Ohio St. v. LSU

Which, all told, was about as good as we could have hoped for.

One could make the argument (and the argument has been made) that USC is playing as well as anyone right now, but in college football that's irrelevant. There was no shame in losing to Oregon on the road--back when Oregon was number two, half the Trojan starters were in the hospital, and Dennis Dixon was sprinting toward New York and the Heisman Trophy--but losing to Stanford was just inexcusable, a breakdown in playing, coaching and good judgment all at once. (Someone explain to me again why Booty was out there to throw four second-half interceptions with a broken thumb, with a perfectly competent back-up in Mark Sanchez standing on the sidelines? Oh, right: Drew Bledsoe had once won a Patriots' game with a broken finger while Pete Carroll was head coach. Nice to know Carroll can, from time to time, draw on his fantastic success in the NFL.)

Anyway, and this goes back to 2003 and continues to this day: it is hard to feel bad when your team is headed to the Rose Bowl.

Of greater concern is the screw job put on Arizona State, who lost two games (to Oregon-with-Dixon and the everybody's-back-and-healthy Trojans), and for whom the Kansas Jayhawks would be thin gruel.

In the hours before Fox's selection show (which show was lousy, by the way: where was the interview with Pete Carroll with the requisite spray of roses in the background?), the only real question had come down to the Fiesta, ASU v. Kansas. I posted this comment on The Irish Trojan:

I was home in the Valley over Thanksgiving, and all I heard was that the Fiesta Bowl committee presently has some sort of animus toward Arizona State, and that the powers of Phoenix and Glendale (remember, the game was moved across the Valley last year, from Tempe's Sun Devil Stadium to Glendale's University of Phoenix Stadium) were quietly (should last night's events take place) urging the committee to choose an out-of-town team, in order to boost hotel and restaurant dollars.

If the first part of the above is true, it's nuts, as the whole reason the Fiesta Bowl was created back in the day was to give Arizona State some national attention. (The Devils played in five of the first seven Fiesta Bowls, winning four.) No ASU, no Fiesta Bowl.

If the second part is true, it's a shame, for one would think that civic pride would prevail.

I don't know how true any of this is true. But I'll be keeping it in mind this evening.

And then came the announcement.

Well, Kansas has one loss. And the entire non-Manhattan state of Kansas will point their Winnebagoes and tractors Phoenix- and Glendale-ward on Christmas week, and fill the greater coffers of Phoenix and Glendale buyin' sparkly things and all them talkin' picture boxes.

Was Arizona State the victim of a travelism? Maybe.

Was the animus toward ASU part of the equation? Maybe.

What is undeniable is that, when it comes to the Pac-10, the BCS always seems one slot short.

Courtesy the Irish Trojan, a more conspiratorial take here.

A Fine Mess

Well, ASU hangs on.

And everyting else . . . mercy.

Nationally, numbers one and two lose.

Ohio State goes from five to (presumably) one by not playing.

Two conference champions (LSU and Oklahoma) will finish, in the BCS, behind two teams in their conference that didn't even qualify for the championship game (Georgia and Kansas, respectively).

An attempt to sort it out here.

Championship Saturday, cont.

LSU beats Tennessee, 21-14, thus shutting off any miniscule hope USC had for the BSC Championship.

Oregon State just scored a 41-yard field goal in OT, to send the game into a second OT and keep me from Arizona State-Arizona.

Mizzou/Oklahoma, West Virginia/Pitt, just underway.

And USC is going to the Rose Bowl, if you haven't heard.

Update:

Good Lord. Oklahoma beats Mizzou.

And West Virginia loses.

USC ends up one LSU loss away from the BSC championship.

But the Rose Bowl has its invite.

Missouri over Kansas

Kansas, by losing, may yet prosper via the "Nebraska Loophole."

2001: last regular-season game of the season, Thanksgiving Friday, undefeated #2 Nebraska loses to Colorado and falls out of the Big 12 Championship game.

With undefeated, #1 Miami waiting in the wings, new presumptive #2 Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma State. Then new presumptive #2 Tennessee loses.

The following weekend, in the Big 12 Championship game, new actual #2 Texas loses to Colorado. With Colorado eliminated from consideration with two losses, and with one-loss Oregon oddly never given much credit, the second slot in the title game goes to . . .

Nebraska. Who gets clobbered by Miami, by the way, but that's not really the point.

People talk about Ohio State being "in the clubhouse with one loss." Well, that's the same status for Kansas. In the clubhouse with one loss, able to sit and watch Mizzou and West Virginia beat their brains out and maybe hand them a bid to New Orleans.

Had they lost (badly, say) to Oklahoma last week, Kansas may have been surpassed by a two-losser (LSU?) dominating in its conference championship. As it is, by losing a week earlier than all the conference championships, end-of-year showdowns and so forth, Kansas may have done itself a favor in the long run.

This year is so screwy that, as in 2001, keeping your team off the field may be the best strategy.

(With apoligies to Brendan Loy) Go Bruins! BEEEAAAAAT the Ducks!

