Congratulations To The National Champions..utah Utes.

[greenminer]

Of course, none of this would make us happy until we have a playoff system in place that would have included us last season.

Everyone whines until their team is included.

[LongJim]

Utes have a legitimate claim this year.

From Wolf's blog:

*Utah is the only unbeaten team in America.

* Utah has four wins over current top 25 teams (Alabama, TCU, BYU, Oregon State)

* Utah has two wins over top 10 teams (Alabama, TCU)

* Utah won a conference that is arguably the 3rd or 4th strongest in college football this year, and went 6-1 against the Pac- 10 in the regular season.

* Oklahoma's best win came against TCU, Florida's best win came against Alabama, and the only team to beat USC was Oregon St. Utah beat all three of these teams this season.

* Utah soundly beat an Alabama team that was one quarter away from a national championship game berth.

[untjim1995]

If we are to continue with the BCS farce, I think they should name the Cotton Bowl as the 6th BCS bowl, and give the Mountain West winner an automatic bid and also would allow another at-large team. Now that the Cotton Bowl will be played at Jerry's place the weather is not a factor, which has been the argument against adding the Cotton Bowl to the BCS bowl list.

This has been my contention for a long time. And instead of having the national championship site having a meaningless game a week before, use the Cotton Bowl as the 5th BCS game. If the MWC is willing to expand to include Boise State, Fresno State, and either Nevada or Hawaii to get to 12, then the league would become an AQ league. The you can keep the Rose Bowl with the Pac- 10 vs. Big 10, the Fiesta would get the MWC champ, Cotton Bowl would get the Big XII champ, the Sugar Bowl would get the SEC champ, and the Orange Bowl would get the ACC Champ vs the Big East. That still leaves three spots open for the three "next bests" (i.e, Notre Dame when the finish in the top 12, second best team from Big XII and SEC, etc.). I believe this will happen long before a playoff will be instituted or the "And 1" scenario takes place. It will be real interesting to see if the BCS would expand so as to keep the government watchdogs off their ass or if they would use a power play move to enforce the BCS membership by making their leagues a Super 1-A or something like that. Sadly for us, I don't see any scenario where it would make one bit of differnece for the ol' alma mater.

[oldguystudent]

I've been putting some thought into this. If the NCAA refuses to have a playoff, unlike every other sport at every other level, then the notion of a national championship is just absolutely absurd. Here's my solution. D1A football is essentially to the NFL what minor league baseball is to MLB right? Does anybody clamor all over each other to declare a national champion of minor league baseball? Nope. It's divided into several leagues, each having their own champion. So here's my proposal: Get rid of the national championship altogether until the NCAA bends.

With the transformation of WKU complete next year there will be 120 D1A teams. Disband the Sunbelt conference and distribute those teams among the other ten conferences. Gerrymander a bit with the teams in the remaining ten conferences until you've got an even 10 conferences with 12 teams each. Now pair the 10 conferences into 5 leagues. This allows for an 11 game in-conference schedule and 1 rotating "sister conference" game for a total of 12 games.

Create five bowl games -- Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange and Cotton. Assign two conferences to each bowl (Big 10, Pac 10 for Rose, Big 12, SEC for Sugar, et al). So the Rose Bowl effectively becomes the championship game for the newly (or not so newly) aligned Pac-10/Big 10 "league". Send the champion of each league to its assigned bowl game, and don't worry about a national championship. Now there are five major bowls that all 120 teams have an equal shot at getting to.

If, independently, the Armed Forces Bowl, Sun Bowl, New Orleans Bowl, Motor City Bowl, Meineke transmission gear shift knob bowl, etc. want to continue operating, so be it. Those can continue to be, as they always have been, nothing more than exhibition games that give the alumni a great excuse to throw back cheap cocktails at dawn.

[gksmith]

'Bama CHOKED!

If they were as good as they were all season it should have been a route by Alabama. Just like Texas Tech, they flat choked. I am not taking away anything from Utah, but Alabama was supposed to be a lot better then that.

[CMJ]

'Bama CHOKED!

If they were as good as they were all season it should have been a route by Alabama. Just like Texas Tech, they flat choked. I am not taking away anything from Utah, but Alabama was supposed to be a lot better then that.

Or perhaps Utah was just that good, but no one believed it.

[emmitt01]

Or perhaps Utah was just that good, but no one believed it.

Couldn't be. They have a MWC patch on their jerseys.

[CMJ]

Utah ends the season #4 in the Coaches Poll and #2 in the AP. Did they get the shaft?

Yes.

But that is still pretty amazing that a non AQ school ends the season with so much respect. Props to the Utes, the "People's Champion" for '08.