*Those high-profile bowl game blowouts last night illustrate the absurdity of college football's BCS system. The season premiere of "According to Jim" just should NOT be more compelling television than the Sugar Bowl. And the rest of the bowl lineup is uninspiring.
College football fans love to tout their sport as being the best because "every game matters" in the regular season. But how significant is that when no game matters in the postseason?
*The outdoor hockey game played in Buffalo was an eye-catching spectacle on TV. Every NHL event should take place in freezing outdoor conditions, preferably with gusty winds and falling snow as a backdrop. I rarely watch more than a minute or two of the sport on the tube (though it can be a fun experience at the arena), but yesterday I often stuck around for a few minutes at a time to watch the Penguins and the Sabres battle in the great outdoors.
However, the finish of the game reminded me why I can't take the NHL seriously. It ended in one of those postgame shootouts that the league adopted a few years ago because casual fans supposedly hated ties. Well, we do hate ties in sporting events, but settling them with an abbreviated version of the game (and that's putting it generously) isn't the solution. Penalty kick shootouts in soccer may be thrilling, but come on, that's no way to decide a big game. Similarly, these "OT wins," even if they don't get as much weight as a "regular" win, are ludicrous.
NHL games should go to sudden death overtime at the end of regulation, and the game should continue until someone scores a goal. If the players are the warriors that hockey fanatics always tell us they are, they can handle it. Shorten the season and lighten the travel if you must, but make it so that there must be a winner in every game, and then maybe I can respect the sport.
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