Ok let's face it. The winner of the SEC, either Florida, Alabama, or LSU, is going to the national championship. In fact, a two loss SEC team that wins the conference would only have been denied that spot if there were two undefeated BCS conference champions. Florida can finally show it is the real deal against Alabama or LSU, Bama gets another quality win over the #1 team in America, or LSU beats both Alabama and Florida. National championship resume established.

I wish I could say the other spot was as up for grabs as it should be. If Texas wins out, it will be in the big game. But why? It will have quality(?) wins over Oklahoma State, Kansas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma....

...Sorry, but I'm not impressed. Only one of those teams has less than three losses with three or four games still left to go.

Oklahoma State (6-2) has lost to Houston and Texas which is nothing to be ashamed of but has no above average wins. It has been consistent but still has to play Texas Tech, Colorado, and Oklahoma, which could all become losses. Win out and this becomes a huge win for Texas.

Kansas (5-3) barely survived Iowa State and has rattled off three straight losses to Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech. This is probably not a quality team but at a time with Todd Reesing looked like a team you wanted to beat. They still have tough games left against Nebraska, Texas, and maybe Missouri.

Texas Tech (6-3) beat Nebraska and played Houston and Texas tough but also lost to Texas A&M. Games at Oklahoma State and against Oklahoma which they will be underdogs in.

Oklahoma (5-3) our BCS darlings. Even in averageness, they are overrated. I'll tell you this surprised me, Oklahoma's best win is over Kansas. They lost to Miami, Texas, and BYU. Losing to Texas should not be rewarded, and it should not be punished harshly. Losing to Miami isn't huge but it also should not be rewarded even though it was close. BYU, remember them? Let's play the pretend I'm a BCS voter game. "BYU sucks I mean they aren't even in a BCS conference and lost to Florida State and TCU." Okay maybe I'll agree with you once. This loss is unforgivable on top of two other losses. This team is shockingly average against real competition.

Now if you didn't catch this we still have Oklahoma State v. Texas Tech, Oklahoma State v. Oklahoma, and Texas Tech v. Oklahoma. Spread those three losses among those teams and you might have a team not looking like as much of a quality win for the Longhorns.

I am not a Texas hater. In fact, I like Texas. How do you not respect a team with the crazy winning percentage they have over the years in a major conference? Texas should have been in the championship last year. However, I am all about being fair and not going on name recognition alone, which has been a disturbing trend in college football lately. I know people want Colt McCoy in the big game to see what he does. All I'm saying is if they go undefeated they should not be considered shoe-ins for the championship game like they currently are.

Who would replace them? Who is better? Is anyone?

See you in part two where I try and figure that out....

Alright. Only hours away from another year of Ohio State and Michigan. I will argue to my grave that this is the greatest rivalry in college football. Of course, each year brings a new storyline to the game based on the different players looking to win "the big one" maybe for the first time and the implications for the college football season that are usually at stake in this game. This year's game definitely has unique qualities but it lacks the excitement of almost every other season.

Last year had Michigan been healthy and Chad Henne been 100% I think the game could have been a great edition to the rivalry. Ohio State held a prime position to get into the national championship game once again and Michigan was trying to prove that it possessed the talent to beat anyone in the country even though they lost a number of disappointing games especially to Appalachian State, regarded as one of the biggest upsets in the history of college football. The resulting game was probably the most boring Michigan Ohio State game I have ever seen in my life. Clearly, Michigan without a health Henne could not do anything offensively so once Tressel's Buckeyes scored fourteen points, the only play they ran was a rush up the middle. The game ended with Ohio State winning 14-3.

The uniqueness of this year's game is just plain weird, and highly disappointing. Michigan, for the first time in the almost 22 years of my life, will lose more than half of their games and will not appear in a bowl game for the first time since the Big Ten allowed more than one conference team to go to a bowl. Ohio State only lost twice this year and has a chance for a share at the Big Ten Title, but it will not be headed to the Rose Bowl. This hurts for a team that legitimately could have made it to the national championship game once again. Michigan's traditional pro style offense no longer exists. In place is the spread offense, which is being run with players who intended to play at Michigan under the old offense. They do not have the personnel  to play this system effectively yet. Ohio State added Terelle Pryor to the team, the number one quarterback recruit from last year. He gives the Buckeyes a skilled running quarterback, a dimension that was not there under former starter Todd Boeckman, which complements the offense. This year, Ohio State is much more talented than Michigan, hands down.

