college football game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. Alabama won 34-24. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Check out the Top 25 scoreboard from this weekend’s season openers:

#1 Florida 61, Division I-AA Charleston Southern 3

#2 Texas 59, Division I-AA Louisiana Monroe 20

#3 Oklahoma 13, #20 Brigham Young 14

#4 Southern California 56, unranked San Jose St. 3

#5 Alabama 34, #7 Virginia Tech 24

#6 Ohio State 31, unranked Navy 27

#8 Mississippi 45,  unranked Memphis 14

co-#9 Oklahoma State 24, #13 Georgia 10

co-#9 Penn State 31, unranked Akron 7

#11 LSU 31, unranked Washington 23

#12 California 52, unranked Maryland 13

#14 Boise State 19, #16 Oregon 8

#15 Georgia Tech 37, Division I-AA Jacksonville State 17

#17 Texas Christian opens Sept. 12 at Virginia

#18 Florida State 34,  unranked Miami 38

#19 Utah 35, unranked Utah State 17

#21 North Carolina 40, Division I-AA Citadel 6

#22 Iowa 17, unranked Northern Iowa 16

#23 Notre Dame 35, unranked Nevada 0

#24 Nebraska 49, Florida Atlantic 3

#25 Kansas 49, Division I-AA Northern Colorado 3

Only four of the games pitted ranks teams against one another.  Now, it’s impossible to know rankings two or three years in advance, when most of these games are scheduled.  But only a handful of the games — the ones I’ve highlighted in bold — are non-embarrassing.

Steven’s right that major football powers should simply never schedule games against Division I-AA schools.  (I’m sorry, but I refuse to play along with the NCAA’s  idiotic attempt to rebrand the minor leagues as the “Football Championship Series.”)  I’d go even further, though: they shouldn’t play perennially noncompetitive teams, either.

Yes, it’s true that these also-rans sometimes give the big boys a scare.  Navy did it Saturday, nearly upsetting Ohio State.  Appalachian State beat Michigan a couple years back and upstart Troy State beat Mississippi State (although it took tornadoes and a torrential downpour) before that. Sometimes, these games showcase a rising power and every once in a while we’re treated to a wonderful Cinderella story.  But, frankly, it’s always an accident.

Mostly, these games are a joke that make a mockery of sportsmanship and competition.

As an Alabama fan, I’ve thrilled to the last two season openers, against highly ranked Clemson and Virginia Tech.  It’s been especially satisfying to win those games, getting the season off to a rousing start.  But, honestly, fans of Clemson and Virginia Tech have to be upset with their athletic directors for agreeing to these games and wrecking the season before even getting to inter-conference play.   Given the way the rules are set up, it may be cheesy but it’s very smart for the Southern Cals of the world to get their seasons off to a bang by whomping up on the San Jose States.   And it’s very much in the interest of the patsies to take half a million dollars or so as a prize for their beating.

And, while my Tide deserves kudos for scheduling marquee opponents to start the season the last two years — and for its home and away series with Penn State set for 2010 and 2011 — they’ve got plenty of cupcakes lined up, too.  Should a team with national championship aspirations really be playing Florida International, North Texas, and Chattanooga?

Why not change the rules and mandate that the big boys open up with the big boys?  And, in fact, play the big boys each and every week?   Wouldn’t that be much more exciting?

Here are the conferences that matter:  ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, SEC.  Go ahead and throw the Big East in, too, if you want to pretend.  Those are the BCS conferences.

Let’s limit the national championship to schools playing in those conferences.  Let’s mandate that schools in those conferences schedule games only against other schools in those conferences.  And — here’s the exciting part — let’s take a page out of European soccer’s playbook a have a system where the lesser teams in those conferences get replaced by the best teams from outside.

So, obviously, Notre Dame will have to join a conference.  I vote for the Big East.  They’re already a member for everything but football and it’s too small, anyway, with only eight schools playing football.   Heck, get all the BCS conferences up to twelve schools, which should pretty much cover any decent football programs.  (I mean, really, are there more than 72 college football programs that ought to have a shot at the championship?)

