Why College Basketball Sucks, and College Football Doesn't

College basketball sucks, we all know that. Not as bad as the pro game; which is like trying to watch flies fornicate on drying paint while my wife regales me with tales about her latest foray into the cooking of pork chops, but it still sucks.

In college basketball, the entire regular season is rendered completely, totally, and irrevocably meaningless because of conference tournaments. If your team does reasonably well, but doesn’t win the conference or conference tournament championship game, there’s a decent chance you won’t go to the NCAA tournament. Conversely, if your team sucks worse than the movie ‘Mirrors’, starring Kiefer Sutherland, but you magically get on a hot streak and win your conference tournament, you’re automatically in…knocking out said good team annotated above.

In college football, NOTHING matters more than what you do in the regular season…nothing. In college basketball, you can have an off night if you’re North Carolina or Duke, and recover to get a #1 tournament seed. If you have an off night in college football, it reverberates throughout the season. Just ask USC how bad that loss to Oregon State was.

In college basketball, rivalries are extremely watered down, and matter little outside of the teams and fan bases that are playing. Duke beats North Carolina in December? Oh, that sucks, but we’ll get ‘em again in a month or so, thinks the Tar Heel fans.

In college football, it’s often more important to beat your rival than it is to win your bowl game. Ask a Michigan fan how much better their off-season would be had they beaten Ohio State to close out their pathetic, miserable, embarrassment of a season. You lose to your rival in college football, it eats at your soul for a fucking year. Or if you’re Michigan, a decade…BWAHAHAHAHA…Michigan sucks. Ohio State rocks.

For office pools, college basketball REALLY sucks. Worse than Michigan sucks. Worse than trying to be ‘that guy’ and watching the entire ‘Pride and Prejudice’ mini-series over a weekend sucks. If one of your favorites to make the final four loses in the first or second round, you can pretty much kiss that pile of money goodbye. Your favorite to win the magicjack.com bowl loses by a FG in overtime, you can live to fight another day. Unless, of course, you were a complete homer and picked six out of seven Big 10 teams to win their bowl game. Jesus, Wisconsin over Florida State, Minnesota over Kansas…what the HELL was I thinking?

College basketball fans like to point out that a legitimate champion is crowned, and their champion isn’t decided via a popularity contest. Really? The selection process isn’t a political popularity contest? You don’t think Kentucky would have a better chance than North Dakota State? Really?

To those of you that will spend the next couple of days agonizing over ‘bracketology’ and all that it entails, I have one thing to say: Pass the pork chops, honey, and set my alarm for spring practice.