MAYBE MICHIGAN WASN’T THE TEAM THAT GOT SCREWED.
We’ve played games of backyard football that ended with such chicanery, trickery, and pulled-from-the-ass heroism. We’ve seen games like this scripted in Varsity Blues, played them in various permutations of video game, and on occasion dreamt them up when we were bored, and considering the ultimate nutjob fantasy game.
But Boise State just beat Oklahoma, and if it didn’t happen, you could not invent it. Trick laterals, last minute comebacks, halfback passes, fourth down conversions….
And Ian Johnson just proposed to his girlfriend, the head cheerleader at Boise State. ON CAMERA. And you know she said yes.
We’ll try to capture this in the morning, but frankly, if you didn’t see it, you’ll accuse us of getting into the PCP early on Saturday. The B in Boise stands for balls. Planetary-sized ones.
A Bruckheimer movie broke out Tuesday morning in the Fiesta Bowl. We give it four stars.
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51
Jmac says:
… with some help from Reggie Ball’s doppelganger …
There would need to be more ridiculous scrambling 22 yards behind the line of scrimmage, elbows thrown at Georgia trainers and errant, wounded duck passes for it to be a true Reggie Ball-doppelganger. The rest of the Virginia Tech players were doing their part to provide the trash-talking.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:43 am
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DevilGrad says:
Whether Boise State is a “flash in the pan” likely will have a lot more to do with financial resources than it does with the product they put on the field.
My alma mater traditionally spends less on its entire athletic depatment than OSU does on football alone. Our football coach makes less than a first-year associate at any halfway decent New York or DC law firm. Boise puts more money into football than that, but not enough to keep coaches from leaving for, say, a down-on-its luck Big XII program.
Under those circumstances, it’s hard to sustain ten-win success, and unrealistic to denigrate the ten-win seasons that do happen solely because they are so difficult to replicate.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:54 am
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Boston Frog says:
Jmac, if you’re saying that it’s easier to win in the WAC than in the SEC, I agree. There’s obviously no doubt about that. And I wouldn’t begrudge Kentucky the opportunity to play a good opponent in a decent bowl. However, take a look at some bowl teams’ schedules. A lot of mid-level BCS teams make bowls by beating three or four body-bag teams and/or 1-AA opponents and then struggling to get maybe three wins over mediocre teams in their own conference. That’s essentially what a good WAC or MWC team does, too, but the BCS team gets a much better bowl with a better opponent and more money while also getting the cash the big boys bring into the conference.
And, most bottom-feeder BCS programs can sustain themselves by being bad and cashing checks while top non-BCS schools that actually invest in their programs and try to win struggle mightily to survive financially. The division between the two seems arbitrary at best. Actually, I’d love to see a system of relegation and promotion in college football and other American sports similar to the one that exists in European soccer and rugby. But that’s a bizarre tangent for another day…and, as I think we’re about 90 percent in agreement, anyway, I’m going to stop rambling and go get some lunch.
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
54
Futbawl Fan says:
Boise State is a welterweight who got a lucky hook on the chin of a heavyweight
Let Boise State play a heavyweight schedule in Big 12 or SEC and they will be 8-6 every year.
The game was fun, but like my granddaddy used to say: “even a blind hog can find an acorn every now and then”
’nuff said
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
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Anonymous IV says:
BostonFrog has put forth some fine points about the inequity of the nonBCS schools vs. the BCS schools. To gain a better perspective let us replace the labels of nonBCS na dBCS with racial terms before the Civil Rights Era. NonBCS schools can be called Colored or Negro and the BCS schools are white. If we use those terms, I believe that we can see that if we want more nonBCS schools to be competitive with BCS schools the issue that has to be addressed is equality. The fact that they are excluded has forced nonBCS schools to be excluded from being able to share in any of the profits, media exposure, recruiting, etc. that came from this game.
For all of you that cheer for a big time program maybe you should have the balls to cheer for a program where losing seasons are a regular occurence. Show me a fan of Temple, Buffalo, etc. I will be impressed.
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:23 pm
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oc phil says:
My modest proposal for fixing the system is to adopt something like the Euro-soccer world has. The BCS conferences get matched up with a mid-major. The bottom team in the big league gets relegated to the lower league and the top team from the mid-major conference moves up to the paired BCS conference. So in my system the Pac 10 would lose Stanford next year and gain Boise State. The Big 10 would get the winner of the MAC and lose thier bottom feeder.
It will never happen, but it would be a better system.
