Category: College Football (Page 294 of 296)

All the BCS apologists are happy today now that Texas and USC are left as the only two unbeaten teams in the country. If they stay unbeaten, the system will have worked for this season, just as it did in 2002 when Ohio State and Miami squared off in an epic battle for the National Championship.

Supporters of the BCS can argue that this system is much better than the pre-BCS days, when matchups like Miami/Ohio State and Texas/USC would not have taken place. But that really misses the point. Fans, players and coaches deserve a better system. Teams like Auburn last season deserved a shot at the title after going undefeated in the SEC. If Alabama had won out, they certainly would have deserved a shot. This season, teams like Miami and Ohio State have one and two losses, respectively, but does anyone doubt they would have a chance at the title if a real playoff system were in place?

I was rooting for Alabama, because another controversy might have tipped the balance in favor of a playoff system. It looks like we’ll get an incredible game between Texas and USC, but we deserve much more.

Fourth-and-nine at their own 26, less than two minutes remaining. Sixty-one yards later, USC is within field goal range, the Irish holding tightly to a 31-28 lead. A couple minutes later, after fumbling the ball out of bounds at the one on the previous play, Matt Leinart sneaks into the end zone with three seconds left on the clock.

ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski is already calling this back-and-forth contest “The Greatest Game Ever Played“:

“Wow. Even the goalposts had goose bumps. Seven seconds left. USC with the ball inside the Notre Dame 1-yard line. No timeouts remaining for the Trojans. Star running back Reggie Bush cramping up. The geeked-up sellout crowd near sideline’s edge, just waiting to storm the field.”

You gotta hand it to Charlie Weis and the Domers — they had this game in their hands, up until that sensational 61-yard pass to Dwayne Jarrett. Meanwhile, are Leinart and USC unstoppable? At this point, they may just be.

During the USC/Notre Dame game, as the camera caught a USC trainer on the sideline working on a player (on his back with legs in the air), color commentator Pat Haden had this to say:

“That’s not allowed in many parts of Utah.”

That’s a great yet totally inappropriate line. I love it.

Just about everyone has taken shots at Joe Paterno over the last several years, and frankly the criticisms were well deserved. Yet Paterno has an undefeated team and, more importantly, he’s ripping the BCS!

During a news conference Paterno called the BCS a “joke” and said that there ought to be a playoff system in college football. He’s one of the wise men of college football, and it’s great to see him give an honest assessment the ridiculous system used to select a national champion.

Three carries from Adrian Peterson. In the end, that’s probably what hurt Oklahoma the most in the latest Red River Shootout.

Well, that or Texas QB Vince Young’s electric performance: 241 passing yards, 3 TD, and 46 rushing yards. Or maybe it was Billy Pittman’s four-catch, 100-yard, two-TD display. Or Jamaal Charles’ 114 rushing yards…on EIGHT carries. That’s 14.3 yards/carry, folks. Or how about the Longhorns’ defense, which held the Sooners to 172 total yards and forced two turnovers.

Okay, so this was a blowout, plain and simple, in every facet of the game. And in the end, Texas’ 45-12 drubbing of Oklahoma, their first win in the last six games of this rivalry, gives the second-ranked Longhorns an open road to the National Championship game, assuming they don’t slip up against Texas Tech on October 22.