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Post being replied to

Get a life by ndtnguy

I post on Rock's House approximately once every six months, and you're older than I am. I penned one longish paragraph on this entire topic, and you've run around like an unemployed, adderall-addled chicken with its head cut off typing whole volumes on it. Old men venting their feelings indeed.

If a forty-year-old dude cussing at people over how many college-football playoff games are best isn't an old man venting his feelings, I would like to know what is. You might take some of the emotional energy you have directed towards this topic and try engaging with your wife. (Or is she your ex-wife because you can't have a calm conversation about something as pointless as football? Try her anyways; she's still the only woman the priests will let you bed.)

And at the end of it all, what do you have? You have a value judgment that playoffs are better than exhibition-game bowls, and the secondary value judgment that playoffs with more teams are better than playoffs with fewer teams. But those judgments are arbitrary at worst or derived, at best, from contingent, immanent interests. There are no fixed moral principles at issue here.

Consequently, there is no self-evident mechanism for concluding that the value of expanded playoffs, or playoffs at all, exceeds those of tradition connected to displaced bowl matchups, or the logistical problems of expanded seasons, or of avoiding enhancing the already powerful role of television money in college athletics. Partisans of larger playoffs simply hold up "chance to play for the championship" as if it were some axiomatic basic good. They can do that because, without any means of engaging in precise analysis at all, objections can be dismissed as either "irrelevant" (who could say?) or merely nostalgic (the ultimate weapon of the overly enthused internet interlocutor, of course, being labeling something as old-fashioned or nostalgic).

All of that occupies a lot of virtual space. But none of it is terribly convincing. Nor does it add up to a situation in which you, or persons similarly situated, are likely to be convinced yourself. I know I have better things to do, and I hope you do as well. If you decide to spend less time on here and your wife appreciates the newfound attention, remember not to give me the credit.