Third quarter, Bruins lead Oregon 6-0.

It goes without saying: Bruins beat Ducks, Trojans beat Bruins, Trojans go to Rose Bowl.

UCLA leads 6-0 . . . no, make that 9-0, as a third Duck turnover leads to a third Bruin field goal.

The Bruins--who have featured three different quarterbacks--cannot move the ball on the Ducks' side of the field, simply intercept the ball and kick it essentially in that very spot.

The Ducks--who have featured three different quarterbacks--cannot move the ball, period.

Never has a boring game been so thrilling.

Fourth quarter.

Update: UCLA intercepts, penalty takes the ball inside the twenty, whatever yokel is working with Dan Fouts says, for the third time--"You gotta go to the end zone," when clearly what UCLA needs to do is run a few plays into the line, burn the clock down, and . . .

Update: . . . Oh, never mind. Oregon intercepts in the end zone, does nothing, punts, and UCLA drives back for a touchdown. 16-0 Bruins. Game over.

And USC, which--with a win next week--goes to the Rose Bowl, has got some work to do.

BCS

So . . . how does a USC-Hawai'i Fiesta Bowl grab you?

A Kansas-West Virginia National Championship game?

Today was just the latest in the craziest college football season in memory.

Consider:

*Two dramatic, BCS-affecting upsets (Arkansas over LSU, Texas A&M over Texas), one of them in a rivalry game, and both winning coaches (one for sure, the other almost certainly) headed out the door in dual jump-or-be-pushed scenarios, both of said coaches are involved in separate off-the-field kerfuffles best described, both of them, as bizarre.

*The team with the second-to-easiest schedule in the country plays the team with the third-to-easiest schedule in the country--and the game has major BCS implications.

*Kansas--at this moment in time--is essentially the number one team in the country, and yet no one gives it any chance at all to survive the next eight days with more than the Orange or Sugar Bowl as a consolation prize. Probably correctly.

*Three years ago, Cal, with one loss (and that by six points, on the road, to the undefeated Leinart/Bush/Lendale/Tatupu/Cody/Jarrett Trojans) was left out of the BCS in favor of the Vince Young/Cedric Benson Longhorns, who themselves had one loss (by twelve points, on a neutral site, to the Jason White/Adrian Peterson Sooners). Now teams with two or three losses (a considerably not-as-good Trojans team, first and foremost) find themselves in the catbird seat, and little seems to stand between Hawai'i (which played a weaker schedule than Odessa Permian) and a fat New Year's payday. Yes: the extra BCS game is a factor. However, between 2001 and 2005--a five-year span--we were treated to four BCS Championship games featuring two undefeated teams from major conferences, and in one case an undefeated from a top-tier conference (Auburn, 2004), on the outside looking in, and probably incorrectly. (Would Auburn have fared better against USC than 55-19? Probably.)

The moral? The era of the super-team is on hold. In 2004 we spent four months waiting for USC-Oklahoma; likewise in 2005 with USC-Texas. This year? Does Kansas-West Virginia grab you? Missouri-Ohio State? Brother.

*As for USC-ASU. In Sun Devil Stadium yesterday, enjoying my Thanksgiving dinner out behind Packard Stadium (my brother's father-in-law brought the game he'd shot: pheasant, grouse, and so forth), I reached an inner peace about the whole affair. Strange how my mood seems to affect USC games. 2002 against Notre Dame and (in the Orange Bowl) Iowa, I was quietly confident. Two blowouts. 2003: the Rose Bowl. Quietly confident, USC whallops Michigan. 2004: Oklahoma, a kind of "well, let's see what happens" attitude. Result? 55-19. 2005: Absolute, infinite, obsessive insanity from about Labor Day on, as I realize USC and Texas are headed for a collision course. Result? The Vince Bowl.

Last year: the Rose Bowl. Even keel. USC blowout.

So: my lesson learned. Even keel is good luck. So: yesterday, I went with my Sun Devil family to enjoy my repast, the gorgeous weather, and see what happened.

Then USC took the kickoff, marched smartly down the field and scored.

And I knew the game was over. I knew the game was over because finally, finally the team that we might term the post-Jarrett era was hitting on all cylinders and playing the way their press clippings claimed they would play.

To look over the season. Idaho State was basically a scrimmage. Nebraska (a far worse team than we thought) was won when Carroll simply abandoned the passing game altogether, and rammed the ball down the Blackshirts' throats. Then the injuries piled up, complacency set in; the Stanford game (or something like it) was inevitable. Arizona was close. Notre Dame: next.

In the end, Oregon was an unfortunate happenstance, a loss against a better team, a hard pill to swallow, as it represented the end of USC hegemony lasting all the way back to the fifth game of 2002.

And then? The Cal game might have been the fulcrum, the game that saved the Trojans from (ick) El Paso. And then there was last night, with some crucial pieces (COUGHsambakerCOUGH) back in play. At 7-0, it was over. At 7-7 (with the fluke of a kickoff runback) it was over. Booty had all the time in the world, and Carpenter didn't. And that was your ballgame.