Merry Christmas: Who's Happier Today, Vol Fans Or Gator fans?

Take a look at how Florida fans celebrated their post-season (Chris Spears photo)

Playoffs, Smayoffs. Bowl games still matter to the fans because they can have fun. And Gator fans did that at the Gasparilla Bowl.

By CARLTON REESE 

GatorBaitMedia.com

On Sunday morning, tens of thousands of Tennessee Vol fans woke up in 20-degree Columbus, Ohio, the continuation of a weekend nightmare not simply because their football team was humiliated the night before. For them, there were no roller coasters, tiki bars or games of beach volleyball leading up to the big game. 

Perhaps an uplifting visit to the National Veterans Memorial and Museum or the Franklin Park Conservatory provided something memorable for the trip; otherwise, regrets are about the only thing Vol fans took back home with them.

Welcome to the era of the national college football playoff, where the old debates about mythical champions have finally been vanquished so that we get it right, no matter the costs. Up to this season, every year of college football was rife with debate about who should either be playing for the national championship or even who should actually be the national champion. Even with a 12-team playoff the debates remain; only no one will argue over who the champion is in the end.

So what a relief for our beloved sport! We finally “get it right” – but did we? College football, in its organic form, from the late 1860s grew into a second national pastime over the next hundred years with teams playing mainly a regional schedule and harrowing over conference championships and wins over rivals. As such, teams competed mainly for the sake of competition and rivalry, and not until the early 1900s was there ever such a thing as a postseason thanks to the Rose Bowl game, first played in 1902 and then annually since 1916. 

As the popularity of such games grew, more bowl games emerged so that eventually there were too many. Bowl games weren’t created or mandated, they simply emerged over time and lasted for a century, eventually factoring into who would be determined as “national champion.”

The wise sage Reese Bobby claimed “if you ain’t first, you’re last” and generations of college football fans seemed to have taken this seriously: to them, what matters is who wins the national championship – anything else renders your program at the bottom looking up. So we now have this 12-team (soon to be 16-team) playoff where the final landscape of college football is to be a battlefield littered with 133 rotting corpses and one victor.

Today’s millennials have no recollection of spending late December on Bourbon Street with a New Year’s Day game awaiting at the Superdome. 

During the day, other bowl games would be gracing the TV sets of the bars and restaurants and the whole scene was a party. Finally, there was a game, and win or lose there was a vacation of revelry shared by strangers all happening to wear the same colors. Perhaps it was for a national championship or maybe for bragging rights – either way, the game was a big deal and getting there was a tribute to your team’s great season and a reward to the players and fans alike.

Perhaps New Year’s Day was spent on the sofa. For a college football fan, there was no better day of the year than that one spent watching the Cotton Bowl then the Rose Bowl and that inevitable evening battle between the Orange and Sugar. Each game was a championship in and of itself.

Fast forward to 2024, where those Vol fans no doubt see it all as a giant waste of time. 

Playing a road game on the campus of another team, especially one located at some frigid latitude, was more of a curse than a reward. It’s fair to ask, “Who is happier today, Vol fans or Gator fans?” 

The question answers itself.

With the playoffs, we have turned the rowdy saloon into a neighborhood Chili’s – the former rather unpredictable where most have a great time and the latter a more safe haven offering the measured “standard pour” at the bar with the typical uninspiring appetizers.

At least  Tennessee fans were able to travel out of state for their miserable adventure – Indiana had its best season in forever and followed the trail of tears to South Bend, within their own borders. Southern Methodist went 11-2 and earned a trip to Nowhere, Pennsylvania. Clemson won the ACC despite a mediocre season and at least enjoyed a vacation in Austin, Texas.

The 40-year-old fan who wears a hockey jersey to church can’t imagine a world without a playoff, or six overtimes, or a thousand points on the board. He’s a fan! The world needs every call to be reviewed, telecommunication through helmets and nothing allowed on the field that can’t happen in Madden NFL. 

Today, the automaton sports world beats the days of Earl Weaver arguing with the umps any day of the week.

The Gators did not make the playoffs and that seems to be the measuring stick for any football program today. On Friday night on Dale Mabry Avenue in Tampa, hordes of Gator fans chanted in unison, “It’s great… to be… a Florida Gator!” and there is little doubt none were despondent about missing the playoff. 

On Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville Saturday night, Rocky Top was being played with all the enthusiasm of Tap.

With the institution of a playoff, the long-range design is simply the elimination of bowl games. None have any meaning these days, so we are told, so why even bother? But in our zeal to create a football tournament we are losing one of the truly unique elements of the sport that helped to fuel its mystique. 

The Sugar Bowl was special because it was the reward for winning an SEC Championship; the Rose Bowl was the reward for the Big 10 and Pac 10 champions. The Cotton and Orange Bowls brought in champions from the SWC, Big 8, Big 12 and ACC depending what decade you were watching. 

Admittedly, the games were special even if they more often than not failed to pit the two best teams in the country.

The bowl system was part of college football’s immense rise in popularity – a playoff is thought to take that popularity and increase it exponentially. 

The results of this experiment won’t be known for years to come, but at the moment it seems the sport will be filled with more disappointment than rapture.

With 134 teams in Division-I, college football is still at its best as a regional sport. 

Equitable scheduling is impossible nationwide – it’s not even possible within a 16-team conference! Playoffs work when the sample size is small enough for equitable scheduling, which takes place in the NFL even as imperfect as it may be. But there has been this push for national hegemony in college football the past 50 years and finally a semblance of it has appeared. It just doesn’t taste as good as we thought it would. 

Just ask any Vol fan.

•