Cleaning Up the "Better" Mess

There is one issue in sports I am tired of hearing. When a team wins, they are the winner. Period. They are the better team because if they were not they would have lost. (Except for a few extreme situations...1991 5th down incident) Understand? No more, "Well they may have lost, but they are still the better team." That's not true! After all if they knew who was going to win, why would the teams even bother playing? Think about it. It just makes me sick when I hear writers saying USC is still the superior football team compared to Texas. Matt Leinert's quote was the most classless thing a senior could say. His team lost, but he still thought they were the #1 team. It's tough to lose, but it's even worse to be a poor sport about it. Another classic example is a recent article written by Andrew Perloff on CNNSI.com. Mr. Perloff makes the comment that the better team lost Saturday in Denver. I have all the respect in the world for the Patriots, but how can you say on a night they converted 5 turnovers New England was better? Yes, New England has 3 Super Bowl rings in 4 years, and yes they may be a more dangerous team on paper, but when you get down to it the only thing that matters is the score at the end of the game. It's not logical to make that comment. With thinking like that you might as well say the 1969 Super Bowl trophy belongs to the Colts even though they lost 16-7 to Namath's Jets. How about this one? Georgetown may have lost to Villanova in 1985, but that championship really belongs to them. We all know Thompson's team was more skilled and flat out better than the Wildcats. The Hoyas were just off that night so they deserve the right to be called #1. All in all, the essence of a matchup between two opponents is suppose to decide one thing and one thing only, the winner...not a controversy. 'Nuff said...