Thank the Lord Almighty!
The Trojans of the University of Southern California went down in a heap in Corvalis, Oregon last night, defeated by Oregon State, much to the delight of anyone who hates the BCS. I think that’s everyone except for the rich good ol’ boys who make all the money off the endless stream of consolation games played during bowl season. Even they have to cringe a little when an undefeated BCS conference team gets left out of the championship game.
OK, so USC has a storied program and due to their recent string of success they are looked upon favorably by the powers-that-be when voting in the polls. It doesn’t take a genius however, to realize that the preferential treatment of USC is unjustified and not fair to any of the teams who play a much tougher schedule in a much tougher conference.
Am I taking crazy pills? It’s clear as day. Look at the four teams behind USC going into this week before the Trojans’ epic loss. Then look at their competition compared to USC.
Oklahoma – plays #24 TCU, #7 Texas, #18 Kansas, and #10 Texas Tech
Georgia – #8 Alabama, #21 Vanderbilt, #5 LSU, #4 Florida, and #15 Auburn
Florida – #5 LSU, #3 Georgia, #21 Vanderbilt
LSU(already played and beat #10 Auburn) – #4 Florida, #3 Georgia, #8 Alabama
Now let’s look at USC’s Pillsbury-Dough-Boy-esque schedule. They play…oh, wait. No ranked teams the rest of the season? That’s impossible right? What’s even worse is that three of the aforementioned top 5 teams all play in the SEC and therefore play each other. They’re guaranteed a loss while USC prances through their cake schedule.
The Pac-10 is not the SEC, nor the Big 12, nor the Big 10. These three conferences plus the ACC and the Mountain West all have more ranked teams than the Pac-10. It’s no contest yet if USC were to run the table and say Georgia lost to two ranked teams, USC would be number one and Georgia would have no shot at being crowned national champion. Ridiculous.
Listen, I know these kids work really hard and I don’t want to take anything away from the effort they put in week in and week out. But to be given a free pass when other conferences are playing three, four and five ranked opponents to USC’s none takes away from the hard work put in by players at other schools.
Fortunately lovers of sport, competition and deciding the outcome on the field seemed to have dodged the perennial USC bullet for now. If this mularkey doesn’t make a case for a playoff then I don’t know what does. Hopefully they’ll lose again to cement their place out of the top 2. How about next week? Oregon in prime time!
