We're No. 2

So, the University of Washington football team is the second best in the entire United States of America.  The AP says so, the Coaches' Poll says so, and the thirteen voters in the almighty College Football Championship say so.

Very cool.  But, those of us who aren't totally committed Husky fanatics, or at least current UW students, have our doubts.  The team, despite its 13-0 record, has seemed shaky in game after game.  Would the second best team in the entire known world really have to struggle to get past Stanford, Oregon State, and Washington State?   We, along with most of the nation, have asked ourselves that question repeatdly. 

And beyond that, here in the Northwest Corner, regardless of ethnicity, we tend to be Scandinavian in our attitudes.  "Be humble.  Don't brag about yourselves.  Don't call attention to yourselves.  Remember that if you're too happy today, you're bound to be miserable tomorrow.  Things can always go wrong, and usually will."  Pessimism is our proven default.

And even my mildly felt, Norwegian happiness at the Huskies' success is offset by my displeasure with everything else in the world of college football.  The advent of the College Football Championship has been motivated by television's quest for bigger bucks.  It's been built on the destruction of the New Year's Bowl traditions, and on the destruction of regional football conferences with century-old traditions (notably this year, of the Pac-12), and the growing conviction that football conferences themselves are no longer necessary.  That their championship games, especially, should be done away with.

When you have a play-off system that determines the champion of the entire Universe, who needs regional conference championships?  They just clutter things up.

And, of course, the antique need for "regional" conferences is now obsolete, now that we can fly across the country in five or six hours.  (And now that football players aren't seriously expected to have the same lives and academic strivings, interests, and responsibilities as do common college students.)  With West Coast teams now set to join the "Mid-Western" Big Ten conference, joining recently-added Atlantic Coast teams like Rutgers and Maryland, the term "regional" is rather anachronistic, right?.  

My mind is still reeling from the idea of Stanford and Cal playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

I can't predict where it's all heading.  I just know I won't like it.  In fact, as a teenager, I hated the disbandment of the "Pacific Coast Conference," and its temporary replacement by the Pac-5.  Even though the Pac-5 was, within a few years, expanded back to the Pac-8, leading to the snide comment that the schools had chosen an unnecessarily complicated way just to get rid of the University of Idaho. 

So, bah!  My politics may be liberal, but my attachment to traditions, to the "way it's always been," is downright conservative.  Even Tory!  Stop the world, especially the sports world.  I want to get off.

But anyway.  Go Dawgs.  Beat the Longhorns! And the Wolverines!