Sports Logic

School spirit appears to be a total detriment to logical thought at times. Ah, well, pride cometh before the fall, as they say. On what am I basing this conclusion? Yesterday, during several of the football games, I saw disturbing trends. To wit:

Texas Tech fans automatically root against the team that defeated them for the team they did not play. Were they to put on their thinking caps, they would realize that if the team that beat them is also defeated, it further lowers their standing, as they lost to an inferior team. Were they to desire their standing in the eyes of others to improve, they would root for those that destroyed them. It's not surprising that Tech fans would be this way, though. They tend to be a bitter lot, many of whom were rejected by UT and A&M in applications and thus detest the schools, not realizing that the school they attend is more on par with Baylor and thus should focus their energies in that direction.

People at TCU were hoping for BCS chaos with a UT defeat to put themselves in the Rose Bowl. Although it seems logical to desire such a thing, there is no way they even pose a threat to the other top ranked teams. By pose a threat, I of course mean economically. I admittedly know very little about their team, though I'm told their defense sucks. In any case, the top two teams to play in the Rose Bowl must be able to fill the stadium with approximately equal numbers of fans. Given that the fan base of TCU is much smaller, due to the fact that they aren't a premier institution and don't graduate near as many people as the other top schools, they had no chance. The world revolves around money and president more often than we might like, but that's simply the truth of the matter.

What really has never made sense to me is the idea of an upset to begin with. I'm told that no one likes a spoil sport, but the opposite seems to be true in the case of sporting events. Why in the world would we make such an exception? All the teams are guilty of it, really. UT upset Nebraska at some point in the 1990s when Nebraska had a chance at the championship. From a viewing of the second half of the game, it would appear that Nebraska really wanted this more, which makes very little sense as that they don't actually get anything out of it besides knowing they were motivated by sour grapes.

Why am I even concerned with these things? It bugs me that other people spend so much time worrying about them. A game is just a game. It proves very little, and yet many people place a great deal of stock in them. Players have off games, and there are other factors at stake beyond how good a team is in each and every game. Sometimes a team clearly wants the win more. Therefore, why worry about it. Let the rivalries die.

The saddest thing is that the overall rating of a university often has a significant component attributed to how well its sporting teams fare on the national level. It's absurd to even allow such things on a college campus to begin with as the primary purpose of these institution is education. Therefore, the academics alone should be considered. It's well known that the term "scholastic athletes" is a joke, as that many of these athletes are reading on an elementary reading level. Sure, there are the exceptions, but these tend to prove the rule more than anything as that one has to go searching for players that are intelligent both on and off the field. Typically, when those players are found, they are not by any means the school's star players.

Respecting the BCS, all the people that despise it should give it a rest. The sole reason these bowl events are propagated and allowed by universities is that they make money, though for the university, most of that money is funneled directly back to the athletics programs and thus doesn't have any impact on the quality of the education of the university. Note UT's godzillatron and stadium expansion after winning the national title. If we wanted to determine the actual best team, it couldn't take place on the field. It's a fact of life that we have biorhythms and these will impact how we perform on a certain day. Players get injured for some *cough* unknown reason (e.g. the current helmets are actually more likely to injure them than rugby helmets.). Spirits wax and wane. Games are not usually played on neutral fields. Why is it that if we're even the slightest bit concerned about discovering the best time, we don't normalize the results to find it. Given that we're not even going to reasonable lengths without considering the BCS, it's a wonder than people can even think to criticize the next tier of the system.

In the end, I do support sporting events for one singular reason. Though I want them completely removed from schools as that they distract from the purpose of the school, they contribute to economic activity. The flow of money is usually a good thing. It creates jobs. It increases perceived output. It allows people to buy things. It would just be nice if people were more reasonable about them and not blow them so far out of proportion as to make a monster of them.