Do you know how difficult it is being a basketball fan in the Southeast? Very. A football is oblong with points on the end. A basketball is perfect sphere. Footballs bounce in odd directions. Basketballs react in perfect dance with the Ying and Yang. Both are sports they pride themselves on winning and being the best team you can be. You might be the worst team but get all those lucky bounces and you "upset" the favorite. It's all math. The chaos theory completed. No chaos theory in basketball, just chaos.
A basketball game is played indoors and is uniform. The floor of each arena is the same. Football on the other hand is played on artificial grass. It is played on real grass. It is played in mud,and on frozen fields. It doesn't rain indoors except in Atlanta during the SEC Tournament. There is no wind. The temperature is always 72 degrees. Now take the other sport. Some days it is hot enough for the players to overheat. Other days it is so cold the players can barely hold on to the ball. You never hear a basketball announcer say something like "he stands at the free throw line with the game winning shot in the balance. The wind is in his face and is so cold it bits your face." Nope. You drop a basketball and it bounces in the exact trajectory it left your hand. It might hit several hands fight to catch it but the geometry is always the same.
Footballs? Oddly shaped and designed to let luck determine what happens. Mark Ingram running for the end zone and the ball is knocked forward. It could have just as easily bounced out of bounds and Bama might have won the Iron Bowl. Instead, it bounced forward and to the amazement and disgust of all Alabama fans,it went in the end zone. Great play by Auburn. Sure was. Luckily for Auburn the ball bounded in the end zone. Unfortunately for Bama it didn't go out of bounds. No skill involved. Just luck.
That's a lot like your boss tossing your friday paycheck and you see it floating to a co-worker who smiles and says, "hey I got paid twice this week." When a head coach said that luck is involved in winning the national championship it isn't just coach speak. You will never hear a hoop coach complaining a pass bounced the wrong way. It might have gone the wrong way but someone threw wherever it ended up.
Those are just a few of the reasons I love basketball more than football. Two other important reasons is that the hot dogs and rest rooms are close by. That rest room thing get more important when you get older. Roll Tide.
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