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The Law of Diminishing Interest

As there have been every Saturday since Labor Day weekend, there are approximately 20 college football games on TV today available via my cable television service. There is almost no chance I will watch any of them from start to finish, despite a happy lack of any pressing errands preventing me from doing so.

It happens every late fall. As college football's season goes on, my attention tends to go elsewhere. It's a direct mathematical relationship. To take an extreme case, next Saturday will be the "biggest" college game of 2009 -- Florida vs. Alabama for the SEC championship. I'll watch, but if there was an NFL game on opposite it, I would not, even if the Lions were in the NFL game.

The problem is, the closer the college season gets to its endpoint (s), the more the sport's complete absurdity becomes apparent to those of us lucky enough to live in a community with other sports entertainment options. By late November, the BCS always stands revealed as a "competition" as crooked as an Albanian minor-league soccer match. By late November, one realizes college ball is a sport which ends in a prolonged series of exhibition games. By late December, the bowls are the background noise and sights of the holidays -- the exact equivalent of the Christmas Muzak played at the mall.

My theory is, after the final gun of the Harvard-Yale game, college football is over for another year. And if I lived in a town where it wasn't, I'd move.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:24 AM