The BCS proves one thing.. college football is not the NFL

   Another college football season is in the books with Alabama declared the Bowl Championship Series winner and USA Today coaches poll national champion. The Crimson Tide shut out former number one LSU 21-0 to win the BCS title game. But what was the aftermath of  that game? More talk about tweaking the BCS, adding teams to form a ‘four team ‘ playoff format, to crown a more legitimate champ.

   Look, here is the issue. Led by ESPN, or as former Daytonian Dan Patrick calls the ‘mothership’, all the media pundits are trying to make college football like the NFL.  It’s not, thankfully. The NFL has always been about championships. Even before the Super Bowl era, there was the history of NFL championship games, involving the Browns of Paul Brown, Lombardi's Packers and the famous Colts victory over the Giants in the 1958 NFL title game, the first must see TV game in NFL history. In the Super Bowl era, the title game is the goal of all NFL teams. The regular season is a prelude to the playoffs and Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday has become a national day of honoring football and its rich tradition in our sporting history.

    College football is not about crowning a champion. It is about student athletes, ages 18-22, playing football on a college campus, a place of learning for young people. The players are performing for their peers, other students. The biggest games of the season for college teams are against their biggest rivals. The most popular weekends in college football are the weekends when the rivals meet: Ohio State- Michigan, Georgia-Florida, USC-Notre Dame, Oklahoma-Texas. It is these games that define college football, not a BCS championship game. The regular season in college football is the game, on the campuses where students eat, sleep, go to class and earn their degrees. It is tailgating by alumni, throcking to spirit shops and enjoying fall colors on a college campus.

    In 1902, the head of the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California asked the University of Michigan football team to come out to California to play a football game against Stanford on New Year’s Day to help promote his parade. Little did he know that the game, which wouldn’t be played again until 1919, would begin a tradition of playing bowl games on New Year’s Day, six weeks after the end of the regular season. It has never really made sense for teams to stop playing in November and then after Christmas travel to a far away site to practice for another game. It’s almost like a different season. But a parade director wasn’t too concerned about whether it made sense for a football team. He was interested in promoting his parade.

    Now the TV moguls want to again alter tradition. They are trying to make college football a copy of the NFL playoffs. Why? Well, television money of course. But the rich tradition of college football is on campuses and at universities across the nation. The alumni and friends of colleges follow their teams as they compete, learn, grow and battle their rivals, all the while entertained by the marching band leading the crowd in the school’s fight song. It’s the games that count. Not the national championships. College football is not the NFL.