The College Football vs College Basketball Horror Movie Nearly Over

For reasons only known to them, certain people do not want us to be able to enjoy college football and college basketball. There is no “and” to them. It is a world where people who like one must hate the other because, apparently, college football is the king and that makes college basketball the court jester or something. Really, I am not sure what it makes either of them, although, I do know there is room for both.

Still, it doesn’t really matter why I — the lowly but freshly ranked 87th best blogger in Pennsylvania who has dark hair, multiple kids who thinks Dora has an awesome jumper and loves Christina Ricci (Tough criteria, but only down one spot from last year!) — thinks. There are those out there who want to let college basketball people know, their sport stinks. They especially love doing so while the college football season is in full swing.

It is much like a horror movie. The evil people (folks who prop up college football to other-worldly levels) are looking to hurt the innocent (us good-looking, albeit sometimes snarky college basketball people). To be fair to those evil college football people, though, they aren’t looking to murder us or impregnate us with an amputated lobster. Well, at least as far as I know. They just want to let us know that we aren’t as great a community as the one they have built.

Which, in terms of mass and exposure to the point of nausea, is true. Football in general is a much more popular American sport than basketball. To even further make us feel inadequate, some of the football lovers will make it a point to acknowledge how “niche” college basketball is. That it is the smallest major sport (NFL, NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball, MLB, NBA, does the NHL still count?) of the big time sports. Which, again, is not really a lie.

What it isn’t, however, is the full truth. College hoops might be a little more niche than watching two student-athletes cause blunt head force trauma to one another (yeah, you guys probably like snuff films too), but we make up for it in friendship, spirit and togetherness. Yeah, yeah. Those are things that are all kinda/sorta/but most importantly not the same, but it is true because I say it is.

Regardless, I can’t take the back and forth anymore between the two groups. On the mean streets of Twitter I can’t tweet about a basketball game on a Saturday without someone popping in my mentions about some football game between two teams with three losses each who I am supposed to care about more than watching the UMass Minutemen be all Cinderella-ish well before March.

College basketball people, however, are not as harsh. We tend to be a little more passive aggressive. Most of us won’t go after a football guy by blowing up his mentions. Instead we wait. We lurk in the dark. Waiting for that moment when an uneducated college football lover tries to put something college basketball related down and they are wrong.

A bad example: College football lover guy likes to think their regular season is more important than the college basketball regular season. That the only part of the hoops season that matters is March.

An iffy-at-best rebuttal: There are approximately 29849038590823905 Division-I college basketball teams (okay, like 300). Only 64-ish (okay, 68) make the NCAA Tournament. To get into the NCAA Tournament takes a lot of winning in the regular and postseason. If you are a fan of a “power” conference program, and your team isn’t the Duke Blue Devils, every game probably matters to your team. There is a world of difference for the St. John’s, Boston Colleges and Penn States of the world between a 19 and 20 win season. Not to mention who, where and how they beat whoever they beat (same equation applies to losses).

All of that is not even mentioning the programs from the mid-majors and below. The guys you all love to have make deep runs in your NCAA Tournament brackets because some guy on ESPN told you they were a sleeper team. College basketball fans already know about Harvard, UMass (not really a sleeper at this point) and the like. You, well, you don’t think it is important that a team like Harvard is running amok and whooping on bigger programs. But hell, yet another Big 10 team falls to a lowly D-2, Sub-Division of mortals (or whatever it is you call the not Division-I teams) and it is the apocalypse.

Even more, worse rebuttal? Well, yes: The college football regular season does matter. In fact, it matters too much. Yes, “too”, with that extra ‘o’ because it adds value — and something with grammar as well.

Rather simply, if your favorite program loses a game early on and their name isn’t {insert anyone from the SEC} your offseason of false high-expectations, crazy fandom and uncontrollably trying to convince people that Tennessee was going to go undefeated, is over. Sure, they (meaning you, irrational fanbases who say “we” when referring to their favorite team) might be playing in the Christmas Eve Lobster Salad Bowl brought to you by Marty Jannetty, but that wasn’t what you wanted. And you know what? You knew this was a high probability when they lost to the Club State Pool Cleaners on September the 4th.

Alas, none of that matters now. No more of those scary, mean, usually much bigger and stronger (but never as good-looking) college football guys will be around soon. Their season ends on Monday with their version of some form of fictional college championship (playoffs? Hell, we have had them since before your great-grandpa had his first football induced concussion. Welcome to the 30s, college football).

All of those guys will now be off helping NFL lovers evaluate talent for the draft, travelling to high schools to watch teenagers practice and sweat in the heat and won’t even bother telling us how bad college basketball is sans a random tweet about how boring some game is.

None of which brings a single tear to my eye. Really, I have one of those pesky college football lovers in my life. He knows who he is. Hell, he is even a closet, but fake, college basketball fan. To him I say; see-ya, biatch (that is how the cool kids spell it, right?). Go enjoy an offseason of convincing people why one of the 490852930852938905-four-star prospects that signed with one of the 398492891 potential bubble up programs will put that program over the top.

Side note (goes for both CFB and CBB): How in the world are so many recruits rated as having four-stars yet none of them are that good? We need a better system. If the same programs get a gazillion four-star recruits but never get any better, maybe it isn’t them. Likely, it is the crazy expectations we put on them thanks to our crappy recruiting eval system. Just saying.

{Sigh. Breathe. Take sip of coffee mixed with vodka mixed with pickle juice for cramping.}

Those college football people will want to poke their ugly heads out come March — and you know what? We should let them. The more people who want in on the college basketball party the better. At least, at least for now that is, we won’t have to deal with as much back and forth with those mean college football people….

Granted, now we will have to deal with all of those condescending NBA lovers, but they are currently really busy trying to come up with fictional trades for the humorously bad teams that will somehow make their franchise not a laughing stock. Right, everyone in the Eastern Conference sans the Miami Bron-Brons and Indiana Pacers? So, we are safe from them for now.

Okay. I leave you all with a horrible, bad and slightly misguided joke because I want us to stay friends:

What does hooker killer extraordinaire Craig James and former UConn assistant coach and arrestee in prostitution ring scandal Clyde Vaughan have in common?

Hookers!

Hookers: Who have been bringing peace between arguing factions since the beginning of professional streetwalkers. It’s not a crime if they only charge a dime.