Divide the conferences not already aligned that way into two, six-team divisions.  Then, play a season where each team plays, say, six games from within the conference and six games from another conference on a rotating basis.  Play  a conference championship game for all conferences, so the ones that do so aren’t at a huge disadvantage.

And the worst team in each conference each year?   They’re out.   Replaced by the top six teams not currently in a BCS conference.   If you’re among the Best of the Rest the next year, you’re back in.  If not, tough luck.

The beauty of this system is that it survives even if the college presidents finally come to their senses and agree on a playoff.  And it means every game, every week has meaning for the fans and the schools.  There will be no patsies.  And the worst teams even have something to play for: a seat at the table for next year.

One of the biggest factors in an NFL team’s success is the quarterback. Pundits love to talk about the importance of ‘establishing the run’, but at some point the game is going to come down to whether or not your QB can put together that final drive for the win. Teams with good QB’s will win games; teams with bad QB’s won’t.

Of course, the quarterback can’t win by himself (just ask Dan Marino and Drew Brees). It helps to have someone to block, run and catch those beautifully thrown balls. Having a defense never hurt (unless you’re playing against Baltimore- then it hurts a lot).

Which team can put all the pieces together and make a run at the Super Bowl?

With 32 teams in the league, odds are it won’t be yours (or mine).

AFC

The AFC has dominated Super Bowls in the 2000’s, winning 7 of 9. New England has 3, Pittsburgh 2, and Indianapolis 1, and those three teams stand the best chance of representing the AFC again in 2009.

Super Bowl Favorites

These two are in a class by themselves

Pittsburgh Steelers

They have a mean, fast terrifying defense. Their QB Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t put up the best numbers in the regular season, but he makes plays when they matter. If Pittsburgh wins this year, they will tie New England with 3 Super Bowl titles and compete for Team of the Decade bragging rights.

New England Patriots

They have possibly the best QB in the league in Tom Brady, throwing to one of the most explosive WR’s in the league in Randy Moss. Those two could probably win games playing by themselves, but New England has talent to go around them. Brady will have something to prove after missing last year with a torn ACL, and he could very well lead New England to its 4^th Super Bowl title of the decade.

Super Bowl Contenders

These teams will need to get hot at the right time, but they have the talent to make it if they do.

Indianapolis Colts

Things have slipped recently in Indy. Coach Tony Dungy retired, and the team struggled early last year. Still, as long as they have QB Peyton Manning in the pocket, they will be a threat to win every game.

San Diego Chargers

They are still loaded with talent. QB Phillip Rivers is a good passer looking to take his place among the elite. RB Ladanian Tomlinson may still have something left, and TE Antonio Gates is like a second receiver. The Chargers also have the advantage of playing in the miserable AFC West, which is good for 5-6 free wins.

On the other hand, the Chargers have gone backwards in both years under Norv Turner, from 14-2 with Marty Schottenheimer in 2006 to 11-5 in 2007 to 8-8 in 2008. At this rate, they will be 5-11 in 2009.

Baltimore Ravens

Ray Lewis still leads a scary nasty defense that went toe to toe with champion Pittsburgh three times last year. Rookie QB Joe Flacco played well, but they will need to find some offensive spark to carry them over the top.

Playoff Contenders

These teams probably lack what it takes to win the Super Bowl, but they have a decent chance of making the playoffs, and maybe winning a game or two

Tennessee Titans

I almost had them in the Super Bowl Contenders category, but I just can’t see QB Kerry Collins leading a team past the likes of Manning, Brady and Roethlisberger without some serious help. Vince Young was supposed to be the QB of the future; his best days are still at Texas. They have a stout defense, even without DT Albert Haynesworth, and that should be enough to win some games.

Houston Texans

The Texans have been mediocre for so long, it’s hard to imagine them in the playoffs. Still, the pieces are there. QB Matt Schaub is improving, and there is talent at RB with Steve Slaton and WR with Andre Johnson. They play in a tough division with Tennessee and Indianapolis, but this might be their year to finally make some noise.

