The college football season is finally over, with nothing left but the coaching carousel and a random all-star game or two.  So now of course comes the time where commentators, bloggers, and hacks like me invent year end awards and assign them to players, coaches, and teams.  Why not conferences too?  So here are my non-BCS awards:

Team of the Year: Boise State

This one is pretty obvious, the only non-BCS team to finish undefeated, taking down #11 Oregon and #6 TCU along the way, and never having another WAC team come within 10 points.  They finish the 2000s with the best win percentage in college football, having lost only 17 games in 10 years and  happen to be 49-4 over the last four seasons.  They’ll start 2010 in the top 10, maybe even the top 5, and have chances to prove themselves again against Virginia Tech and Oregon State.

Honorable Mention of course goes to TCU, who had an equally outstanding season before losing to Boise in the Fiesta bowl.

Team of the Year That Isn’t One of the Big Four: Central Michigan (more…)

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The Fringe is back after a mostly unintentional holiday hiatus- you didn’t miss much, seeing as the bowl games get a lot better coverage in the regular media than the regular season does for our non-BCS teams.  Although ESPN commentators have an infuriating habit of talking about the BCS games during close, compelling non-BCS bowls, despite there being hours of material dedicated to those games already.

Anyway, in the tradition of year-end type awards, here are my picks for surprising, disappointing, important, and outstanding bowl games: (more…)

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The regular season is finally over, and for the first time since way back in 2008, two non-BCS schools have finished the year undefeated.  This year, thanks to the magic of preseason polls, both schools were ranked high enough, and there were so few one-loss teams, that the BCS couldn’t manage to ignore the second one and so both TCU and Boise State were destined to reach the big money games.  To date, BCS conference schools are 3-1 against the big boys, including famous wins over BCS darlings Oklahoma and Alabama.  Fortunately for those involved, they came up with a solution to keep that number from getting any worse- just stick them together in the Fiesta Bowl and nobody has to get embarrassed this year!

In the midst of the fallout of the BCS assignments, Pub curmudgeon and Big-10 guru Rob in WI posed a question- why is this such a bad thing?  One moment we’re clamoring for TCU to get a shot at Alabama, the next we’re saying that TCU isn’t a worthy opponent for Boise State? (more…)

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13 Weeks of football are done, and we have three non-BCS conference champions already sorted and two more to crown before 4 PM Saturday.  We still have two teams sitting unbeaten, eagerly watching the scoreboards of championship games around the country to see what shakes out and where they might be headed.  Writers (and hacks like myself) have spent hours futzing with bowl projections, stalking Google News and Twitter for bowl acceptances and rumors, and so forth.  And by 9:00 on Sunday, it’ll all be over.  Except for the part that’s not over.

But we’ll get to all that in a minute.  First, a look at the league championship games this week: (more…)

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In honor of the holiday, and in hopes that most of us won’t have to be at the computer much tomorrow, we’re taking an early, abbreviated look around the non-BCS universe today.  First off, though, a tip of the cap to the folks in the retail, service, and phone desk job positions where you’ll spend Friday (and in some cases, Thursday), on the grind so the rest of us can fill up our tanks, get a meal or a beer, buy some worthless crap, or report our insurance claims during our four day weekend.  Much respect.

Now, on to the football.  We’re going to play Football Team Thanksgiving: what some of our non-BCS teams are, or hope to be, thankful for:

TCU: Thankful for being awesome, their shiny new MWC title, and that New Mexico got their one win out of the way against Colorado State last week.  Now they can roll over as expected, setting TCU up for their first BCS bowl bid.  Would be very thankful if Texas A&M beat Texas tomorrow to open the door, at least a little, to a shot at the national title.

(more…)

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If you watched TCU vs. Utah last weekend, or even saw the highlights afterward or on Sunday morning,  you saw a large handful of pundits and even more bloggers suggest that, just maybe, TCU was as good or even better than Texas.  Perhaps this was a reach, but perhaps not- their schedules are comparable (yes, really.  Sagarin has TCU at 48th and Texas at 50th) and TCU hasn’t been within 3 points of an opponent since a sub-20 degree game at Air Force.  Texas certainly hasn’t looked bad lately, but they also haven’t done anything to suggest that they’re far better than anyone around.

Of course, all this speculation and TCU’s massive win over then #16 Utah was met…with Texas still 100 points or more ahead of TCU in the polls.  Which isn’t surprising, given what we all know about how the polls work- pre-season polls are locked in, and nobody gets moved down until they lose, no matter how iffy they look or how strong a lower team is playing.  Unless they’re Boise State.  Bummer about that one, although if it can’t be settled on the field, TCU has earned their way ahead of BSU for now.

