Buncha Crap System (BCS)

It’s the holiday season and you have nothing better to do than to read this breakdown of the BCS, so it’s a little longer than a normal blog post, but I think you’ll learn something and hopefully enjoy it:

Could there be a better time to discuss this thing called the BCS than right now? No, especially after President Gee, Ohio State University’s President, came out and basically called every school that’s not a part of a BCS automatic qualifying conference a “little sister of the poor”. It’s clear that you sir understand nothing about college football.

The BCS was created to make a means for determining a “true” college football national champion. Let’s cut the bull. The BCS was formed as a way to increase revenue. Is there any surprise that the biggest schools, enrollment wise, and stadium wise, are members of this thing we call the BCS? No those conferences were allowed to be a part of the BCS because of how good their college football teams are (there's just a hint of sarcasm here), so lets look at em;

Big Ten – Ok, this might be the toughest conferences out there but aside from Ohio State, no one else has more than 2 wins in a BCS game

SEC – Florida and LSU, need I say more? They deserve to be there. They also have the highest winning percentage of any BCS conference in those big games (.737).

Big 12 – Oklahoma, Texas, and Nebraska those are the only real contenders year after year.

Pac-10 – They perform well in the big BCS games (.615) but until this year it had been the USC conference.

The last two conferences can easily be kicked out of the BCS and no one would question it:

Big East – This is a basketball conference! This year Pittsburgh will probably win the conference and get a BCS game with a dismal current record of 6-4. West Virginia who might be the best team in that conference is 7-3! In BCS games they don’t perform up to par, they are .500 in BCS games but 3 of those wins came when Miami was still in the conference.

ACC – why are these guys still in the BCS? They have been in 12 BCS games and have won an amazing 2. They hoist a .167 record with Florida State wining 1 and losing 5, and Virginia Tech wining one and losing 2. Everyone else that made a BCS game lost. But lets keep them in there because of the money those schools bring in.

If you combine the Big East and the ACC, they have a combined BCS winning percentage of .333, or they win 1/3 of the games they play in. Sure that’s not a bad percentage and it is college football but lets look at the WAC and Mountain West combined.

The Mountain west and WAC are both .667 in BCS games, but one of those games placed Boise State (WAC) against TCU (MWC) in a copout game where the BCS was afraid to see 2 BCS automatic qualifiers lose to two non BCS conference schools. When Utah got its BCS games, they won. When TCU got its game, it lost to Boise State. When Boise State got its games it won. When Hawaii got its game, it got destroyed. But 5 out of the 6 games were great entertaining games, is that not more important than money? Apparently not.

Don’t put down teams from non automatic qualifying conferences based on where they play. It’s not really up to them, Boise State can’t just make a call to the ACC and say “hey we want in”, well they can but it won’t put them in the ACC. Speaking of the ACC and Boise State…Virginia Tech is going to win the ACC Costal, this is a team that lost to Boise State to begin the season, we won’t even talk about the D2 school they lost to. Is it not logical then that if a team from a non AQ (automatic qualifying) conference beats the champion of an AQ conference from the same year that they are the better team? Put Boise State, TCU, and Nevada in the Big East or ACC and watch all three teams finish in the top 4 if not win the conference.

The BCS is a load of crap. TCU, Boise State, and Nevada (the 3 highest ranked non AQ teams) are all garbage and couldn’t hold their own weight in a real (BCS) conference. That’s what I’ve been hearing from commentators. I’ve also heard that Boise State is THE BEST all around team in college football this year, BUT they don’t deserve to play in a national title game.

Let’s have a playoff system that has been talked about for a while now but will never happen. Why? Because the money isn't there. Here’s how my system goes:

There are 12 conferences including independents. At the end of the season the #1 and #2 team in that conference play to determine the representative. We now have 12 teams which will be ranked by the same coaches and sportswriters that already rank the teams. Then we reward the #1 and 2 teams by giving them byes. I have attached a table (click on it to make it bigger and more clear) with Rankings as numbers and Games as Letters. It will only take 4 weeks, the length of bowl season already, and you can still have your other bowls on the side.

Let’s not penalize teams like Boise State and TCU for not having the luxury of being in a BCS conference, and by all means lets not put them down and call them our “little sister of the poor” especially not when Boise State or TCU would beat your Ohio State this year.

Boise St. vs. Nevada

So Nevada plays possibly the most complete game of the season and drops a spot in the BCS. Welcome to the BCS era ladies and gentlemen. Does this mean anything? Yes, it means if we lose to Boise St. we will be out of the ranking picture.

If there’s one thing different with this Nevada team this year than from years past its that they can step up to the big game. Look at Cal, BYU, and Fresno State. Sure BYU wasn’t as good as they were thought to be, but that’s a team that we easily would have lost to in the past. We also wouldn’t have beaten Cal in the past, and Fresno State would have been up for grabs. Nevada is not exactly a team that can win when they fall behind, so this year that was a positive, and we almost pulled it out against Hawaii as well. Boise State on the other hand is a completely different story, they might be the best team in the nation, definitely the most complete team if you ask me.