Miami Dolphins

Why not? They went from 1-15 to 11-5 last year. Chad Pennington is an accurate, underrated quarterback. Teams will be better prepared to defend the Wildcat formation this year, but don’t be surprised if the Dolphins have a few new wrinkles.

Middle of the Pack

These are the teams that will tease their fans by doing just enough to avoid being mathematically eliminated until the final weeks.

New York Jets

Despite the good fortunes of Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco last year, breaking in a rookie QB is usually not a recipe for immediate success, and Mark Sanchez likely won’t be any different. The Jets came close to a playoff run with a different QB last year until his arm fell off (hint: he’s really old and he keeps un-retiring). Sanchez will make some plays, but he’ll make some mistakes too, and those will keep the Jets out of the playoffs.

Buffalo Bills

Terrell Owens will add a boost in production, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough to drag this franchise into the post-season, especially when they have to play New England, Miami and the New York Jets twice each.

Jacksonville Jaguars

QB David Garrard took a step back last year, and this team has a lot of work to do to re-establish their identity as a tough, smashmouth team. There is some talent there, but it will be tough for them to make a run playing in the difficult AFC South.

Cincinnati Bengals

QB Carson Palmer is back from injury. WR Chad Johnson changed his name to Ochocinco, which doesn’t even mean 85 (it means 8, 5). Will the Bengals be able to put aside all the distractions and history and put together a decent season?

Probably not.

The Clowns

It hurts to have a team in this category. These are the teams that make people join fantasy football leagues and do extra yard work on Sundays. The ugliest part is three of these teams are in the same division, meaning there are (at least) 6 horrible games to look forward to in the AFC West.

Denver Broncos

Last year, the Broncos couldn’t stop anyone on defense. But, they did have a good QB who could keep them in games by throwing all over the place. So, they got rid of the quarterback. Jay Cutler is gone, Kyle Orton is here. Now, the Broncos not only won’t stop anyone on defense, but they won’t score points either.

Kansas City Chiefs

The Chiefs were bad in 2008, and they don’t look to get much better. They brought in QB Matt Cassel from the Patriots after he spent one good season throwing to Randy Moss and Wes Welker. He’ll find things a little more difficult when he has to throw to a cast of receivers that includes Dwayne Bowe . . . and no one else. I think my Grandma might be on the three-deep. Oh, and their defense stinks too.

Oakland Raiders

Al Davis lost his mind. We’re not sure exactly when it happened, but it was probably around the time the Raiders got spanked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl after the 2002 season. The Raiders won’t win many games until he either 1) gets it back or 2) is deposed.

Cleveland Browns

The Browns don’t really have a quarterback, and you really need one to win in the NFL. The Browns have two people who might play QB, but they don’t seem to want either one of them. They were bad last year, and they’ll be bad again this year.

NFC

When I was a kid, the NFC dominated the Super Bowl with teams like San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Washington crushing whoever the AFC managed to send (usually the Bills or Broncos). Times have changed. Whoever wins the NFC this year stands a very good chance of being on the losing end of one of those historical SB beatdowns.

That’s why there’s no Super Bowl favorites category. The NFC lacks the clear hierarchy of the AFC, so we’ll just go with three simple categories.

The Good

These teams have talent, and any one of them could get hot and earn a chance to get smoked in the Super Bowl by New England or Pittsburgh.

New York Giants

QB Eli Manning greatly enhanced his reputation in 2007 when he led the Giants to an upset Super Bowl win over the juggernaut New England Patriots. They have a bruising rushing attack, and their defense is stout and they can pressure the QB. Losing Plaxico Burress could haunt them in the playoffs, though.

Philadelphia Eagles

Everyone will be buzzing over the addition of Michael Vick, but this team still revolves around Donavan McNabb. He should continue to put up numbers with RB Brian Westbrook and WR Jeremy Maclin and DeSean Jackson. The defense won’t be quite as scary without defensive coordinator Jim Johnson, who passed away in the offseason.

