College Football Bowl Games - How Crisis Was Averted

The BCS can breathe a big sigh of relief as it seems that this year's bowl schedule makes everyone happy (yes, if you click on "bowl schedule," it will take you to the bowl schedule).

And to think that we were three points away from a complete disaster.

Yes, I am referring to that Boise St. game at Nevada that could have had us ending the regular season with four undefeated teams and a scenario where a then #5 Stanford team would have been left out of a BCS bowl game.  And that would have been the real heartbreaker.  I'll go into more detail later, but first, let's take a look at reality.

Reality - How it Actually Worked Out

Think of everything made of gold and no mistakes, everyone living in beautiful houses with great views.  Utopia, but that would never happen, right? It almost seems that way with this year's bowl season.

First of all, we have a clear national championship game.  #1 Auburn and #2 Oregon went undefeated in strong BCS conferences in unbelievable fashion, with Auburn riding the play of Heisman front-runner Cam Newton and Oregon sprinting to dominating victories behind the legs of LaMichael James.  The is undefeated TCU, of course, but come on.  Whenever we talked about a non-automatic qualifier school in the championship, Boise State was in the same sentence and rarely TCU.

Second, there are some GREAT matchups. Not good, GREAT. For the first time ever I feel like I really want to watch every game this year.  Here are some good ones:

1. Capital One Bowl: Alabama vs. Michigan State.  We wouldn't be surprised if this was a BCS game.
2. Cotton Bowl: LSU vs. Texas A&M.  Overrated LSU against underrated Texas A&M. They meet in the middle.
3. Chick-fil-A Bowl: South Carolina vs. Florida State.  The SEC and ACC runner-ups meet in a game about pride more than anything else.
4. Alamo Bowl: Oklahoma State vs. Arizona.  Usually it's the Holiday Bowl that gets this kind of matchup - two high-powered offenses and lots of scoring.

Finally, (with the exception of Connecticut) each school is in a place they deserve to be.  I don't see anybody getting left behind.  Now, we can talk all we want about UConn being the only unranked BCS game qualifier ever, but they're from the Big East and we'll all just have to suck it up until TCU joins in 2012.

Nightmare - What Could Have Happened

Imagine riots, fire everywhere, people on the streets throwing rocks and digging through trash.  Apocalypse, but that's a long way away, right?  Not in college football land.

First, there's the Stanford issue.  Think about this - Boise State goes undefeated. There are four undefeated teams, and there's a good chance they'll all go to BCS bowl games, because only the top four (and the AQ conference champs) are automatically given BCS games.  Meanwhile, Stanford and potential #1 pick Andrew Luck sit at #5, their only loss being to #1/2 Oregon. 

Because the Ducks are headed to Glendale for the National Championship, the Rose Bowl doesn't have its normal Pac-10 entry.  Stanford seems like the next best option, but supposedly bringing a non-AQ team to the game would hike up the revenue. So you think, "oh, they'll just get an at-large bid to another bowl."  False. If the Rose Bowl can't bring in enough cash by having Stanford, why would anyone else be able to?

So there you have it, at team whose only loss is to the best team in the nation gets left to suffer in a lower-level bowl game.

Second, there's the Boise State situation.  Suppose Kyle Brotzman kicks it through the uprights in the final seconds in Reno and Boise ends their regular season 12-0.  They get a BCS berth as they should, probably against Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.  They win, and we hear the cliche "we haven't lost, so as far as I'm concerned, we're the best team in the country" stuff.  Add to that a Virginia Tech victory in the Orange Bowl, which hikes up the value of that opening week game played way back when.  Now everybody just goes to bed pissed off.

Finally, there's the LSU situation.  I think LSU is overrated. They use two okay quarterbacks and have a coach that doesn't know how to tell time.  Had they beaten Arkamsas in their final game of the season, they would be on their way to a Sugar Bowl matchup against maybe Ohio State or Michigan State.  Now, that would have created some headlines about at 2007 national title rematch, but LSU is still there as a surprising one-loss team about to be eaten up by Terrell Pryor.

The Happy Ending

Thankfully, we neither have to live nor think about the above scenarios anymore.  Instead, we can look up in awe at the scenario floating farther above.

THE END

(Not really. Bowl season hasn't even started yet.)



Oh, I just wanted to point out one more thing.  The computers actually saved us from the Stanford scenario up there.  The human polls all had the Cardinal at #5, behind Wisconsin by a small margin.  The computers gave them #4, and it was enough to overpower the confused minds of the voters. It looks like the computers did something right for once.