But Boise State has always brought out the best in us, we put up great numbers against them and they don’t seem to look so dominant. In years past we didn’t have the team that could beat them yet it was always close and a nailbiter. This year Nevada HAS the team capable of walking out of Mackay a winner and making talking about Boise State a thing of the past. The sad thing is if we win, we won’t get the recognition we deserve, and well Boise State will be talked about how they just were never a really good team. If we lose, I still don’t see Boise State moving up, even if Oregon and Auburn both lose, I can easily see a 1-loss team moving ahead of Boise State and TCU to play in the national championship game. (I’m working on a nice little piece on the BCS which I’ll post this week)

Judging by the spread for this game, the “experts” think it should be a pretty easy win for the Broncos. I beg to differ. I honestly believe that this game will be decided on the final possession of the game and the difference in score at the end will be 3 points or less.

The key to the game is to get the lead early and play mistake free. If Nevada’s defense can hold the Boise State offense on their first 2 possessions and score on their first 2 possessions, we could be looking at an upset. On the other hand if Boise state does the opposite and holds us on our first 2 possessions, we could be looking at a disappointing night. As far as mistakes, this will be a high intensity game and we could see some fights. Those could be a good thing, what’s a bad thing is Ricky Drake kicking another kickoff out of bounds, what is that? 4 times this year so far?

I don’t expect our defense to hold this team scoreless, but I do know that they are capable of forcing them to punt on 4-6 possessions. On the other hand, our offense, if it gets in rhythm can prove extremely difficult for the Broncos defense to contain. I’m expecting the Nevada secondary to back off a little and allow short passes but try everything to prevent the long ones. Maybe even some 3 deep coverage on 2^nd down?

If Nevada is behind by more than 10 at half it’s going to be a tough game to win. Anything closer than that and its anyone’s game. This might prove to be one of the best games of the year

Final Score Prediction

Someone 45 – Someone 48

Week 12 Ranking Implications

So unfortunately this week is not the best week to move up in the BCS rankings. Why does this matter? Because next week is Boise State and it would help to be ranked as high as possible so we don’t get 86’d from the Rankings completely. Here’s what I have for this week:

#6 Stanford losing to Cal

#19 Texas A&M losing to #8 Nebraska

#20 Iowa losing to #9 Ohio State

#21 Mississippi State losing to #13 Arkansas

#16 Virginia Tech losing to #24 Miami

After last weeks poor performance by Stanford and the strong performance by Cal, I do think that Cal can beat Stanford this week. That being said I see us moving up 2 spots. I still hold my ground that this Nevada team is better than South Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Missouri. Hopefully the voters see that this week and we

New Mexico State vs. Nevada

I don’t have much to say about this game except for the fact that it probably shouldn’t be played. New Mexico State is one of the worst teams in all of college football. Their defense is horrible and their offense can hardly be called an offense. This will be a stat padding game for Tyler as I don’t expect to see Kaepernick play but maybe one possession in the second half. The running game will look like a beast as always, and our defense will look like one of the best in the country. I would not be surprised to see this end in a shutout or a killing, speaking of which someone should call 9-1-1 before the game even starts.

The big news about this game is Colin Kaepernick, that guy that I think is the real MVP of college football this year. He will accumulate more than 54 yards rushing and will most likely throw for a touchdown, hopefully to Brandon Wimberly. Why is this important? Well the latter will give him the school record for TD passes. The first however will make him the FIRST player in NCAA history to pass for 2000 yards and rush for 1000 in 3 seasons. If that doesn’t say something about this kid then I don’t know what does. It will be a night of history.

Final Score Prediction

New Mexico State 0-13 – Nevada 42-83

Colin Kaepernick

As the season slowly comes to an end we start seeing who the favorite is to win the Heisman. Now it’s no surprise that Auburn’s Cam Newton is the favorite to take home the trophy, but does he really deserve it? Sure he’s putting up great numbers and sure the quality of play is higher in Auburn’s conference but that shouldn’t matter.

The Heisman is essentially the MVP of all 120 D1 teams. If you ask me the MVP is an individual whom the team would not have been the same without, he is the Most Valuable Player, a game changer, the glue that holds the team together. If we look at the numbers Cam Newton does have better numbers, but they are only slightly better.

Here’s the thing, Cam has only been doing this this year and not without controversy. Whether it’s his fault or his fathers fault, his reputation has and will continue to remain scarred. He plays on a team that’s stacked with talent. Remember the Patriots that had that amazing season and ended up losing in the Superbowl? What happened the next year when Tom Brady went out? A now struggling quarterback looked like he should have been the #1 pick in the NFL draft. My point is with a team like Auburn, you could take 90% of the quarterbacks out there and put them in his place and they will have great numbers. And don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not saying Nevada’s team doesn’t have talent, because its got plenty of it, its just a different level of talent.

