Typing as I listen to Wake Forest/Louisville in the background...
13-0 record, conference champions and a BCS Bowl winner. That's the resume of the Boise State Broncos, who last night beat the Oklahoma Sooners 43-42 in one of the best college football games I have ever watched. With the win the Broncos face the same results as the Utah Utes did in 2004, as well as Auburn a couple of seasons ago...doing everything they were asked to do, yet still find themselves nowhere near the BCS National Title.
How can this happen, first of all, and how can this happen more than once? Shouldn't this have been fixed by now...at least somehow? While many are calling for a playoff, and many aren't, can't we come to a conclusion? Something needs to be done to give these teams some sort of shot at getting considered for a National Title, not just in the minds of college football fans but in the record books as well.
I guess we could ask Boise State to play major OOC games, but why should they have to when several major schools (including the Florida Gators, no matter how hard we try to defend it) schedule easier non-conference games to ensure they play at home and tally up a few wins out of conference? Boise State would be forced to play on the road against basically all of their bigger OOC opponents, or else come up with HUGE chunk of change to bring major programs to Boise to play on the blue turf. While this is the issue at hand, this is all that Boise State could possibly do to ensure they jump up in the BCS rankings to have a shot at the championship game...that or somehow join a BCS conference.
Not only is this situation frustrating because we've seen it all before with Auburn and Utah, but now there is going to be yet another debate within college football whether or not the BCS Champion is truly the National Champion...meaning that whoever wins the game next Monday night in Glendale may have company at the top...especially if that Champion is the 1-loss Florida Gators. If we do win on Monday, there will no doubt be a ton of controversy, but that's the college football we have all come to love. And I do think there should be some controversy - Just like there was when Auburn was 13-0. In the end (if we do win), however, our guys will be the ones with the Sears Trophy and the National Championship rings, and that will be all I need to see.