How much sense does it make, really, for polls to be demanded the day after the games are played?  To do a great job as a voter, you would have to be watching games from noon until 2 am every Saturday, then go straight to the TiVo for another 10 hours to catch up on the other matchups.  If the system had any interest in getting it right, polls would come out at the end of the week, after there’s time for voters to read, watch, and break down more games, instead of voting by box score.

(more…)

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With TCU down to one more hurdle, and Boise State clearing all their big ones, the question for the BCS is now whether or not two outsider teams can get in on the ten available BCS spots.  Right now, I think the chances are pretty good.  If they do both win out, and Boise is left out of a BCS bowl yet again, it might be the final nail in the coffin for the idea that bowl games are a reward for the athletes.

What we know for certain:

• Barring a huge upset, Texas will play the winner of the SEC championship game in the BCS Championship (2 spots).
• The winner of the Big 10 will play the winner of the Pac 10 in the Rose Bowl.  (2 spots)
• The Sugar Bowl will pick another SEC team, probably the loser of the Championship game (1 spot)
• The Big East and ACC will send teams somewhere (2 spots)
• The top rated non-BCS school will get an automatic bid (1 spot)

So right there, you have 8 of the 10 available BCS bids.  We now have to try to guess who will be contenders for the last two spots.  Let’s look at the BCS Top 16 as it stands now. (more…)

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With eight weeks down and only six to go, most teams have turned their attention to winning conferences or just getting bowl eligible.  But the biggest drama is still at the very top- TCU has jumped Boise State in the BCS rankings, based on a big gap in the computer polling.  And I am on board with the change for two reasons- the main one is that TCU has played the better schedule.  Both teams are deserving of national attention, but if I have to pick one, I have to say that TCU is more deserving.  Clemson and BYU are just better wins than Oregon and Fresno State.  Boise’s best win is better than TCU’s, but their second best win is far below.  The next six weeks will be spent with both coaches trying to convince anyone that will listen that they deserve the shot at the bowls or even the title game.  But Boise needs to watch out for the buzzsaw that Nevada has become, and TCU has those gentlemen from Utah coming to town in a couple weeks.

It’s worth noting that analysts are now projecting both teams to go into the BCS anyway, and this would be an ideal scenario if both teams win out.  Seeing some more top ten teams pick up a second loss will help that happen, so thanks, Miami.  And now, on with the usual fringe rambling. (more…)

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Anyone who stayed up to watch the Boise State at Tulsa game, or switched after the US Soccer game was over, saw a great finish featuring two of the best teams stationed outside the BCS conferences- and one of the best teams in the country.  Boise State won 28-21, although Tulsa had a chance to tie in the waning seconds, just coming up short on 4th and long.  As the game unfolded and Tulsa kept fighting, I knew this would probably cost Tulsa in the rankings.

Sure enough, when the game ended, SI’s Andy Staples (who has an AP vote) posted this tweet: “And Boise survives again. Given what we saw tonight, how much would the nat’l title contenders from Boise lose by if they played Alabama?”

Now, I don’t know a ton about Mr. Staples, but he seems like he’s an educated college football analyst who happens to be a BCS-league apologist.  My response to him was, squished into fewer characters, that a certain Utah team only beat New Mexico State last year by three points, and how did Alabama fare against them?  (Answer, in case you forgot, is that they got pole-axed).  He countered that that was a different Alabama team, then presumably went off to do writery things that he gets paid to do.

But here’s my real point in all this- you can’t compare two different games involving four different teams and declare that you know the outcome of a third game which has not happened!  (more…)

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On Conference USA message boards, there is a well known phenomenon simply called ‘Coogin’ It,’ or, to ‘Coog it.’  This refers to the annual game or games in which Houston, despite having superior talent, momentum, and even coaching, will lose to an inferior opponent.  It is accepted as an inevitability by everyone in the CUSA community, including most Houston fans, because it happens every year.  Most people, however, thought that it would be Mississippi State or Southern Miss that caught out the Cougars, not lowly UTEP.

By losing, Houston takes themselves not only out of the BCS Buster hunt, but got blown completely out of the Top 25s, although beating the Cowbelles this weekend should put them back in, since they landed in the 26-27 range in most polls.  We’re now left with Boise State and TCU undefeated, with Boise still tracking very well in the polls.  They had a flat performance against 1-AA UC Davis this weekend, but I would argue they were due after a pretty decent early schedule.  They are now entering the soft spot in their schedule, against lesser WAC talent, so all eyes now go to those computer rankings to see how badly they slide when their schedule strength falls away.

TCU is on the opposite end of the scale- things are getting tougher instead of easier.  Their next three games are at Air Force, home for Colorado State, then back on the road for their big test at BYU.  AFA and CSU should be penciled in as wins, but the BYU game should be a great match. (more…)

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