Salt Lake City Snubbed

Congratulations to the Utah Utes. Utah handily defeated the Crimson Tide to win the 2009 Sugar Bowl. You finished the football season undefeated (13-0) and if a national title must be handed out to Div-I football then I believe you should receive that honor.

The Alabama Crimson Tide were a quality opponent, finishing the year with only 2 losses (the other coming to Florida in the SEC championship game). Yet this just goes to prove my point that teams from non-BCS conferences can compete with and beat the teams from BCS conferences. This was the 4th time that a team from outside the BCS conferences were allowed to play in a BCS bowl and marks the 3rd victory (.750 winning percentage). Everyone likes to point to Hawaii's embarrassing performance in last year's Sugar Bowl, but why not look at Utah and Boise State's victories?

I realize that many will disagree with my opinion that Utah is the rightful national champion but until college football figures out this BCS nonsense, they shouldn't be removed from consideration. Taking advice from a commenter on my previous BCS article, why do we need to crown a National Champ? My only problem is that either Florida or Oklahoma will be given this honor. The thing that seperates these squads from the Utes? One loss.

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With Liberty and Injustice for All...

12-0

With a phenomenal season record like that, you would think that your team would have a shot at playing for the national title. You knocked off several ranked opponents and won not only your conference, but beat your rivals and teams from the power conferences.

Yet the Utah Utes and the Boise State Broncos will not be playing for the crystal football in South Florida on January 8.

Instead, that night college football fans will watch as the Oklahoma Sooners play the Florida Gators in a less than neutral Dolphin Stadium. Their records (12-1 and 12-1) are blemished. I'll be the first to admit that the Big 12 (especially its South Division) and the SEC were the best conferences in college football this year. However, what makes these two one loss teams any better than USC, Penn State, Texas, or Texas Tech (all with 11-1 records)? If these teams had played in conference championships then they too would likely have 12-1 records.

In addition to these snubbed BCS squads, my original point still rings true. Boise State and Utah are UNDEFEATED. I have no reason to root for these squads. I'm a Purdue Boilermaker fan from the Midwest and have never been to Utah or Idaho. Yet I can't help but want to pull my hair out when I see that these two undefeated squads are locked out of the championship. In fact, Boise State will even be locked out of the BCS altogether.

What else can these schools do? They have won every game that they have played this year (something that no other schools can claim). Yet they happen to play in conferences that the NCAA has deemed inferior. To be fair, there are a lot of bad teams in the WAC and MWC. Idaho, New Mexico State, San Diego State, and Wyoming were atrocious. But, schools like TCU, BYU, and Nevada help bring in balance. The SEC and Big 12 are not without their doormats either. Baylor, Iowa State, Mississippi State, Auburn, and even Tennessee were awful as well.

Even if you feel, for some odd reason, that the Utes and Broncos shouldn't be playing for the national title, I think you have to admit that they deserve to be a part of the most prestigious bowls, the BCS. And yet, the Broncos look to be excluded from this group in favor of the ACC and Big East champions. Virginia Tech has an extremely impressive 9-4 record against the stellar ACC this year and the Cincinnatti Bearcats, although 11-2, played in a Big East that was arguably no better than the MWC or WAC this year.

Ultimately it boils down to the same point that I have been making over the last few years. In college football, if the only metric we have for truly comparing teams is wins and losses, then how can teams with better records than those in the championship be denied their shot at glory? To say they can't compete is ludicrous, all you have to do is look at Utah in 2004 and Boise State in 2006. Sadly those two teams won't get a chance to play each other to decide who is the best team in football this year.

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I Hate the BCS

I hate the BCS.

1979-Indiana State (current enrollment of 10,568, less in 1979) finishes as national runner-up in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

1985-Old Dominion national champions, winning the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament

1988-Louisiana Tech national champions, winning the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament

These are 3 examples taken from basketball, where schools from "non-BCS" conferences were able to play in, and often win, the national championship game. Currently in the FBS division of college football, every school (except Southern California) has played at least 3 games. Therefore, most teams are at least a quarter of the way through the season, and I feel we can begin to make some real judgments on the season.

I am a firm believer that, if at all possible, the national championship game should be played between two undefeated teams. However the BCS has screwed this up on several occasions, most notably when undefeated Boise State did not play against undefeated Ohio State in 2007, but finished as the only undefeated team in Div-A football. Were they awarded a national championship trophy or even a share of the prize (like Southern California in 2003-04)? No, because they play in the WAC.

Why does the BCS hate the likes of the WAC, MAC, MWC, C-USA, and Sun Belt so much? Doesn’t college football pride itself on rabid fan bases and intense rivalries? I believe that teams like Boise State, Fresno State, Utah, Tulsa, and Central Florida (as well as others) have rivalries just as intense and fans that are just as energized as the doormats of the BCS conferences (Indiana, Baylor, Stanford, Duke - I’m talking to you).

What brings about my annual anti-BCS tirade? Here’s the reason:

This is a list of all the teams in FBS football that are still undefeated. Teams in black are from BCS conferences and teams in red are from non-BCS conferences.


One of the MWC teams could go undefeated (BYU is my pick) and so could Boise State. When you look at their schedules, you don’t get disappointed.





Both teams play two opponents that are currently ranked (Boise State already defeated Oregon), and they each beat all of their Pac-10 opponents, one of which could upset USC, whom many are calling the best team of this decade, like last season. Speaking of USC, they currently have no more ranked teams left on their schedule and they still have 10 games left. So for those who call WAC/MWC/C-USA/etc. schedules soft, how do they legitimately stack up against “powerhouses”? Will USC beat UCLA by 59 points like the Cougars did? How can anyone imply that these “mid-majors” can’t run with the big boys when we’ve seen Utah and Boise State win their previous BCS games and seen teams like Illinois from BCS conferences get embarrassed on the big stage?

I’m not taking anything away from teams on this list that may finish with a loss or two. I realize that the SEC is tough, as is the Big 12 (don’t count out the Big 10 either). But with college football’s refusal to adopt a playoff system for the FBS (the only NCAA sanctioned sport where this occurs), the one metric that we have to go on is wins and losses. Qualitative issues like strength of schedule and “quality wins” should have no place in the process.

Ultimately the question that I ask is that if at the end of the season only two teams stand undefeated (or one for that matter), will they get a shot at the title like Indiana State or Old Dominion regardless of their conference affiliation, or will they be shut out like every year before?

I realize that this entire argument depends on a great deal of what-ifs and speculation, but no more than the preseason pick of Georgia at #1 simply because they beat Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl; a Hawaii team that by typical BCS standards shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

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