Dallas Cowboys

Which Cowboys team will it be? The 13-3 powerhouse of 2007, or the disorganized bunch of 2008? This is a team with a lot of talent in place, but QB Tony Romo and company have yet to prove they can win in the playoffs. They could go 12-4, they could go 7-9.

Chicago Bears

Everyone is going to jump on the Bears bandwagon. They were good enough to make it to the Super Bowl after the 2006 season without a quarterback, and now they have one. Still, it will take time for QB Jay Cutler and the team to mesh. Other than TE Greg Olson, who is Cutler going to throw the ball to?

Green Bay Packers

Aaron Rodgers waited patiently for years behind Brett Favre, and last year he got his chance, only to watch his team go 6-10. Rodgers played well, but he often did so by himself. The defense has been overhauled and converted to a 3-4. If they can stop people, and RB Ryan Grant can recapture his 2007 form, Green Bay could surprise a lot of people.

Minnesota Vikings

I hesitate to put them in this category. They have a great running game led by Adrian Peterson. They have a nasty defense. The only gap was at QB, so they signed you-know-who.

We all know what’s going to happen here, because it happened in ‘08 in NY and ‘07 in Green Bay. The Vikings will be cruising along, and then either 1) Favre’s arm will stop working, like last year or 2) Favre will throw a crushing, inexplicable interception, like the Ice Bowl in 2007.

Arizona Cardinals

You can’t say a team isn’t a playoff contender when they went to the Super Bowl last year, and almost pulled off an upset for the ages. Still, it’s hard to catch fire two years in a row. Their defense wasn’t all that good last year, and QB Kurt Warner is fragile. As long as he’s throwing to All-World WR Larry Fitzgerald (and very good WR Anquan Boldin) the Cards will have a chance.

Atlanta Falcons

They made a surprise playoff run last year with rookie QB Matt Ryan. They have a strong ground game with RB Michael Turner, and added veteran TE Tony Gonzalez from the Chiefs (who were attempting to eliminate anyone who might accidentally catch a pass). On the other hand, they play in the volatile NFC South, where teams have a habit of going from last to first and first to last.

Carolina Panthers

QB Jake Delhomme is solid. They have a solid defense and a solid running game. They are a solid team who should have a solid year.

That said, they’ll probably go 6-10.

New Orleans Saints

The Saints have tremendous firepower on offense, with QB Drew Brees nearly breaking Marino’s single season passing yardage record last year. The Saints will score from everywhere on the field, and that’s without Reggie Bush and Jeremy Shockey in top form. If either of them gets going, this team could break records.

And they’ll have to, because their defense can’t stop anyone. If the D somehow finds a way to slow people down, the Saints could have a big year.

The Bad

Not really the bad. More like the mediocre. The bad just fits the categories better.

Washington Redskins

New York has a quarterback. So does Philly and Dallas. Washington may not. QB Jason Campbell has struggled, and without a QB, Washington can’t hope to compete in the cutthroat NFC East.

Seattle Seahawks

They were devastated by injuries last year. With QB Matt Hasselbeck back to health, this team could return to respectability. Remember, they went to the Super Bowl just four seasons ago. It seems like a lot longer, doesn’t it?

San Francisco 49ers

Can Mike Singletary will his team to victory just by glaring at players with his wild middle linebacker eyes? Maybe. It’s actually a better plan for victory than some teams have (Al Davis developing a scheme involving mind control lasers). It’s not as good as having a great quarterback or a vicious defense, but so it goes.

The Ugly

These teams make fans want to avert their eyes. Teams should pay the fans money if they manage to stay for a whole game.

St Louis Rams

Only Detroit’s incredible 0-16 kept the Rams from being the worst team at 2-14 (tied with the Chiefs- is it something about Missouri?). Marc Bulger is actually a decent quarterback, but he spends most of the game staring up either the roof of a dome, or the pretty clouds floating by against the cerulean sky. That’s unlikely to change this year.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

They fired Jon Gruden for going 9-7. I think they would be glad to have that record this year. They don’t have a quarterback. They drafted Josh Freemen out of Kansas State, even though he wasn’t very good in college. QB’s who are bad in college are usually bad in the pros too.

