Worst Sunday of the Year

As I sit here on the Sunday afternoon before the Superbowl, I am struck by how this is the worst Sunday of the year for sports. Think about it – from September through January, we have NFL football every week, then there is a week off until the Superbowl. In February, you can watch the Pro-Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game, baseball spring training starts and if you’re into it, NASCAR starts its season. March of course brings us college basketball’s March Madness. April, May and June is filled with the beginning of the baseball season and the conclusion of the NBA & NHL seasons and their playoffs. Baseball continues in July and August, plus the weather’s beautiful any way. That gets us back to September and the start of the NFL season. It is this one week that just sticks out. Sure, there are some basketball games on and there is the NHL All-Star game, but it’s just not the same, especially when you are coming off the NFL conference championships and you’re leading into the premier sporting event of the year – the Superbowl.

This got me to thinking: there is an easy solution for this if the NCAA would get its act together. This could be the week of the NCAA football championship. If they had a playoff system, this could be the week that the final game is played. With an eight team playoff, they could have the quarter final games played during the traditional bowl games on New Years Day. They could use the big four bowl games that are currently part of the BCS – the Fiesta Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. The semi-finals could then be played the Saturday of the NFL conference championships and the Championship game could be this week. If it were this year, the schedule would be as follows:

Quarter-finals: January 1-2
Semi-finals: January 17
Finals: January 25

Seems like a simple solution, doesn’t it? Which begs the question, why can’t the NCAA figure this out? Eventually, I think they will come up with some system, but until then, we’ll just have to sit here on the worst Sunday in sports and wonder when they’ll get their act together.