I'm as thrilled as the next Yankee-basher that Texas has lost its playoff virginity and that either Dallas or San Fran gets its World Series cherry popped in the next two weeks. I'll be watching every whiff. (There'll be lots. The Giants can't hit and the Rangers will be facing great pitching.)
So understand that this isn't a complaint. But anyone who thinks these are the two best teams in baseball doesn't have both oars in the water. It's fair to say that the Rangers couldn't even win a bronze medal in the AL East Olympics.
So after a 162-game season and three rounds of playoffs, we'll have a definitive champion, but no answer to the question "who is the best team?" This works for me in baseball, at least to some extent, because the best team is the same one every year, by artificial means. It does mean that Rent-A-Wrecks like Detroit and St. Louis 2006 will vie for baseball's Daytona 500 now and then.
These contemplations coincide with publication of a new book fashionably calling for a Jihad against the BCS. Like most fans, its authors demand a playoff in college football. Well, I have some bad news for all of you.
We already have a college football playoff. The BCS is a two-team playoff that guarantees that one of the two -- or maybe three or four -- best teams in the land will emerge as champs. If you expand the playoff to eight or 16, some arbitrary method will be employed to choose the contestants, just as it is now. The championship game, though, could pair any of those 16 teams, including the two weakest. Definitive champ; pit in stomach.
If you're sipping at the playoff punch, remember this too: a 16-team playoff would suck the marrow out of the college football season. Oregon, Boise State, TCU, Auburn, Alabama and Ohio State could all cruise to the finish at this point because a loss, or even two in some cases, wouldn't knock them out of the top 16. Under the current system, every game is swollen with import. The result is a fascinating college football season that usually gives us a definitive champion that can also credibly claim to be the best in the land.
Personally, I prefer the chaos, the mayhem and the endless arguments. Sports talk radio would have to fill its hours with even more insipid subjects than it does now were it not for debates about non-BCS schedules, comparative undefeateds without opponent overlap, and objective versus subjective rating systems. Do you really want to hear more rambling, inarticulate quarterback voice mail messages that knock the bronze off their senders' Canton bust? Because that's the kind of mindlessness that would fill the chasm created by eliminating college football debates.
Every sport grapples with this. The NBA and NHL have chosen to steer their regular seasons off a cliff, much to their long-term detriment, I would argue. Pro football, benighted in all it surveys, seems to have successfully played both ends against the middle (and it's collecting the vig too.) College football has the regular season nailed and the post-season is tacked down pretty good too, the righteous uproar not withstanding. Baseball is trying to have it both ways and the result is predictably a little of everything. The season is important, but once you squeak into the playoffs, you're as likely to win as those who roar in.
And this year, the mice are roaring.
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