Daily Skiff

Over the past two weeks the debate raged on: Arizona Cardinals or Pittsburgh Steelers?

The Steelers won, who honestly were my pick to win it all in the preseason, thanks to some shady officiating.

Before the weeks of analysis, we watched the NFL playoffs and before that there was the annual debate about the BCS.

Before that, we had college football and preceding that every year is Major League Baseball.

It may seem like what I am doing here is giving you a sports calendar in reverse, but what I am really doing is showing you how unimportant the NCAA basketball regular season is.

This has actually been one of the most topsy-turvy seasons I can remember, but then again I don't pay much attention to college basketball until March.

Before the first game is played, even the most half-hearted fan can accurately pick at least half of the teams that are going to make the tournament and probably at least a dozen of the teams that will be in the Sweet Sixteen.

So we play 30-plus games just to see what we already know will happen.

This makes the college basketball season pointless.

I will admit to spending a good majority of my Spring Breaks with my best friends watching tournament games, but I have also spent a Spring Break watching the Texas Rangers, who might as well be a college baseball team.

I know people hate college football because of the lack of a playoff system and praise college basketball because they have the best playoff in sports, but that is all college basketball has going for it.

You can get the whole regular season done in about 15-20 games or so, depending on the conference.

Just play everyone in your conference twice, once at home and once on the road, to set the stage for the conference tournament.

Play the conference tournament and let the winners go to the dance as usual. The 30 conference champions will be joined in March by the 34 best remaining teams according to rankings.

Rank these 64 teams from best to worst - arbitrarily of course - because if college sports has taught us anything it's that rankings don't need to be determined by reason or principle, and let them play it out.

You can get the whole thing knocked out in about two months, which is all the time that is needed to keep us busy between football and baseball seasons.

Article Tools