Thursday, September 16, 2010
The College Football Season is Like NASCAR...in hell
Friday - Qualifying = Sept. 4th to Oct. 16th
This part of the season is all about establishing your position for when the first BCS Poll comes out. Essentially you are out on the track by yourself. Sure there are some times already on the board, but its too soon in the day to know if the tack is running fast or slow. You just got to get out and do your best and the rest will take care of itself.
Ideally you want to take the first couple weeks easy. Feel the car out, shake off the rust, and find a grove, and for god's sake stay off the wall coming out of turn #Kansas. SHIT! Alright, its cool, you tore up the front end pretty bad, but we can duct tape that down. We've lost our shot at the poll position, but we can still put in a good run or two and get a solid qualifying time. Going to have to let it fly going into UNC, NC State, Wake Forest, Virginia and Middle Tennessee. Got get that average time up, and a zero kills your average.
Sunday - Race Day = Oct.23 to Nov. 20th
After the first BCS Poll comes out you'll know exactly where you are sitting. So many teams ahead of you, and so many teams behind you. All you can do is focus on the guy in front of you. Pass him, and move on to the next car. Maybe the lead is out of reach, but maybe you'll get lucky and Alabama and Florida will be so busy trading paint down the back stretch they'll run right up the back side of Vandy whose a full lap behind.
White Flag - The final lap = Nov 27th to Dec. 4th
Rivalry games and Conference Championships. There are going to be a lot of teams that are just too far behind at this point, but if you are in a position to win, now is the time to make your move. Beat your rival, get into that championship game and hope for some lucky crashes ahead of you. Always hoping for crashes.
Only this is NASCAR hell, so some teams will leave the track a lap or two early.
Home Coming Carnival=Bowl season
All the rules change. Everyone comes into the pits, fixes whatever damage they have, adds a few upgrades. Take a month off and then go back out on the track in pairs. Beating your opponent is important, but you are also racing the clock, and you will be penalized or rewarded arbitrarily based on how people think you did during the preceding race. Once again, crashes can happen at any time to anybody.
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You got the ending all wrong. NASCAR instituted the Chase for the Championship concept. The season was 36 races and the point winner won the cup. People don't care as much about NASCAR when NFL football is on the same day so viewing stats dropped like prom panties when football started up. Obviously the solution is to make it more exciting. And apparently you do that by cutting 75% of your drivers from any possibility of winning the cup with 10 races to go and resetting the other 25% to near zero difference. Wooo! That's exciting. The result is that no one really cares about how those turn out and still watch football and the drivers have to place just good enough to stay alive for those weeks. You get a mish-mash of viewers but nothing too steady. And then a bunch of extra people tune in to the last race to see who wins, if it's close. Or not. And that sounds a lot more like bowl season to me.
ReplyDelete-The Mayor
A valid point. That is an equally random way to end a season, and you know what, people at the Daytona 500 don't care, and that's the way it should be.
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