Las Vegas Bowl:

35  -  32

Sometimes the best bowl games of the season are not necessarily the venues that are the most anticipated.  If this opening bowl game between Utah and Navy, which took place at the Poinsettia Bowl, located in San Diego, California is any indicator, the Bowl Season is going to pick up where the wacky, zany regular season has left off.

I have campaigned on many occasions that both Utah and Navy should be BCS Conference members.  The BCS Busters Model, which I have touted throughout my book manuscript project, would do just that.  Utah, would in fact, be moving to the PAC-10 Conference to make way for the newly created BCS Rocky Mountain Conference, which simply aligns many of the best non-BCS football programs historically over the last decade, throughout the BCS era.

Navy, on the other hand, would enter the Big-East Conference along with Army, Appalachian State and East Carolina.  Think about it.  All 4 teams are located along the Eastern corridor and this past season, the above programs, other than Army, had stellar seasons, playing straight up with the teams within the conference.  This is a look at how the Big-East, PAC-10 and mythical Rocky Mountain Conference might have played out this past season.

    

    

This magical realignment, so necessary to eliminate the chaos of the BCS, bringing order via a chronological sequence of events (the BCS Busters Regular Season Playoff), which would determine college football superiority, while bringing the ethical compass of the sport back into fold, could very easily occur.

While many college football fans around the country continue to scoff at the concept of Mountain West, Western Athletic and C-USA teams being adopted into the BCS family tree, Utah’s recent history provides a glimpse into why this concept should come to fruition.

With the Utes victory over the Mid-shipmen last night on the slimy-dewey tundra of San Diego, the group from Salt Lake City has now won 7 straight bowl games, dating back to the 1999 season.  The list of victims includes 3 BCS opponents and 4 highly regarded non-BCS opponents, who have defeated many BCS opponents on a regular basis themselves.

1999:  Fresno State (17-16) Las Vegas Bowl

2000:  USC (10-6) Las Vegas Bowl

2003:  S. Mississippi (17-0) Liberty Bowl

2004:  Pittsburgh (35-7) Fiesta Bowl

2005:  Georgia Tech (38-10) Emerald Bowl

2006:  Tulsa (25-13) Armed Forces Bowl

2007:  Navy (35-32) Poinsettia Bowl

If we include the carnage of the regular season as well, beginning specifically inside the BCS era (1998), we find Utah, again, in very select company.  In 26 meetings between their BCS counterparts, Utah is 16-10 with an average margin of victory (17.6) that is more than dominating and an average margin of defeat (5.9) that demonstrates they are no fluke. 

My hunch is that many of the so called media experts, as well as many competent fans, would suspect that these numbers would be reversed.

Since the inaugural BCS season in 1998, the Utes have defeated Louisville, Arizona and Indiana (twice), Washington State, both USC and UCLA, South Florida, California, Oregon, Texas A&M, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech.

Now here is the prickly part.  The Utes, while dominating BCS foes, are struggling against the much maligned and stigmatized other members of their own conference, who like themselves are stigmatized by the weaker sister emblem of the non-BCS factor.

In the last decade when lining up against the premier teams within the Mountain West and WAC conferences, the Utes record is strikingly similar to their winning percentage against their BCS counterparts:

BCS Record and winning percentage:  16 - 10 = .615

non BCS Record and winning percentage:  26 - 18 = .591

Do you think many SEC, Midwest or East Coast fans realize that Utah actually has a greater winning percentage in the last decade against BCS opponents than they do against their own non-BCS family counterparts, many who are suddenly becoming rising stars of their own? 

It is time for all college football fans who are prudently interested in the future of the sport to recognize the social bias exhibited within the BCS social structure and denounce the whole process of determining BCS Bowl game pay-outs.  It is time for the Mountain West specifically, and the best programs of the WAC and C-USA to get their BCS paycheck and social dues.  As a matter of fact, it is long and woefully overdue!

Comments?  Click Here!