Paper Champions

Week 6

Do you know who the reigning national champions are in college sports? Go ahead, take a guess.

Football, Men’s Basketball, Women’s Basketball, Men’s Soccer, Women’s Soccer, Wrestling, Women’s Volleyball, Men’s Water Polo, Cross Country, Ice Hockey, Skiing, Swimming, Track and Field, Baseball, Softball, Golf, Lacrosse, Tennis, Men’s Volleyball, Women’s Water Polo, Gymnastics, Rowing, Fencing, Rifle, Field Hockey.

All these sports and a couple others have national champions that are determined on the field of play and not by votes or judges with the exception of Division 1A college football. D1 college football is the only sport in all of college sports that we are told who the two best teams are in the nation by coaches, sportswriters and computers in order to play a game to determine a national champion.

D1 college football is an animal unto itself. It is the biggest source of sports revenue for almost every school that fields a team and it is also the biggest drain on resources among all college sports. A single home game at a major university can bring in millions of dollars in revenue for the university from ticket sales, tv revenue, fan gear and boosters.

So why is it that this game, which most of us watch over all other sports and are more emotionally involved with then any other sport, spoon fed to us by the NCAA and the media? Every year we get to the same point in the season and have the same questions. There are 8 to 10 teams that have one loss with a few that have no losses. Every year we have this big argument over who deserves to be in the championship game and almost every year a few teams are left out who might have been able to overcome and win a title.

So why do we as fans continually sit back and take it from the NCAA and all the others who favor this type of segregation. Every year you have quality teams from the so called mid-major conferences that everyone dismisses because they play in the WAC or the Mountain West or Conference USA or others. Every year we hear about how great teams are from the PAC-10, ACC, SEC, BIG 12 or BIG 10 and that no other team could possibly compete against them.

Frankly I am tired of being told who the best teams are and would much rather watch the teams decide for themselves who the best each season is. Who has the right to tell Boise State or BYU or Hawaii or any of the other teams considered the poor step children of college football, that they could never win a national championship in D1 college football. Can anyone say without a doubt that no mid-major team could ever beat a major college team to win a D1 football title? Perhaps if they were given the opportunity to compete for a national title each year they would be able to recruit players to get them to that level. Perhaps more kids would stay closer to home to play and not travel across the country to play for the “Big Schools”.

If we as fans are being asked to pay more and more money to watch our favorite teams play then I think we deserve the right to be able to watch the game decided on the field from the beginning of the season to the end of the season without the input of all the others who are making millions of dollars by telling us who the best are in their opinions.

If we were to apply the same philosophy that football uses to all other sports, then teams like the 2006 Oregon State Baseball team would have never won the National Championship because they came into the post season ranked 8th.

Teams like the University of Portland. The little school on the bluff in Portland Oregon would never have won two national championships in womens soccer because they were just a little school and could never compete against the Texas or Notre Dames or UCLA’s of the world. By the way, UP beat all three of them in winning their titles.

I don’t know about you, but I find it exciting to watch the David and Goliath matches. That is what sports is all about. Coming together as a team to overcome all odds and win. Our movie theaters are full of movies that represent just that. Glory Road, Rudy, The Rookie, Hoosiers. We revel in the stories of the little guy who overcomes everything to win the big game. It is the cornerstone story that we tell all our youth athletes and our children. We tell them that if you work hard enough, anything is possible. Would you ever tell your child he or she cannot do something simply because of where they live or who their parents are?

So why then, on the biggest stage in all of college sports, do we slam the door on the little guy and not invite him to the party. Why don’t we let the real winner be determined through the self-determination of each team and not by the so called experts who keep telling what they think is best.

We don’t want just a paper champion in college football any longer. We want a true national champion. One that is determined through the hard work, heart and effort of the players alone and not in some boardroom by suits who think they know it all.

Lets stand up as fans and let the sporting world know that we want a real champion, not a paper champion.

Oh and I will have the answers for you on who won what last year in my next blog.