Over the past 3 days, all I have heard is constant whining, complaining, sniffling, and crying from the Michigan State Spartans. I’m not just talking about the ignorant fans or particular sports talk radio personnel. It’s coming all the way from the top. Mark Dantonio, the players, and even the administration in East Lansing are completely out of touch with reality. If you are going to call out the BCS and cry about how entitled you are to whatever prestige bowl you think you belong in, we first need to understand the selection process, and further, understand what the point of a bowl game is.
With exception to the national title game, which is clearly about paring what most believe to be the best and second best team in a final match to establish a champion, bowl games are about fun. I know that’s a complex and largely unintuitive idea *sarcasm but bear with me. Are bowl games about establishing an ordered ranking of teams? Clearly not (If it were we would have a playoff) and I don’t think the casual, or even hardcore, fan cares about that at all. Do you really care whether your team is #5 or #12 in the country? No! You care about watching an exciting game between your team and another team from another conference that you don’t normally get to see. You are interested in seeing just how good your team is against an irregular opponent. You want to go to a game or watch one on TV that a lot of people are excited about. So what is the trend here? It’s not about the teams. It’s not about the records. It’s not about the statistics. It’s about you… t
he fans.
There are people that will argue that it’s not about you. They will say it’s about making money – greed. That is an oversimplification of reality. Is it about money? I guess… but you have to understand that money is simply a unit of measurement of what people want. How do you know what fans, who this is really about, want in a bowl game? You need a metric by which to measure the subjective; a unit of desire. The BCS has established that metric by asking how much time and money you, the fans, are willing to spend on various games. That’s the beauty of this system that unintelligent sports analysts, who don’t have any concept of anything other than records and statistics, just don’t understand. Money is just a unit of measure that ultimately tells observers what the fans want.
So let us get back to addressing our little brother‘s concerns with regards to Michigan’s induction into the Sugar Bowl. Is Sparty more deserving of a BCS bowl than Michigan? Well… that depends on the metric we use to measuring what is deserving. The first thing we have to remember is that bowl games are about creating fun for as many fans as possible. This is accomplished by paring teams, of similar strength (nobody likes a blowout) and that people care about, against each other. That’s it. There truly is no other relevant criterion. If Michigan State wants to get what they want, a BCS birth, they need to put their time, and their money, where their mouth is. It’s as simple as that. Look, Michigan State could hardly even sell out their conference championship game. I think tickets were going for $9 on stubhub. That’s pathetic… and Bowl selection committees take note of that. If the fans don’t care about the success of their team in Indianapolis (aren’t willing to spend money and time), then what evidence do they have to say that they will show up for a bowl game in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, or California?
Michigan has proven time and again that we aren’t Michigan State. This is Michigan! The fans, who this is all about, will do their part regardless of what the product is on the field. This… Is… MICHIGAN! This is what it means to be Michigan. It is what Michigan is all about. We don’t just care. We care with a level of tenacity that other programs can only look to as some lofty goal as what the epitome of fandom should be. It is unfailingly true. The 2011 Spartan football team did their job on the field. They had a 10 win season. They beat the Wolverines at home in, as Brian of mgoblog would say, “a trash tornado”. But yet again, the Spartans are let down, not by the BCS who are only observers, but by their fans who simply don’t care enough. This one is on you. For as long as you let them, the world will always see the folks in East Lansing as Michigan’s little brother.