It means everything

The last chapter of The Story will be televised to the widest audience possible. This is also how stories (the good ones, at least, the old crowd-pleasers) operate: the hard-scrabble underdog doesn't take on the unbeatable favorite in the backyard in front of friends and family. What made David David was that Goliath went down in front of everyone, forever.

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Usually it's best to leave the shredding of Stewart Mandel's latest intellectual gambit to Michael at B&B, but he seems busy and anyway, the following sentiment appeared in a dozen different places after the Iowa-Penn St. game. So I feeling entitled to point out that this ...

But why, you ask, is the regular season "more important" with the BCS in place? Let us count the ways -- just using last weekend as an example. If college football had a playoff ...

• Iowa's dramatic upset of Penn State wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. The Nittany Lions can and probably will still win the Big Ten. The loss would only hurt their playoff seeding.

... mindlessly equates "playoffs" with an eight- or 16-team version. 'Cause, see, in a four-team version both the Iowa game (which costs the Nits a guaranteed shot at a national title as opposed to one that depends on the kindness of Big 12 strangers) and PSU's upcoming Michigan St. tilt (in which the whole nation will wait with baited breath to see if the Nits or Trojans grab the fourth playoff berth) become vastly more important to the country-at-large.

But that's not really my point. My point is that it's stunning to see a national writer tell Iowa fans that their season-defining, possibly program-defining victory (should Ferentz dig the Hawkeyes back out of the last couple of years' worth of mediocrity) "wouldn't have mattered in the slightest" if Penn St. went on to take part in a playoff. That win and the story those that were there will tell their grandkids someday in the robot house are irrelevant. Now, I know, Mandel is intentionally discussing the BCS and BCS ramifications alone ... but isn't the entire "let's hone our focus on the BCS to microscopic levels at the exclusion of what's important about college football, like Iowa" viewpoint identical to the playoffs-ruin-everything viewpoint Mandel is arguing against? In trying to argue that playoffs would strip college football of its uniqueness, Mandel strips out exactly what about the Iowa-Penn St. game helps make college football unique.

Not that Mandel can even get his pro-BCS argument straight anyway ...

• Alabama's overtime win over LSU -- one of the most intense endings I've ever covered -- would have been largely irrelevant. While the game would still be a big deal because of Nick Saban's return to Baton Rouge, the palpable tension in that stadium after the Tigers blocked the Crimson Tide's field goal was due to the fact that Alabama's entire season was on the line.

Under a playoff, if the Tide had lost ... oh well. They could still clinch a spot in the SEC title game the following week.

Right, the same way Florida did two years ago after losing to Auburn ... the way LSU did last year after losing twice ... the way Florida will again after losing to Ole Miss this year. BCS or playoff, that game wasn't going to matter in terms of the national championship picture anyway.

And in those blind Mandelian terms, neither will the Iron Bowl.

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Those are, of course, the same blind Mandelian terms the overwhelming majority of Alabama fans are happy to accept. Over and over again over the past six years, they have told us their sights are always set higher than mere rivalry (Tennessee sometimes excluded), that games that aren't played with championships on the line aren't worth caring about, that Auburn supporters deserve derision and mockery for daring to invest so much in a single game rather than titles. In short: they have told us that Auburn's six wins don't really matter. They don't really count for anything.

I think the tune would be entirely different if they had won a few of those games and certainly will be when they finally do break the streak--at which point the measure of our two programs will magically be who wins the Iron Bowl again, not which one shamefully wants to win it more--but for now, this tune is theirs. It is the tune sung by the likes of Stewart Mandel, the tune danced by grade-fudgers to keep the budding professionals eligible, the tune written by the NFL and, it has to be said, played by no one at this level so beautifully as by the Tide's resident coachbot.

Let them keep it. I will keep college football, where before the draft rankings and the quarterback camps and luxury boxes and million-dollar contracts and polls and marching bands and even the damn sweat and blood, comes the hate. That's where this sport we love starts. Auburn gets that. Alabama claims they don't. This is the way things have to be. But it doesn't mean I envy them. Ever. At all.

Besides, should Auburn do the damn-near unthinkable and leave Tuscaloosa with a win a week from Saturday that the Tide follow with a loss to Florida the week after that, Auburn fans will look back on this season with a certain fondness laced with disappointment while Tide fans will do with a certain disappointment laced with fondness. The game will mean everything to Auburn regardless. Here's to hoping Alabama finds out after the fact exactly how much it means to them.

T-minus 12 days. Let the hate flow, Auburn.