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
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DevilGrad says:
I’d show you the Temple fan over at the MAC BBS, but I don’t think he’s back from vacation yet.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
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Boston Frog says:
Phil, somewhere in my rantings I mentioned the same thing. I’m right there with you. I would love to see promotion-relegation in college football and all American sports.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
59
tzubear says:
Boston frog and oc phil –
a relaegation system would be interesting but administratitvely problematic.
1. BCS conferences must take into account regulation of ALL sports, and Satnford has very good programs outside of football.
2. Advancement of teams would have to be a kind of draft system where each confernce drafted in order of a pre determined need. This is necessary since BSU could go to the PAC-10 or Big 12based on geography. Under this system the Big 12 woukld likely have frist crack at including BSU. This opens up the argurment that geographical limits would have to be imposed by the NCAA so that BSU wouldnt end up in the ACC. Keep in mind that relegation systems work because there are no conferences in European leagues.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
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tzubear says:
Oh, and I am firmly agaisnt anything that gives the NCAA more control.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:43 pm
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DC Trojan says:
1. BCS conferences must take into account regulation of ALL sports, and Satnford has very good programs outside of football.
You could make it for football only. That doesn’t address the broader problem of conferences which are (broadly in the case of the mid-majors) geographically based, but on approach to that would be to just make the promotion – relegation patterns fixed — e.g. WAC winner always goes into Pac-10, and Pac-10 loser always goes into WAC.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:53 pm
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crazy tom says:
College football is the only sport I can think of where allegedly intelligent people make straight-faced arguments about what teams deserve this year based on what they did last year.**
** NOTE: If subject team is Notre Dame, replace “last year” with “under Ara Parseghian.”
Come on… Ara retired over 30 years ago. We expect to be given our due based on Holtz’s accomplishments. After all, he went something like 12-1 against the final AP top 20 (I think 7-1 against top 10) over a two year span in the late 80’s. All will be right in the world when Weis starts doing the same. Or at least pounding the snot out of the pansies, and occasionally pounding the snot out of a pretty good team (eg, USC and Texas in ‘95, UW in 96…). Of course, unlike Davie and Willingham, Weis actually did come in to something of an “empty cupboard”, which should be pretty well refilled around ‘08. Next year is goign to be the suck, though. And I’m keeping my mouth shut about tomorrow. The college OT format still sucks donkey balls, though. For whomever whined about “boring punts and field position”, you hate football. Maybe they should start a new game that’s all overtime from start to finish. You’d probably like that more, you freakin moron.
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
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tzubear says:
Dc trojan –
Though better for the fans I shudder to think of admin difficulties juggling different conferences for football, basketball, soccer, diving, vollyball…..
or you could, as you said, just do it for football. Though, implementing a 8 or16 game plaoff would seem a more simple solution.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
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oc phil says:
Sorry Boston Frog, I guess I didn’t finish your post all the way through.
My idea was based on just football. Not all the conferences are the same for all sports anyway, since all school’s don’t have the same sports anyway. Soccer got title 9′ed at USC for example but many of the other Pac 10 schools kept the sport (actually when USC still had a soccer team they didn’t play in the Pac 10 and travel up to Washington or Oregon but played a schedule of mostly SoCal colleges).
And my idea was to keep the pairings of conferences geographically based. Perhaps Pac 10/WAC, Big 12/MWC, ACC/Big East, etc.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:45 pm
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J.J. says:
And Ian Johnson just proposed to his girlfriend, the head cheerleader at Boise State. ON CAMERA. And you know she said yes.
And if she said no later, he’ll get rebound.
One of the coolest things i’ve ever witnessed, and to think I was reluctantly rooting for Oklahoma before the OT (as a fan of another Big XII team).
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:52 pm
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Boston Frog says:
So, you’re saying that there are college sports other than football? Huh. I had no idea…
Phil, no worries–it’s very easy to get lost in my wordy posts. Sadly, I also write for a living.
Yeah, the whole relegation thing would be nigh on impossible, but wouldn’t it be fun? Imagine Colorado going 4-7 in the WAC or Miss. State going 3-8 in C-USA…
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:18 pm
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BillC says:
Wait, there’s a way to rid ourselves of Miss. St.? Oh happy day. I’ll take a road trip to Orlando or any other C-USA town over so god-forsaken-god-forgot Starkville, MS every day of the week and thrice on Saturday.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 am
68
Marcus says:
Because I feel for any of you who went to bed after OK’s last-minute interception, a game DVD will be out in a few weeks.
Check out http://www.ktvb.com for details
January 4th, 2007 at 3:19 pm