Idiots Write About Sports

As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room on the outskirts of Washington D.C. The clock has just struck midnight. My wife is already sound asleep. Saturday Night Live is already a third of the way through its 90 minutes of tedious comedy.

And the second half of the Cal-Arizona State game has yet to begin.

This is a game between the seventh- and 20th-ranked teams in the nation. And I would hazard to guess that I am the only person, outside of dedicated alums, hardcore gamblers and folks manning the late-night desks at major metropolitan dailies, to be watching the TBS telecast of this game in the eastern time zone. How are the east coast-based media types who vote on college football rankings supposed to properly assess the performances of Cal and Arizona State when assessing their rankings? Since most are probably sleeping more soundly than my wife right now, I suspect they’ll give a passing glance to the box score and adjust their rankings accordingly.

Yeah, good thing college football decides its champion through a playoff system instead of an elaborate system of polls, huh?

Each time I make a trip to the East Coast, where A’s home games start at 10 p.m. local time, where college football games can end on Sunday morning, where the accounts and descriptions of night games played in Pacific Standard Time are but a rumor to the morning paper, the bias of the eastern media establishment toward teams who complete their games at a decent hour becomes all the more understandable.

Post a comment