The month-long joyride that is tournament basketball is straight ahead, but let’s not overdo it. As crazy and wild as it gets, college basketball can’t touch the beauty and passion of college football.

Simply put: oblong > roundball. With a nod to the tournament field, here are 68 reasons why:

1. The College Football Playoff: Two more teams, two more games, twice the controversy!

2. The postseason: CFB: Crowning a champion; CBK: blindly picking a pool and hoping to win some cash from the poor saps around the water cooler.

3. No charge/block call.

4. Embrace, for a moment, the lunacy of getting hot for three days and stealing a spot in the tournament from a team that busted its tail for three months.

5. Cameron Indoor Stadium? Let me introduce a little thing we call Saturday Night in Death Valley.

6. They’re not throwing fire spears on the court at the Leon County Civic Center. Or whatever they’re calling it now.

7. Script Ohio.  On a basketball court?  Shameful.

8. The Aggie War Hymn. The whole damn stadium sways.

9. Bevo.

10. November: where dreams go to die.

11. March: where fantasy obscures reality.

12. Three years of eligibility vs. one and done.

13. It’s 17 degrees in Stillwater and you can’t feel your toes. And it just doesn’t matter.

14. The Wasatch Mountains overlooking Lavell Edwards Stadium.

15. The San Gabriel Mountains overlooking the Rose Bowl.

16. Running through the T.

17. There never, ever, will be a single play in college basketball  like this  .

18.  Or this  .

19. Or,  heaven help us, this  .

20. The Mike Leach (Hal Mumme) offense.

21. The read option. First the NFL ignored it, then they copied it. Now they think they invented it.

22. High Street, State Street and Mill Ave on Saturday night.

23. The sweet,  unbridled joy of the post-game locker room  .

24. Ralphie.

25.  Ever see Duke-North Carolina do this? 

26. The Most Exciting 25 Seconds in College Football.

27. Thursday Night in Lane Stadium.

28. Hot apple cider and warm winter blankets in November in The Palouse.

29. Notre Dame’s freshly painted helmets with 24k gold flecks.

30.  The UGA graveyard  .

31. The shortest season of any major sport: three months (and one day) of sheer bliss.

32. Overtime. Eventually, the NFL will come around here, too.

33. The Grove.

34. The Vol Navy on the Tennessee River, and the water taxis at Husky Stadium.

35. The Iron Bowl.

36. Reveille, the highest-ranking member of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets.

37. Homecoming.

38. Fourth down? Who cares?!

39. Keep your filthy hands off my rock.

40. The Song Girls.

41. The Ball Coach,  then  and  now  . 

42. The sport of arguing.

43. The Hook and Ladder, an end around pass and the Statue of Liberty all in one game.

44.  The Baylor Line  .

45. The Heisman Trophy: the greatest individual award in sports.

46. Buckeye helmet stickers.

47. The Game (Cal-Stanford; Yale-Harvard).

48. Army vs. Navy,  postgame alma maters  .

49. Lee Corso.  Never, ever, apologize, Coach  .

50. Sooner Schooner.

51. The Mighty Muss.

52. Playing once a week.

53. Al Golden’s tie.

54.  The Hail Mary  .

55.  The Holy War  .

56.  Country Roads  postgame at West Virginia.

57. The Fifth Quarter.

58. The state of Alabama fans: from the quirky to the odd to the downright insane.

59. New Year’s Day.

60. M Club Supports You.

61.  The Marching 100 

62. The Blue Turf.

63. Puddles,  pumped up  .

64.  The Haka  . 

65. Good Clean Old-Fashioned Hate.

66.  The Swamp on third down  .

67. The  fall sun setting on Touchdown Jesus  .

68. The regular season: CFB: It means everything; CBK: I’m bored, maybe there’s some college hoops on the tube.