Now that the Giants have taken care of business against the Carolina Panthers and locked up the top seed in the NFC, I hope I can stop hearing about how the Giants can't win without Plaxico Burress.

In the car on Sunday before the big game, I actually heard this from a sports talk "expert" on the radio:

"I think that Plaxico Burress is more important to the Giants than Brandon Jacobs.  Yes, I know that the Giants have won without Plaxico, and that Jacobs is important to their running game, but I just think that the Giants can't win without Burress."

Wait: so even though the Giants have won without Plaxico, you don't think they can win without Plaxico? Does somebody dress you in the morning, or do you do it all by yourself?

All this talk started because the Giants lost two games in a row.  Did you know that two games now constitutes a losing streak? Yes, they dropped from 11-1 to 11-3.  Their season is over!!

Fortunately, Giants coaches knew what nobody else seemed to be able to figure out: the only game they needed to win the rest of the year was the game against the Panthers.  Even if they lost that game they would still get a first round bye in the playoffs, but winning at home against the Panthers would lock up the number one seed.

That's it.  So no need to rush Jacobs back before he was ready.  No need to dig too deep into the bag of tricks.  Because losing a game or two at the end of the regular season doesn't mean anything.  Because the NFL is not like college football.

Somebody who enjoys college football explain to me:

Why should one or two losses at the beginning of the year completely end somebody's season?
Why should it matter what your margin of victory is?
Why are colleges allowed to schedule games against clearly inferior opponents?
And why are they allowed to play more games at home than on the road?
And why don't they play the same number of games?

This year's championship will be played between Oklahoma (12-1) and Florida (12-1).  Texas (11-1) was left out, even though Oklahoma lost to Texas.  Does this make sense to anybody who isn't me?  You know how it would make sense? If Texas had lost a playoff game.  But they didn't, because the simple concept of a playoff still manages to elude the brain trust behind college football

And I don't wanna hear about who won what conference or tradition or blah blah blah.  If it takes you more than 3 seconds to explain yourself, then it is dumb.

Why did the Giants win the Super Bowl last year? Because they won every game in the playoffs.  I did not have to bring up margin of victory or strength of schedule or conference strength or anything like that.  Because the NFL is real football.  College football is like a Salvador Dali painting of actual football.