Today, ESPN was mostly indistinguishable from CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. The network spent the entire day debating Donald Trump. And it was insufferable.

No, I’m not here to discuss the merits of protesting the national anthem, what the NFL protests are about or aren’t about. We don’t do politics here at Saturday Down South, and that’s really the point of this piece as well.

College football has been largely immune to the politicization of everything, and I’m immensely thankful for it.

Political polarization has seemed to have crept into just about every area of life. I would submit that this is in large part due to the rise of 24-hour news networks, which was then followed by the rise of hyper connectivity and social media. Regardless of the cause, it’s hard to disagree that political debate has become increasingly exhaustive to many of us.

Furthermore, as the number of places free from such debate decrease, the ones that remain become more precious. And I reject the idea that it’s all about escapism. I don’t think fans watch and love college football because they’re trying to escape something. Rather, they watch it because it’s fun. Really fun. College football regularly provides great, dramatic moments in sports. And that’s why we watch.

I’m not here to pile on ESPN, because you can get there in a lot of places. But, have you noticed that College GameDay is still amazingly fun? Is it a coincidence that it’s also probably the show on that network most free from political debates?

Like many people, I watch quite a bit less of ESPN than I used to. But I still love College GameDay. From the live audience, the hilarious signs and the timeless Lee Corso picks, the show is consistently fun and always delivers. Even from New York City.

It’s not that college football is free from debate. In one sense, it might have more debate than any other major sport in our country. But it’s enjoyable debate.

Decades ago, we determined national champions by random votes without any sort of system that tried to put a No. 1 team vs. a No. 2 team toward the end of the season. It led to endless debate. We still don’t know how many championships Alabama has actually won!

Then, we replaced the system with one that relied heavily on computer formulas. The debate seemed to increase dramatically. Now, we let four teams in to a postseason structure according to the criteria of a group of people sitting in a conference room.

if that wasn’t enough, we set all of this against a backdrop of weekly released top 25 polls that are often just based on minor adjustments of the previously released top 25 poll.

It’s amazing.

Do you find it ironic that college football is structurally more messy than any major sport, yet is easily the most fun sport to debate? Think about it… we have five major conferences competing for a four team playoff. We try to compare teams that don’t even play common opponents. Coaches get contract extensions, then are considered to be on the “hot seat” one game later. It’s incredible, and it’s very messy.

And yet, maybe it’s this messiness that fuels debate that helps keep us debating the actual sport rather than things like how much we should pay players. Yes, the subject flares up from time to time, but by and large, most fans spend their energy debating the polls, discussing conference supremacy or trying to figure out how Kentucky made it 31 straight losses to Florida on Saturday.

For now, Saturdays in the fall are still sacred, and we can enjoy the fun that is college football. If you want to analyze President Trump’s tweets, and how the various groups in our country are reacting to them, well, you’ve still got the other six days of the week.