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College College Football

Long Live The BCS

You can thank the 1987 Fiesta Bowl. You can thank Don Myers. You can thank Sunkist. Hell, you can even thank Penn State and Miami. The highest rated game in the history of college football put the BCS on the map and controversy on the horizon.

For the past 6-8 years, teams from non-BCS conferences have started to make some noise: Utah, Boise State, BYU, Hawaii and TCU for the most part.  These teams have started to match the perennial powers of college football and even win against them. These teams are so intimidating that 2 teams from non-BCS conferences were ranked in the top 6 for the first time in BCS existence. Are they deserving of such a ranking? Perhaps.  And to a lot of college coaches, preseason rankings are irrelevant, and for the most part they are correct. The BCS conferences flux during the season; rarely do a handful of teams run the tables.

However, a non-BCS conference team such as this year’s Boise State and TCU are very likely to go undefeated. The competition of their respective conferences is somewhat pitiful. This means for these teams, preseason rankings are everything. Boise has a clear path to the national title game, as does TCU. No BCS conference team can say that.

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College Football

Our Favorite Time of Year

And so it is upon us once again. College Football Season. Christmas come early for so many of us. What any one of us would do or give up — 2 weeks worth of vacation time / Christmas or birthday presents/ that new car we hoped to buy / the Vegas trip with the boys that our wives and girlfriends “promised” we could go on this year– for the chance for our Laundry Liaisons of the Gridiron to hoist that prestigious Crystal (foot) ball up in the air. And the great thing about this year is that there are no one or two teams that everybody loves.

There seems to be a hope and glitter in most every college football fan’s eyes for this season. We could easily have our first back-to-back national champs since USC did it in 2003-2004. (Or did they really since this whole scandal approached them — thanks Reggie! –and USC did not even really play for the championship in 2003. But I digress.) Or could we have the first Non-BCS conference team hoist that trophy? I’m sure some angry hillbilly from Norman is waiting for that with his hunting rifle so he can blow it to smithereens. “Damn you Statue of Liberty! I mean fake Statue of Liberty!”

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College Football

Fox Coverage Makes Move to ESPN Make Sense

The only thing more disastrous than Bob Stoops’s red-zone offensive playcalling Thursday night was Fox’s coverage of the Bowl Championship Series. And it was disastrous.

Starting with the obvious, Thom Brennaman proved that he makes Al Michaels and John Madden appear intelligent.

Take, for instance, in the pregame show, when he introduced us to “Dolphins Stadium,” even though there’s no such place as “Dolphins Stadium.” For those who care for accuracy, the game was played in “Dolphin Stadium.”

Or, in the first quarter, when Brennaman said the Gators had third down and 10, even though it was only second down. Of course, he would later top this gaffe when he would mess up the down six times in one series.

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College College Football

Forget Ohio State! What About Oklahoma?

Last night Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators won the second BCS championship for the school in three years, bringing home a third straight BCS title to the SEC. The Gators defeated the Oklahoma Sooners 24-14 with the leadership of Tim Tebow, who should run for President some day if you listened to all of the praise the Fox broadcast team delivered last night when it was not butchering the rest of the game.

Congratulations to Florida. Even though Utah is the only undefeated team in college football’s top level, the Gators are your national champions. Much was made about how the once relevant Associated Press poll could make a statement at the conclusion of BCS championship game by voting for another team at #1. Perhaps USC or Texas could gain enough votes for a split national title was the talk of the town. Utah made its statement but failed to gain enough support from the media to earn a so-called split national championship. Utah, you are MY national champion.

Now the time has come for me to put myself in the awkward position of defending Ohio State. What? Allow me to explain…

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College Football

Oklahoma and Southern California will Play for the BCS Title

Pen it in now. Jot it down. Permanent ink. It’s not going to change.

Oklahoma will play Southern California for the national title. It’s set. Plan your trip to Miami.

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College Football

Is Boston College The Most Underrated BCS Team Of All Time?

Mention the Boston College Eagles in relation to the college football world, and one thing comes to mind. Sports fans from all around will make reference to the 1984 game against the Miami Hurricanes. You know the story.  The Eagles needed a touchdown to win the game. A few seconds left on the clock. Flutie takes the snap, scrambles around, and tosses a very long pass into the end zone. Some guy (Gerard Phelan for you con-college football experts) caught the ball on what would be later labeled a “Hail Mary” pass. The BC Eagles stunned the Miami Hurricanes 47 – 45. Fans, and not just the ones from Chestnut Hill, will mention this game as one of the best finishes of all time. But wait, Boston College has established some college football prominence over the last few years.

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College Football

Why We Still Care – Why seemingly pointless bowl games still capture our attention

There it was.  The Motor City Bowl was on and I was glued to my TV hoping that Central Michigan of the Mid-American Conference would manage just one more score.  After they did and it was all tied up, I continued to watch as Purdue of the Big Ten drove for one last time and won on a late field goal.  The following day it was Texas -vs- Arizona State and then I couldn’t wait until the next day when Maryland was due to play Oregon State and two other games were to take place.

I have no loyalty to any of these teams.  I don’t even follow very many of their conferences.  Yet here I was following all the results and enjoying all the trappings of the yearly bowl season.

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College Football

The Inspiration called Virginia Tech

Living overseas, I’m only exposed to the main sports headlines and whatever they decide to talk about on the games I’m lucky enough to see.  Today, watching Virginia Tech beat Boston College for the ACC title and a birth in the Orange Bowl, I’ve been struck by the lack of talk about the one thing that was on most of our minds back in September when the season started, the drama of the Virginia Tech campus shooting.

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College Football

Impressed- Depressed- Unmoved: Week 13 of the College Football Season

And now, the regular season over. Kansas and LSU’s gooses (or should I say turkeys?) are cooked, and we’ve only got one week to go before a month of non-stop controversy.

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College Football

The Model

With all the talk of the Plus-1 format being set up to determine college football’s National Champion, I thought I would try a different idea.  This idea has almost no chance of working, since the Pac-10 and Big Ten conference commissioners have already stated that they will pull out of the Bowl Championship Series if the Plus-1 format or whatever number team playoff was implemented.  My idea calls for all of the BCS conference champions and two wild card teams from non-BCS conferences to play it out for the title.