You know what though, that should not matter. Despite anything else this is Michigan and Ohio State. The way it is every year, the date circled on the calendar, the game that creates heroes that become part of the legend. Oh well, Michigan and Ohio State underwhelmed. The teams and their fans had higher hopes than this for their seasons. Now its irrelevant. Now its two of the juggernaut names in college football going head to head once again to write the next page of the story.

So why am I not excited? Games in the past did not have implications for national or conference championships but I still was anxious to watch what would happen. Maybe it is because at least both teams were still usually the upper level of talent in the country. Somehow once they got onto the field, no matter the talent level difference, the spirit of the rivalry made these two teams equal. I just do not see it happening tomorrow. The fight seems to currently be missing from this rivalry.

I blame the coaches for this and not necessarily in a bad way. Ohio State's Jim Tressel is a class act. He does not come out and say "Oh yeah well Michigan kind of sucks this year so we expect to go in and whoop them." He has reigned in his players by not letting them say any bulletin board material that could light a spark under Michigan. This rivalry has been famous for shoving those sort of "guarantees" and other offending statements in the face of the other team when the game is actually played. Tressel probably over compliments the skill of the Wolverines saying that they have maybe the best front seven in college football. He understands the importance of the rivalry and what it means to the fans like when he mentioned in his first address to an Ohio State basketball audience that he would beat Michigan.

Rich Rodriguez is the new character to this rivalry. The first year Michigan coach comes from outside the program, which can be seen based on his unintentional violations of classic Michigan traditions like the #1 jersey going to a truly deserving offensive player. Rodriguez may be a good coach who had a rough transitional year with his new team, but the way he addresses the Ohio State game makes me mad. He said that this was just another game. Wrong. It is THE game. Michigan fans would have been going wild had they not won a game this year up until now based on what the program has traditionally done. However, if they had been winless this season and won the Ohio State game, the fans would have said "Well, that was a disappointing year, but hey! At least we beat Ohio State!" Rodriguez just doesn't get that yet, and so I doubt his players will come out believing they will upset Ohio State. He needs to pull every trick play out of his book because they should have nothing to lose. I saw inspired Michigan football last year when those players went out in that bowl game against Florida. They refused to lose for outgoing Coach Lloyd Carr and I admired that spirit. It just makes me slightly disappointed because if Les Miles had gotten the coaching job, he would have done anything to win this game. He gets it.

I hope for two reasons that Michigan beats Ohio State today. First, I bleed maize and blue, and while I try to be unbiased in my posts, I always, always want to beat Ohio State. Secondly, this would make the rivalry even more prestigious. No one is picking Michigan to win and if they find a way to it will add so much to this rivalry and why college football in general is so entertaint. This is THE rivalry game. All I am asking is that these teams remember it and start to act like it.

These are the predictionsI had written down in my blog. Not too happy with myself for some of them. I'll review one by one along with two picks that were not in my original blog.

1. Notre Dame will win eight regular season games next year and lose in their bowl game.-this is the only pick I still feel okay about which was actually going out on a limb. The fighting Irish are 5-2 at this point and should win games against Navy and Syracuse. Add that with a win against either Boston College or Pittsburgh and a loss to USC and there is your eight wins.

2. Georgia will win the SEC. Unlikely at this point. Florida is a major stepping stone and that Alabama loss is still hurting. They are still in the fight though so we'll see.

3. USC will win the Pac 10 and play in the national championship game. Again unlikely. I don't feel too bad about this pick the way that USC was considered godly at one time this season, but the national championship is going to be hard to get to this year once again for the Trojans.

4. Oklahoma will win the Big Twelve and play in the national championship game. Ouch. Another miss I don't feel awful about, but this is now VERY unlikely since Texas would have to lose twice for Okla to get to the conference championship. Not going to happen.

