If the Auburn Tigers or Oregon Ducks lose any of their remaining games, college football may be forced to watch one of the most undeserving, unqualified teams to ever play for a national championship. You can look at team records. You can give a team the “eye test.” You can debate and argue. But in the end, one thing is clear, and someone needs to say it.
Neither Boise State nor Texas Christian University has earned the right to play in the BCS National Championship Game.
If Auburn and Oregon both lose, both of the Non-AQ schools should still be kept out, and the only way to see that it happens is for the human voters to get off their political correctness high horse and use a bit of common sense. What exactly has TCU or Boise State done to give evidence that they deserve the right to play in a game that determines the national champion in the Bowl Championship Division of college football? Oh, sure. They will likely go undefeated. Their average margin of victory is impressive. Every so often on their schedule they have what some would call a “quality” win.
But really, shouldn’t it take more than just a couple of quality wins to justify playing for the national championship? Shouldn’t a team have at least one, probably more than one, really impressive victory? A team should have been forced to prove their mettle consistently over the course of the season again and again. At the very least, they should prove they can beat some of the best in the nation before they play for all the marbles.
The bottom line is that neither Boise State nor TCU has done that. Their best, most quality wins pale in comparison to teams from the Pac 10, Big Ten and SEC. It’s really not even close.
The two teams on pace to play the national championship will at the very least have proven that they can beat elite talent and elite teams. If Oregon finishes their regular season undefeated, they will have defeated a very good Arizona team as well as one of the best teams in the nation against Stanford. If Auburn runs the SEC gauntlet, they will have gone through the toughest division in college football, the SEC West, and collected wins against Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, and Mississippi State. They also will have to knock off South Carolina for a second time.
Boise State’s road to a possible national championship? Less than impressive. Their best victory involves beating a Virginia Tech team by a smaller margin of victory at a neutral site than FCS member James Madison against the Hokies in Vicksburg just a week later. What other win should we get excited about for Boise State? Their latest thumping of 6-4 Fresno State? Ole Miss also thumped Fresno State. Is beating Nevada supposed to be that impressive? They lost to Hawaii and allowed Utah State to drop more than 40 points against their defense. Boise’s schedule is so soft, head coach Chris Petersen has had to become a liar. He made mention of Boise State getting prepared for a “tough” Idaho team. You know, Idaho. The tough 5-6 team whose best win so far is against Utah State.
Is TCU’s resume any better? Do we really want a team in the championship game who is hanging their hat on victories against the likes of Baylor, Air Force and Utah? This, the same Utah Utes team that got crushed against the 6-4 Fighting Irish of Notre Dame?
I will acknowledge that it is possible that Boise State and TCU are just as good as any of the one loss teams from the Automatic Qualifier conferences. They pass the eye test. They are crushing nearly everyone they play. The problem is that all of the one loss teams in the power conferences would do exactly the same to these watered-down opponents.
For Boise State and TCU, you can’t prove that you belong with the big boys until you play the big boys again and again. The one loss AQ conference teams and the two loss teams in the SEC West have proven they belong in the discussion. They have beaten elite teams and teams with elite talent.
Let’s be very clear. This isn’t about punishing Boise State and TCU because of the conferences they each play in respectively. It is about not punishing the teams that play in the rough and tumble conferences like the Big Ten or the SEC.
Unfortunately, teams like Boise State and TCU are media darlings. They are cute little teams that schedule middle-tier BCS schools like Oregon State and Baylor. They get their wins, beat their chest, and the national media eats it up. Now we hear that Boise State is scheduling the Georgia Bulldogs next year at a neutral site. Yes, the 5-6 Georgia Bulldogs. Why Georgia? There are four teams in the SEC West, maybe five that would beat Boise State a majority of the time. There are no wins for either team this season against an Alabama, Nebraska, or Wisconsin. As far as we know, both may be figured out to be frauds if they face an elite team with elite talent led by an elite coach.
Utah had risen as high as fifth in the BCS rankings. They were proven a fraud against Notre Dame. What real evidence do we have that Boise State and TCU are not frauds as well? Everyone thought Utah was right in that mix. We saw how that panned out.
Right now, Boise State and TCU should be ranked no higher than nine and ten- pick your favorite underdog to put at nine. All of the one loss AQ schools should be ranked above both of these potentially fraudulent football teams. They simply have beaten better teams, and there is no evidence to support that either of these two non-AQ teams would have or could have survived a full season in one of the power conferences without losing.
Furthermore, Boise State and TCU should realize they haven’t earned a ticket to play for the national championship. If they make the big game, what does that really say about our system? It says that who you play doesn’t matter. It says that the AQ conference members have no reason to schedule tough games outside of their conference. There is no reason for an elite conference program to schedule Boise State or TCU because you won’t help yourself by winning, but you give a team like Boise State or TCU a possible win to point to when voters are struggling and jockeying teams for position. It’s a dangerous precedent that could end out of conference rivalry games such as Florida versus Florida State or Arkansas versus Texas A&M. Imagine the destruction it could cause to Notre Dame if major conferences quit scheduling tough out of conference opponents.
In fact, if either of the non-AQ schools (or heaven help us, both) ends up playing in the BCS National Championship Game, then all the commissioners of the power conferences should have a pow-wow and vow to keep the “fly in the ointment” schools out of their scheduling.
Maybe it would keep them out of the big game as well.
