College Football Quick Fix: No Rematch

There are layers and layers of conversation to be had about the state of college football. But let’s start with one easy fix- no conference rematches in the title game.

There is a quick, clean, two-step explanation for voting for the LSU-Alabama rematch. Step one, LSU is the most decisive number one in recent memory. In addition to going through multiple top-five and -ten competition to win their conference, they took out the champs of two other BCS conferences. Step two, after four quarter of football both the scoreboard and the eye test told us that Alabama and LSU were essentially equals. LSU needed four missed field goals by the Bama soccer players to survive. From that perspective it’s pretty straight-forward: if LSU is a decisive number one, Alabama must be an equally decisive number two. That rationale was satisfactory for a lot of voters.

And sure, Alabama may very well be the 2^nd best team in the country. For that matter Arkansas may be the 3^rd best team, and Georgia may be the 4^th best team, and South Carolina may be the 5^th best team. Who knows? More relevant, who cares? When it comes to picking a title game, I don't, at all.

This brings to my mind the original Ultimate Fighting Championship. The purpose of that first tournament was to put representatives of the world’s great fighting styles in a cage and see which champion, and which style, was supreme. Chances were that if the Olympic gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling could beat the Thai kick-boxing champ, then the silver and bronze medalists could too. But a rematch of the Greco gold medal match sure as hell didn’t headline that first pay-per-view. We already get to see wrestlers compete with wrestlers and boxers compete with boxers on a regular basis. The essence of the UFC is inter-sport competition. Like the kick-boxer to the Olympic wrestling champion, Oklahoma State offers to LSU the compelling contrast in style that made bowl games so appealing in the first place.

Arguments can be made that the traditional conference system has outlived its usefulness. But for all its faults this system provides a landscape of arguments unique to college sports. Is grimy SEC football superior to the spread offenses of the mid-west? How will the physical Big East style translate to tournament basketball with unfamiliar refs? Are the women’s power forwards of the Big Ten more butch than those of the Big Twelve? If we’re going to have these arguments then let’s get some resolution,otherwise what’s the point?