The Chris Rawle Show

The 2021 college football season is over. Georgia defeated Alabama to win the national championship, proof of concept for two things: consistency pays off, and there are different paths to the same goal. As we enter another murky offseason and try to understand the future of the sport, the powers that be are trying to solve the unsolvable riddle: what is best for college football moving forward?

The NFL, more than any other sport, is decided on the margins. Week 18 of the regular season—including Colts-Jags, Niners-Rams, and Chargers-Raiders—was insanity and further proof that the separation between teams can be virtually nothing.

A discussion of youth (Cale Makar, Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase) and experience (Aaron Rodgers), framed by a quote from Padraig Harrington at the 2021 PGA Championship: “People often ask in a general term about experience. Well, as you gain experience, you lose innocence. I suppose if you drew a graph, there's a crossing point of equilibrium where you have some experience and a certain amount of innocence and enthusiasm. As you get a little bit older and you get all this experience, on paper people might think you get better with experience, but as I said, you've seen a few things that you know in your game that you probably never wanted to see.”

The college football playoff was instituted in 2014. Since then, 23 games have been played and only 6 have been competitive. Why is playoff expansion seen as a solution for competitive imbalance?

Team outcome and individual performance can be very, very different things.

Christmas day presented the opportunity to watch two generational athletes, Aaron Rodgers and Lebron James, both nearing the twilight of their careers. How can small stories—like individual games between the Browns-Packers or Nets-Lakers—carry such meaning?

It is stunning how quickly opinions change over the course of a 17-game NFL season. What can be gleaned from such a small sample size?

Finding success in one walk of life does not guarantee success in any others. Why do most people believe this to be a simple, linear transition?

There is a reasonable case to be made that societally speaking, we’ve never been more impatient. This trickles down into the chase for a championship, where teams are ridiculed for coming close but failing to break through, despite mountains of evidence pointing to the same idea: the only way to break through is to keep trying to break through.

The NFL regular season is drawing to a close and it’s time to reflect on the journeys of the teams who have separated themselves at the top.