Detroit Lions

There’s nowhere to go but up.

Image Credit: India Times. This article also appears at Heretical Ideas.

This project has been in the works for a while, fueled by frustration over pundits’ repeated failures to acknowledge and appreciate the most difficult position in sports. After studying quarterbacks throughout my career and spending the past year evaluating the position daily, I believe a strong argument can be made that quarterback play today is as good as ever — and possibly even better. It’s frankly impossible to rank quarterbacks definitively. It’s not how good they are so much as how well they are playing and the situation they are in. Their talent, game-day abilities, the offensive systems they run, the personnel around them, the experiences they’ve had to this point in their careers — they all come into play. Rather than labeling quarterbacks, I’ve created categories to reflect where each of them stands at this point in his career, subject to change. Anyone can criticize. I’ve set out to appreciate the position through a level of analysis that simply isn’t available without a full understanding for what these players experience and how the game has changed. I brought up fantasy football in the beginning because the fantasy mindset has skewed perceptions, encouraging us to view quarterbacks through a statistical lens. We have lost perspective as a result. I purposely did not consult a single statistic in formulating the analysis that follows. My playoff notes, end-of-season notes and firsthand knowledge were my guide. No one asked me to put together a list ranking these 49 quarterbacks. The subject is my passion, the motivation simple. If you can take a five-step drop, keep your eyes downfield and deliver the ball while a 300-pound beast is bearing down on you in a big game, you deserve commendation and appreciation for what you do. There isn’t a bad player on my list, regardless of category!

Of all the things I miss about life in the United States, now that I have returned home to Scotland after five happy years Stateside, friends are sometimes surprised when I tell them that college football ranks high on the list. There are many great sporting occasions in America but few that compare, at least none as far as I’m concerned, to the joys of the opening weekend of the college football season.

That may seem as curious as an American developing a passion for cricket. But curiosities abound and we each contain multitudes. Perhaps it was the sight of an entire turkey being deep-fried in a windy cow-field at State College, Pennsylvania, or perhaps it was the genteel politeness of tail-gating in Ann Arbor that helped persuade me that college football would supplant baseball as my favorite American sport.

Most of all, however, I think it was the nature and idiosyncrasies of a culture that, for foreigners, remains America’s hidden sporting gem. Now, thanks to a roommate who bled maize and blue, a small corner of Scotland will be part of the Wolverine Nation this fall.

College football is king in an America that tourists rarely see. This is not surprising, given that few of America’s greatest cities are hotbeds of collegiate football. Few tourists find themselves in Gainesville or Columbus, Athens or Norman.

Baseball and the NBA have long targeted overseas markets while the NFL has built an international following these past twenty years and even played a regular season game in London last year. In as much as the rest of the world follows American sport, it pays attention to Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady and the New York Yankees. College football might as well exist in another country altogether, one that is arguably more truly American than anything the big leagues can offer.

I discovered, quite by accident, that Washington DC was actually an ideal location for falling in love with college football, precisely because there’s no football power in the city. Each fall I’d become aware of a deep divide between my friends who attended Ivy League universities and those who studied at public universities in the South or across the Midwest. At parties the former group would be immersed in the usual Washington small talk — interminable discussion of social security or immigration reform and the usual interminable political and media gossip; the latter, by contrast, were liberated by the return of something much more important: college football.

On fall Saturdays, the city’s bars were turned over to one alumni association or another as young professionals from Texas or Tennessee, Missouri or Miami gathered for the latest sporting day of obligation. Like so many trade associations and lobby shops, every major programme in the country had a presence in the city.

Cheap beer and memories of carefree undergraduate days wiped away the concerns of political life. Democrats and Republicans put their differences aside to root against a common enemy. For a few hours, they could, thanks to the miracle of ESPN, leave Washington and return home.

