On Tuesday morning, less than 12 hours after the BCS National Championship Game came to an end, I sat in the Phoenix airport struggling to find a creative angle for this column.
I had no will to write about what transpired on Monday night. None. Zero.
Think about that for a second. Oregon just played in the single most important game in school history, and virtually no part of me wanted to type a single word about it.
Forget that the Ducks lost. Forget that it still hasn’t quite sunk in that we were so close, that a national championship was within our grasp.
No matter what the final score was, I really wouldn’t have wanted to write about it. I sincerely doubt that you would have wanted to read about it either.
The fact is, the 37 days of endless coverage between Oregon’s final two games virtually destroyed all of the unique story angles. For the first time all season, I don’t even want to think about the Ducks, much less talk or write about them. Any time I try to, an image of Lou Holtz or Jesse Palmer jabbering instantly pops into my head, and I want to smack myself in the face.
This is the world we live in. 24/7 media coverage rules our lives, from CNN to ESPN. The “lather, rinse, repeat” strategy is applied in full force, and as a result we are treated to 10 different feature stories on the Oregon offense or Cam Newton’s odyssey.
You don’t really get a grasp on this until you live in the middle of it. For four consecutive days, I was surrounded by hundreds of media members with just one goal: to cover the living daylights out of the national championship game.
Everywhere I went, some sort of conversation about the game was within earshot.
“You know, it will be interesting to see how Auburn’s size matches up with Oregon’s speed…”
“…Chip Kelly said today, quote, ‘Let’s just play already.’ I’m Tom Rinaldi, ESPN.”
“…Gene Chizik had to halt his press conference today while his assistants searched for a pulse. I’m Wendi Nix, ESPN.”
Kidding on that last one, of course. But those were the types of things I heard all weekend. By the end, it was like listening to a broken record.
I can’t imagine many people enjoy this sort of non-stop marathon coverage, and it would be nice if the mass media (including people like me, for what it’s worth) could just chill out for a bit in the month before big games.
Which, of course, brings me to my next point. It has been said before, many times, but it needs to be said again. The fact that the NCAA and BCS postpone the biggest game of the year by more than a month is beyond reason. It is unfair to players, coaches and fans alike, and destroys any forward momentum gained from the regular season.
It seems to be a growing trend in sports to wait as long as possible to play the big games. The World Series goes well into November. NBA teams often have three-day layoffs during the playoffs. I suppose the theory behind it is to milk the attention and hype for all it’s worth.
In reality, it has the opposite effect. In the 37 days between the regular season and the national championship, it would be easy to forget there was a game to be played at all.
Not only does this affect the mind-set of a fan, it clearly has an impact on the games themselves. As entertaining as the national championship ended up being, it was clear that the rhythm of both offenses had been severely disrupted by the layoff.
Who could blame them? If you made me take a month-long hiatus from writing, my columns would be unreadable. It simply doesn’t make sense, and the NCAA needs to seriously reconsider its layout for the bowl games.
Media coverage will always be exhausting, especially for games that decide championships. But it would be a lot less frustrating if we only had to endure it for a week instead of a month.
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