College football offseason is upon us

Originally printed in the January 8th issue of the Scroll student newspaper.

Another college football season has come and gone. And the weird thing is, I'm fine with that. During the months of June, July and August, I can barely contain myself; I'm so excited about football coming up again the days crawl by. It's kind of like when I was eight and couldn't wait for Christmas. Then the season actually begins and I'm beside myself. There are several games every Saturday, and lately, there are games nearly every Thursday and Friday as well. It's a football fan's heaven.

And yet, as the weeks pass, by and I've watched 391 football games in ninety days, I begin to tire of them. I tire of watching teams from the Big 10 call fifty running plays in the same game. I tire of watching games where the combined score of the teams is 18. I tire of listening to commentators say “he showed a lot of heart right there,” eight times a broadcast.

Even during this season, the Season of Upsets, the season where no team was safe from getting beaten by what was supposed to be an inferior bunch of kids from a small school. The Season of Upsets was kicked off when #5 ranked Michigan was beaten by Madison High's J.V. team. At the time, I figured that might have just been a fluke. But as the weeks rolled on, there were more and more shocking wins to read about, if you weren't luck enough to watch them live. Stanford beat #2 USC. Pittsburgh beat #2 West Virginia. Arkansas beat #1 LSU on the road.

If ever there were a season to grab my interest permanently, it was this one. But I discovered that the Law of Moderation is unbreakable. Too much or too little of anything is bad. Too much ice cream makes you sick. Too little studying makes you flunk out of school. Too much video game playing makes your eyes melt in their sockets.

And too much college football makes you apathetic towards it. Even when my Cougars beat UCLA 17-16 in the Las Vegas Bowl to finish their season at 11-2, I wasn't as excited as I figured I would be. Part of that is probably because it took a miracle beyond my ability to comprehend for BYU to win that game, but regardless, my thoughts about the win more closely resemble “meh” than “yahoo!”

After watching LSU positively thump Ohio State and win the BCS Championship, despite losing two games this year, I'm even more disinterested. The college football system needs a playoff. It's that simple. After every season there's controversy about how the winner was chosen. People complain about the computers having too much say. People complain about how biased coaches and writers have too much say. People complain that a deserving Hawaii team was shafted out of a spot in the championship game. Okay, maybe not so much for that last one.

And yet I've never heard any real reasons why a playoff can't happen. Concerns voiced about player-athletes missing classes ring hollow. Nevertheless, know I'll probably never see a playoff in my lifetime.

So endure, football fans. Endure the next nine months of college football-less weekends and find comfort that next fall will contain another glut of games for you to gorge on instead of studying for that Biology midterm.

I'll be watching with you.