5. Tim Tebow will not win the Heisman this year. This is probably my weakest pick of all considering how many possibile candidates there are in any season. However, all the talk of the time was on how Tebow was so likely to get better and if he did better how would he not get the Heisman again?

6. Ohio State will win the Big Ten. I don't feel good about this one. I just went with what seemed obvious. Ohio State with much of the same lineup with a year's maturity would make it through the weak Big Ten again wouldn't they? Darryl Clark came out of nowhere to me and energized Penn State.

Here was my other pick not showing up in my original blog.

7. Percy Harvin will win the Heisman. I saw this guy play last year a few times and he is electric. Give him the ball in space and he is gone down the field outsprinting the entire defense. No matter who I picked it was going to be difficult, and since he is at least being considered at the moment I feel okay about my choice.

And finally, the pick I was too chicken to make.....

Michigan will have its first losing season in forty years.  I had it written down at one point. I really did. Then I looked at the schedule and added up likely wins and likely losses in my mind. I got a number above .500 and said well, I guess I can't say that. Turns out that wasn't just me being a homer for my own team, I just did not realize the extent to how badly Michigan would be. The defense has been pathetic for supposedly being experienced, while the offense has actually exceeded my expectations at times. This was supposed to be a team not giving up many points and not able to score many but it is just bad all over. But if thats the sacrifice you make for a national championship in five years, so be it.

There is no sport I love more than college football. The possibility for fantastic finishes, unbelievable plays, epic matchups, and the annointing of new heroes can happen every weekend. Memorable moments like a referee tackling a player, a team scoring a winning touchdown with the band in the way who mistakingly thought the game was over, or a near impossible catch holding on to the ball while hugging the defensive player, and a high scoring too close to call Texas vs. USC national championship game are just some of the possibilities tuning into the game each week.

Most people that follow college football know, however, the complaints with the game. The BCS rankings are not calculated fairly, the computers have too much influence and miss aspects of the game humans could catch, an undefeated non BCS conference team should get the chance to play for the national title if all the other schools have a loss, the amount of time between the end of the regular season and the bowl games allows for the team to transform to a new one or makes the players lose the intensity they kept during the whole season, and on and on.

I have to give the NCAA credit for a few rule changes to problems that plagued the league for years. Finally, games no longer end in ties no matter what, forcing someone to win a close battle. Also, the instant replay backs up or refutes controversial calls and takes away the error of even trained eyes.  No longer can games be won on "phantom touchdowns" that if reviewed with cameras would have clearly been overturned.

But the elephant of the BCS has still been avoided. Not for lack of trying. They minimized the influence of the computers by allowing human voters to account for two thirds of the BCS rankings. That has not been good enough.

Which leads to the biggest problem in college football......

*The chance every year that a deserving team will be left out of the national championship game.*

It is not impossible for one team in every single BCS conference to go undefeated in a single year. Shoot, it is not even impossible for two teams in conferences without a conference championship game to go undefeated along with this in a single year. Throw in a non BCS team like a Notre Dame and the BCS mess would be too crazy to sort out.

Who do you put in the championship game? Do you put in an undefeated team from the SEC who trailed late in games with both quality opponents and below average teams yet pulled out the win every time? How about the ACC team that squashed all of its competition by an average of 40 points but never really had a game with an opponent in the top fifteen? Maybe the Big Twelve champions who won consistently against average opponents but never looked overpowering? What if it was simply too hard to tell?

Of course, the likelihood of this situation is incredibly low, but what if even four teams went undefeated in a single season, each as possible as the other to be the best team in the country?

This decision making process had to happen as recent as last year. A one loss Ohio State team was assumed to be in the national championship game, although it did not get the respect it had the previous year after getting crushed 41-14 by Florida for the championship.

Who to pick between two loss Georgia, two loss but SEC champion LSU, undefeated Hawaii, or two loss USC among a couple other possibilities to face Ohio State?

