How excited are you for Saturday? I mean, really, how excited?
We haven’t watched legitimate football for seven months. Sure, we’ve seen high school all-star games, spring games, pro preseason games, speculation about what exactly is wrong with a head coach’s health, real drafts, fantasy drafts, debates about the dedication of freshmen and premium cable documentaries about Rex ______ Ryan and the New York _______ Jets. (Note: if HBO controlled this paper, you’d know ______ well how those blanks would be filled.) This week, however, we can finally look forward to watching legitimate football in the Swamp.
But not really.
Miami (Ohio) will soon join Western Kentucky, Hawaii and Charleston Southern in the club of sacrificial lambs thrown into Ben Hill Griffin Stadium as UF shakes off preseason rust. In the last three season openers, the Gators have won by an average of 50 points.
Players won’t say it, and coaches definitely won’t say it, but the Redhawks have lost before they step on Florida Field.
So how excited are you for Saturday?
“Not at all” is the easy answer. Fear of oversimplifying aside, sports equals entertainment. And this game won’t be fun to watch. Don’t be surprised if most of the fans in your section are gone by the third quarter.
But a disappointed reaction is shortsighted. Florida vs. Miami (Ohio) is not just about an easy win. The game, along with the seven other matchups pitting top-10 teams against overwhelmed opponents this week, is about sports theory.
On one end of the spectrum sits the NFL, a wildly popular form of American socialism priding itself in parity. College football sits on the other end of the spectrum, a capitalist venture that would make Ayn Rand proud.
The NFL rewards the worst teams each year by giving them the earliest selections from a pool of talented new players. In turn, those players are punished by having to work for the worst teams. And those eight-figure salaries don’t offset the punishment. Players would get the same contracts if the best teams had a chance to sign them, too.
The market for the most talented players enrolling in college, meanwhile, is regulated by football’s version of the invisible hand. Players can choose where they want to play, and teams must create the best programs to sell those players.
The value of both structures is subjective, so it is pointless to debate which is better. And neither league will ever change its system. The NFL is pulling in about 16.6 million viewers for each regular season game, and forcing teenagers to enroll at certain colleges should be left to irresponsible parents.
But understanding the differences between the two systems and why each one works helps explain uneven games like Florida vs. Miami (Ohio).
Socialism is not inherently bad in all business. Because the worst NFL teams get the first draft picks, fans know their teams (outside of Detroit) are potentially one year away from a playoff run.
Building a championship contender in college football is more challenging. But a capitalist system forces teams to overcome disadvantages in interesting ways. Boise State and Texas Tech have been fun to watch because their programs were built on undervalued players and untraditional offenses.
Still, rebuilding a team like Miami (Ohio) seems daunting following a 1-11 season, and Redhawks fans would benefit from drafting the best high school talent. In the meantime, they get stuck facing the Gators.
The average point differential in Florida games last season was 28, twice as high as the point differential in games involving the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings, pro teams that reached similar heights to those of Florida in 2009.
But don’t worry if you’re really excited about this Saturday. You probably just really miss football.
Or you’re a communist.
