NCAA (College Football)

aishiteru

After learning about their upset victory against Bama, I would bet on Utah to win against any team from Big 12 and Big 10 combined hehe. Seriously, Utah can blame the current polling system for failing to recognize its position among the elites in college football but with probably about 100 or more teams making a bid for BCS, how perfect can human be in determining which team should or should not be ranked? Unfortunately for Utah, BCS has a parallel comparison to job hunting for fresh graduates. As one of my career service councilors said to me a while ago, getting a job is not all about presenting your grades, but as equally important, how you present yourself (Actually I believe that's how the world works too). Being the youngest conference in NCAA D1 FBS, Mountain West and Utah must work on something to get more of their games nationally televised next season. Utah have proved how good they can be this season. If Colorado Buffs, despite their 6-6 records last season, still get two national TV coverages this season, why can't the Utes. They also have to be the USC of the Mountain West which means they need to maintain the same record year by year to slowly establish themselves as one of the elites in college football. It'll be an uphill battle to overcome voters' bias towards tradition big name conferences and prejudice to "weaker" conferences but unless playoff system come into a realization, Utah has no other way to do it.

On the other note, wow I can't believe I'm so worked up about college football.

oobi

correct. we can't say usc is the best team since they don't play oklahoma and florida. the same goes for the later two teams, even though one of them will win the national title. also, because of the system, majority of the time, there's no best team in the country no matter who won the championship and we can trace this down decades back. however, if we looked back the history since pete carroll took over usc, they always play their best games against the best competitors. their problem, they play they worst game against lower level competitors. in the case of winning the title, east coast bias plays a big role too (see utah), no matter how good a team is and even if the players play with high intensity and heart of champion. that's why the wac, pac-10 and mwc conferences will never get the respect they deserve (and this has been going for decades and everybody knows it).

if texas lose to buckeyes tonight or even if they win but with small margin (not convincingly), plus oklahoma defeats florida, bcs will get even more criticism and shame to those who voted. unless florida win bcs title, i'll stick with usc as the best team in the country, even though they don't play each other.

as for rose bowl, it's not really about the tradition of big-10 against pac-10, but more about the money. rose bowl commands more money than any bowl games and even bcs title (may be not); that's why they called it the grand daddy of all of them. if they agreed to playoff system, which they really should, they will lose lots of the money because now they have to share them.