Logically, without knowing anything about college football, it would make sense to put undefeated Hawaii in the national championship game. But after rationalization, commentators and football analysts told us that it made sense for LSU, coming from the best conference in football, the SEC, and actually winning their conference championship deserved to go. Their only losses came in overtime anyways, they told us. LSU won the championship and Hawaii got destroyed on every possible level by Georgia, supposedly ending the debate about who was right and wrong. USC and Georgia still had their arguments to be in that game and would probably have their own 2008 BCS champion hardware in the trophy case had their arguments convinced the public.

But this illustrates what is wrong with the sport. If Hawaii had beaten Georgia convincingly it would have been hard to justify not giving them a share of the national championship. This could have been the second time in the decade long history of the BCS that the system had seriously messed up.

This brings me back to my point and I will run down a few quick reasons why this is the worst problem. So again....

*The chance every year that a deserving team will be left out of the national championship game.*

Here's my top 5 reasons why this is so bad.

1. This causes teams to be forced to try to win on "style points." Convincingly winning on national television against an esteemed opponent holds too much sway in the BCS. Alabama didn't just beat Georgia, it slammed Georgia to the mat and shot to the ceiling in an instant. At this writing, Texas Tech is an undefeated 8-0 in a conference that is stacked this year, yet somehow manages to not be in the top 5 and is behind three one loss teams mostly because they haven't had that win against an elite team (which would change if they happen to beat Texas next weekend).

2. Media analysts have too much influence on the human voters as to who the "best" team in football is. Think about it, remember a month and a half ago or so, this year's USC team was announced as maybe one of the greatest teams of all time. Check back with those same people now and they will tell you if they are honest how wrong they were, yet they certainly had most of the country convinced.

3. Conferences with a championship game receive more credit than the conferences or independent teams that do not. Memory is fleeting. Two years ago, even though we might have believed at the time that Ohio State and Michigan were still the two best teams in the country after an exciting high scoring game and USC losing their chance to be in the championship by choking against an inferior team, voters chose to give Florida a leap in the polls especially since their conference victory was much more vivid in the minds of the college football world.

4. The split national championship. Yes, it can still happen. No outright winner of the title. Only has happened once in ten years, but it still happened and is not pretty. This forces the BCS to say it screwed up and no one can be annointed the true champion, cheapening the honor. I am unsure whether they would still award a share of the championship to the team they wronged or if they would just say "sorry, our mistake" now, but I am inclined to think they would still award a split championship.

5. The need to engage in politics. See Les Miles and Pete Carroll for perfect examples of this. Both coaches, when necessary, have felt compelled to convince the press that their team is the biggest force to be reckoned with. Nothing wrong with that, but shouldn't the season and record clearly tell us if it is true? Fact is politcking works.

Solutions are tough, but until this is figured out the BCS is going to have to pray every year that they get lucky. They are begging for just one of either Penn State, Texas, or Alabama to lose just once, so they can avoid dealing with the flaws of the system deciding the yearly champion of NCAA college football.

This is just a quick post where I wanted to point out something I saw a couple years ago on the losing streak in the Stanley Cup Finals.  No team has recorded a second playoff exit in the NHL playoffs after reaching the finals since 1988.  That means for example if teams like the Calgary Flames, New Jersey Devils, Ottawa Senators, who lost in the finals previous years got back to the finals and lost again this year, the streak would end.

Here is the list of the Stanley Cup playoff losers and the years they lost dating back to the start of the streak.

2007-Ottawa Senators

2006-Edmonton Oilers

2005-(nobody :( sadness)

2004-Calgary Flames

2003-Anaheim Mighty Ducks

2002-Carolina Hurricanes

2001-New Jersey Devils

2000-Dallas Stars

1999-Buffalo Sabres

1998-Washington Capitals

1997-Philadelphia Flyers

1996-Florida Panthers

1995-Detroit Red Wings

1994-Vancouver Canucks

1993-Los Angeles Kings

1992-Chicago Blackhawks

1991-Minnesota North Stars

1990-Boston Bruins

1989-Montreal Canadiens

1988-Boston Bruins-Breaks Streak

With the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup finals, the only way for the streak to continue to grow is if Pittsburgh loses. Detroit lost in 1995 and would end the streak if they lost.

Lastly, If Detroit loses, the new streak would start from 1996 and continue to the present