And that, I think, was one of the reasons why I fell in love with college football. In a capital city often defined by transience, college football offered a sense of place and, for a foreigner, a reminder that it’s a big country out there. Or rather, half a dozen territories, known by curious acronyms such as ACC and SEC and numbers that spoke of the vast expanse of the prairies (Big 12) and the rolling fields of the Midwest (Big Ten).

It was a place populated by weird but compelling people too. Remarkable relics such as Joe Paterno, slick villains like Nick Saban, sweet-talking assassins such as Steve Spurrier and blustering, bumptious braggarts like Charlie Weiss. And that’s just among the coaches. The fans, from LSU to Wisconsin, were something else. Even the names of the games seemed exotic (the Iron bowl) or filled with romance (the Red River Shootout).

For all that college football remains an unknown quantity in europe, there are aspects of collegiate sport that are more reassuringly familiar than anything the NFL or baseball can offer. You support your local team or the school you attended rather than hitching your colors to whatever power might be enjoying success on a national level.

A kid growing up in Nebraska isn’t likely to become a Florida Gator just because Urban Meyer is bringing success back to Gainesville. Nor, happily, is the University of Nebraska likely to up sticks in the manner of so many MLB, NFL and NBA sides simply because their owners can get a better deal from long-suffering – and gullible – tax-payers in some other city thousands of miles across the country. There is, in that sense, a permanence to college football that is comparable to european soccer or rugby.

True, sports teams in Europe have owners, but their sides are held in trust, beholden to the supporters and the communities that hold them dear. It is all but unthinkable that their teams could be moved as a result of proprietorial whim. Even in an age in which sport has become big business, there’s an identity and belonging, rooted in a keen sense of place, that endures.

And there’s the sport itself. My room-mate in Washington liked to call the NFL the “no fun league” and he had a point. It’s professionalism, indeed its excellence, mean that there are few surprises in professional football. What’s more, most teams play in more or less the same fashion. The contrast with the joyous unpredictability and variation that abounds in college football could scarcely be clearer too.

There’s something else too: not every match matters in the grown-up leagues. Professional sport in the United States is run along oddly un-American grounds. Revenue sharing, salary caps and luxury taxes are designed to level the playing field, while the NFL and NA drafts create the perverse incentives of encouraging weak sides to lose end-of-season games in the expectation of being able to draft the most promising talent coming out of the collegiate arena. There is a curious Marxist element to professional sports: from each according to their means, to each according to their needs.

European sport, by contrast, is organized upon the ruthlessly Darwinist principle of the survival of the fittest. Promotion and relegation sort the wheat from the chaff and only the strong survive. Each year the herd is culled, permitting upwardly mobile teams a chance to compete with the big boys.

That means every match matters in a way it simply doesn’t in the excruciatingly drawn-out NBA or MLB seasons. These marathons often seem to be no more than a warm-up for the concentrated pressure of the play-offs. But why wait all year for that, when college football offers such exquisite agony every week? Despite commercial pressure to change, college football has, by and large remembered that scarcity increases value.

A 12 game season leaves precious little margin for error when a single defeat can ruin national championship or conference title aspirations. Each week, then, offers the prospect of disaster or, for smaller programs or those who’ve already been knocked out of contention, the joy of ruining someone else’s season. These are powerful, even atavistic, emotions.

True, the closed nature of the college conference system is a little different from the way european sport is organized. But every side has the opportunity to improve if, through good fortune and better coaching it can muster the means and determination to do so. Poor performances at Indiana or Minnesota don’t grant those universities the right to pick the cream of midwestern high school talent for next year’s recruiting class. The competitive nature of college football reaches down to the high school level as universities battle for recruits.

Schools rise and fall on their own abilities. Where was USC before Pete Carroll took over in 2000? Bo Schembechler revived a Michigan program that had been in the doldrums until he arrived in 1969. But the recruiting of high school athletes always offers hope for the future. Theoretically redemption is only a year or two away and the reality of the theory is more important, more powerful, than the fact that theory can’t always be turned into practice.