Some Festivus airing of grievances in sports, starting with the awful College Football Playoff

This is For The Win’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Did a friend recommend or forward this to you? If so, subscribe here. Have feedback? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey! Now, here’s Mike Sykes.

Good morning, Winners! Welcome back to the Morning Win. Thanks so much for rocking with us today. We appreciate you.

We’ve reached the pinnacle of the holidays, folks. Christmas and Hanukkah are in a couple of days. Then, in just a week’s time, we’ll finally arrive in 2025.

The holiday season is usually a time to be thankful for the things you have in your life. We’ll spend a lot of time doing that over these next couple of weeks. But today? Today is a special day. It is not one of those days.

December 23 is Festivus. The day that you get to air out all of your grievances. Grievances against who? Whoever! Just get it out of your system.

Festivus is a non-secular holiday that stands opposite all the commercialism and pageantry of Christmas. It started as a thing on an episode of Seinfeld and has taken a bit of a hold of the culture in recent years.

So, today, I’m airing my grievances. The first grievance is the most recent one: The College Football Playoff.

This weekend sucked, guys.

The NCAA, ESPN and everyone else (including us!) hyped up the 12-team College Football Playoff like this new format would be the greatest invention known to sports. We’d have four games of interconference intrigue on our plates for the weekend.

Instead, we endured endless Fortnite commercials that we really didn’t care about, just to watch every underdog get absolutely blasted by a better team. Not one game was competitive. Not one! Now, we’ve got to endure silly arguments from the snobbiest Alabama truthers CFB fans about whether Indiana along with SMU were ever valid selections in the first place. 

And they’re talking about extending this thing to 16 teams. TUH. Please. Are y’all sure we don’t need to go back to four? Because this was trash.

I’d rather not debate about the last team in and the first team out if they’re just going to get boat-raced. That’s pointless.

I was rooting for you, SMU. WE WERE ROOTING FOR YOU. Rhett Lashlee, I will never forgive you for resurrecting the ghost of Alabama’s past this weekend.

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Grievance No. 2: The NFL kind of stinks

I’ve been complaining a lot about the quality of NFL football this year. Rightfully so, I’d say. I know most NFL fans are probably annoyed by this, but the game’s quality is in shambles and deep down you know it.

There are so many awful teams in football this year. How is it possible to have nine teams with four wins or less? How is it possible to have six with three or less? That doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t look right either.

man. just way too many bad teams this year tankathon.com/nfl

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— definitely not charles (@fourverts.bsky.social) December 22, 2024 at 7:38 PM

The Raiders won a game on Sunday and went from potentially drafting No. 1 overall to drafting No. 6. Do you know how insane that is?

The NFL is so bad that I have to agree with Tom Brady. The strawberry-hating ex-QB talked about how much bad NFL football there is these days. I thought (and generally still do think!) he was simply just a hater giving us that classic “back in my day” routine. You know — the quintessential old man yelling at clouds spiel.

But nah, man. Brady was right. I will never ever ever ever forgive this league for making me say that out loud.

Grievance No. 3: Take some initiative, NBA All-Stars

You know what else sucks these days? The NBA All-Star game. They don’t try anymore. They know it. We know it. Everybody knows it. Now the league is doing some gimmicky tournament this season that will probably only make people hate the game even more.

You know who some of the first people to complain about that were? The NBA’s All-Stars. Not just any All-Stars — the NBA’s premier All-Stars in Kevin Durant and LeBron James. They both talked about how the new format seems, uh, let’s just call it questionable.

LAYUP LINES: LeBron and KD should fix the All-Star game instead of complaining about it

Can somebody do me a quick favor, though? Remind them both how we got here.

This wouldn’t be a thing if the All-Stars decided to just play for realsies for once instead of just mailing it in. Play like y’all play in those offseason pickup games! We’ve seen you do it before.

This ain’t a problem for the WNBA, by the way. That game has been fun for years. They hoop over there — even when it’s not a Team USA vs. the WNBA exhibition.

That just goes to show you it’s not about the state of the game — it’s about the mentality of the players. Love you guys, but please. Try a bit harder. Then maybe we can go back to East vs. West.

Quick hits: Kenny Pickett proves Jalen Hurts’ worth … Jordan Love ain’t beating the Toyotathon allegations … and more

— Here’s Christian D’Andrea with more on what we learned from Week 16, including how essential Jalen Hurts is to the Eagles.

— Jordan Love is a Toyotathon merchant and nothing can convince me otherwise. Charles Curtis has more.

— Here’s Meg Hall with amazing photos of Penn State’s volleyball championship run. This is so awesome.

— Here’s an updated playoff picture for the NFL season. Things are getting tight.

— Charles ranked the best moments from the Seinfield Festivus episode. Please click this.

— Texas is the new favorite to win it all in the CFP. We’ll see about that. Mitch Northam has more for you here.

That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading. Have a happy holiday season!

-Sykes