On the other hand there’s a kid who 119 D1 schools passed on. A kid that no one gave a shot and when he was finally given that shot he turned into one of the best quarterbacks college football has ever seen, yes I said it. If you want a most valuable player then you have to look at a kid who’s been doing this for 4 years, not just 1. A kid who has amassed 9,237 yards passing, 3,852 yards rushing, and 132 total TD’s; those numbers will grow as there’s 4 games left in his career. He’s also one of 2 quarterbacks to ever throw for 2,000 yards and run for 1,000 in back to back seasons, and he’ll make it 3 years in a row this Saturday. I know that the Heisman is not based off of previous year numbers but at some point you need to realize how consistent and how dominating an individual really has been. So he plays in the WAC, is that his fault? Remember nobody else gave him a shot; he didn’t have the option to go to any other conference.

When it comes down to it Cam/Cam’s family has clearly shown that he’s just in the game for the money (as sad as it is). Kaepernick on the other hand could be in the Major Leagues throwing fastballs and being worth a few million but instead he’s in college, getting an education and playing a game that he loves. He’s a kid that if was 18 again and graduating high school, I can almost guarantee 100+ schools would have offered him a full-ride to their institution. All he does is prove every critic wrong, yet when we discuss Heisman candidates his name is rarely mentioned.

Colin Kaepernick will not win the Heisman, he won’t win the Davey O'Brien, he probably won’t even win the WAC player of the year award. They’ll give the Heisman to Cam Newton and 4 years from now take it away due to some recruiting violation. Colin Kaepernick, one of the most dominating players in college football history will never be remembered as he should.

If you really know football and you don’t blind yourself with the politics of conferences then you know who the real Most Valuable Player is.

Nevada vs. Fresno State Recap

In a game that was more than a nail-biter, we saw a Nevada team that we needed to see. This team has not trailed much this season, in fact when we trail this season we usually lose, the only game we trailed was the game against Hawaii. Yes it would have been nice to go into Fresno and completely demolish them, but that’s not what happened. The team was forced to stay in the game which is what will happen come November 26^th (have you circled this date yet on your calendars?).

The defense looked sluggish at times but made plays when they needed to be made. Once again there was strong dominating performances from James-Michael Johnson, Brandon Marshall, and Dontay Moch. I hope you caught the beginning of this game because on Fresno’s first drive of the game Dontay leveled a receiver about 20 yards from the line of scrimmage. Just the fact that a lineman made the tackle that far down the field is impressive, but Dontay flat out laid some wood. The kid runs a 4.2 40-yard dash! More-so the only major problems with the defense were caused by play calling, not players. Sure there was a few missed tackles but other than that I felt like the defense played great.

Offensively it looked like we struggled at times but in the end we made the plays we needed to make. Now lets talk about how bad of a decision Kaepernick’s interception was! I mean he basically threw that into double coverage to a receiver that was blanketed! Yea, I’m sorry but that was a GREAT decision and its something that every Nevada fan should be happy with. Why? You’re either thinking I’m on crack right now or that I’m being sarcastic right?

Well I’m not. That decision shows confidence in Kaepernick that his receivers can make the catch and more importantly that he can put the ball where it needs to be! Now I’ve watched that play probably 10 times over and Malcolm Shepherd should have made that catch.

This game showed we can come from behind and that we don’t get rattled easily. Even the Hawaii game showed us this except we couldn’t come back and win that one. This team has learned what it needs to do to win and if I’m Boise St., I am definitely a little worried about November 26^th. I’m just wondering…will Brandon Wimberly, probably the best wide receiver on this team, get a touchdown this year?

I’m still predicting #18 in the BCS standings!

Week 11 Ranking Implications

Here’s what I have for rankings this week:

#19 Mississippi State losing to #12 Alabama

#24 Kansas State losing to #17Missouri

#23 South Carolina losing to #22 Florida

#25 Texas A&M losing to Baylor

And

#9 Ohio State POSSIBLY loosing to Penn State

So what does this mean? We move up 1 spot? Here’s the thing about this game, its on ESPN, not ESPN2, or ESPN38, just plain old ESPN and its got the 7:30 time slot which means its pretty much the only game on tv at that time. Expect people to be watching especially as the one Heisman hopeful Colin Kaepernick will be breaking two records.

We will move up at least 1 spot this week, with a big win we could move up more. The way I see it right now, Nevada is better than Virginia Tech, Mississippi State, Arizona, and Missouri, which is why I really believe we should be ranked #17 coming into this week. I think with a strong performance against Fresno we could finally get the recognition we deserve.

we could be ranked anywhere from #21-16 come Sunday evening when the BCS rankings are released. In all reality though I see us making a leap to the #18 spot. Now if there’s a crazy week in the top 25 like there was last week, and Nevada wins in commanding fashion, then we could see an even bigger jump, but what happened last week was rare, so lets not focus on that. With a loss this week, it will take nothing short of a win against Boise State to get back in the rankings.