Oregon BCS Championship Delayed for 2 Years

Wanted to thank Josh over at With Leather for this screen cap because I have another job and don’t have the time for this stuff, plus it’s a great site and @houseofpunte follows me on twitter so what more can you really ask for

So last night there was a BCS Championship game brought to you by ESPN and the entire Frito Lay Family or some shit.  In between games of Scrabble with Andy I’m pretty sure that I caught all of the important points.  I believe that the first half consisted of talking about how great these student athletes were and how much they loved their school and how someone might have said something about someone taking money but we weren’t really going to talk about that.  Then for the second half of the broadcast they actually tried to play some football.

There were about a million so called story lines for this game, Cam Newton and the money, the lay off, should TCU have a shot, who hates the BCS more, on and on.  The two things that jumped to my mind where, what is going on with this turf and why don’t the players have cleats that work and second I just spent the weekend watching the NFL wild card round and don’t these guys suck compared to the Seahawks.

The first half was terrible, I think there were 33 combined yards and 14 interceptions and fumbles from what I’ve been told for the past 6 months are the two greatest offenses in the history of football.  I also heard a lot about them the 6 months prior to that during the actual college football season.

I have to admit that I really hate college football, I watch Utah because I went there and have an interest and hate the BCS, although now that they are in the PAC 12 I’ve lost that angle so it’s pretty much going to be all about meeting girls from Arizona.  I know that we will have to hear about Auburn for the next two years until they finally vacate this championship and there is no college champion for the 2010, meaning that the BCS works because now the regular season is even more important because there is no post season at all.  Really if they want to make every game a championship game just have each team play one game then let some dolphins pick the winner by tossing hoops onto toy mascots.

Glad that’s over and I can go back to rooting for my Steelers to beat those gutter birds from Baltimore this weekend.

Mountain West Conference Weekend

I’m pretty drunk right now and these girls are not doing it for me at all, I mean come on it’s Fort Worth, that’s pretty much Dallas

I know that MWC Weekend is a terrible name for a post, but I’ll have to think of something better later.  Frankly I’m not even sure how much longer we will be doing this as soon as Utah moves to the PAC-12 next season we will probably focus on that.  But for now get ready for a rant and this is not going to be the usual mid major rant either, because I don’t think that’s what the problem is.

In the AP pole this week as many of you may know Utah lost a place and dropped form 10 to 11, they stayed at 10 in the other two poles, so it’s mostly just the idiot AP writers.  But still, this is ridiculous, and I don’t think it’s just because they are a MWC team.  I know that’s what everyone on ESPN says, they give them some bullshit lip service along with TCU and Boise and then dismiss them anyway.  It’s always the same, they shouldn’t be punished but they should be passed up.

I’m sorry is not playing grounds for moving up 3 spots but crushing a Big 12 team by 40 points gets you knocked down a notch.  I guess that’s not nearly as impressive as beating a third rate Big 10 team by 3 scores which gets you the number 1 spot.  And here is where I think it’s not just because Utah is in the MWC, because it’s so obvious that Oregon should be #1 and not Ohio St., oh I’m sorry The Ohio State.

Everyone knows that Utah is going to the PAC-12 next year, but look how current PAC-10 schools get treated.  For one thing they play a much better schedule, the PAC-10 is probably the best conference 1-10 in the country this year.  Way better than the Big 10.  and even probably better than the vaunted SEC.  So Ohio St. beats Illinois and gets to be #1 and LSU, who should have lost 3 games beats a middle of the road Florida team and goes ahead of Utah?  It’s the entire west coast, Oregon is getting screwed just as much as Utah.  If you’re not USC, no one cares about the PAC-10, it’s just lip service that they are even a BCS conference.

I’m not even sure how to define the bias in voting, it’s not really an east coast bias, because the Big East and ACC are crap and while they always start high up in the polls even that fiction cannot be maintained for an entire season.  It’s the Big 10 that is grossly over rated, the Big 12 has its upper teams that are probably deserving and pull up the lower schools and of course the SEC always gets the benefit of the doubt, but I think they’ve earned that over the past 30 years.

I wish I could come in here with a solution, but there isn’t one.  Schools are rated on their history, plain and simple.  College football is conservative in the truest sense of the word and I don’t know if the young Turks will ever break through, if new money will ever be old money.  A playoff would improve things, but as long as there are polls nothing will fix it, there will always be teams getting over and under rated and that’s probably why I like the NFL.

Weekend Round Up

Baseball playoffs are now in full swing, the Yankees and Phillies swept their series this weekend giving them some time off to fix their rotations, although one needs much more fixing than the other.  Tampa has come back against Texas and has tied it up and the Giants still lead 2-1 over the Braves.

I’ll briefly touch college football because I’m going into it much more later, but here are some scores to mention:

Ohio St. 38 - Indiana 10

TCU 45 – Wyoming 0

South Carolina 35 – Alabama 21

Oregon St. 29 – Arizona 27

Utah 68 – Iowa St. 27

Hockey is back, which I know no one but me cares about, but suck it I’m in charge around here.  The best part is, there have been super star fights with Kovalchuck, Green, Datsyuk, Perry, Malkin and Nash already being in fights this season.

And finally Team Red Bull crushed at the Japanese GP with a Webber, Vettel 1-2 finish and a third place by Alonso to give Red Bull a 45 point lead over McLaren and a 92 point lead over Ferrari in the Manufacture’s Championship.  And helped Webber extend his lead over Alonso to 14 points in the Driver’s Standings.

Weekend Roundup

Just cause Burton Cummings rounded up many a weekend I’m sure

So here we are with the weekend roundup coming to you on Wednesday afternoon because my weekends don’t end until Wednesday!  Or because I had tons of work to do on Monday and Tuesday and numerous apology letters to send out, cause that’s how I roll bitches.

The U (Utah not stupid Miami) Crushed another crappy MW team this weekend with out even needing their starting QB, I think it was 412-3 but you might want to check that score.

In other Mountain West news, BYU spent another Saturday getting crushed by a mediocre Florida State team much as they did last year, I think BYU is heading to a 5 loss season, so good for them, it’s not like they needed a great record this year because they are going independent or anything.

In the NFL my Steelers, whom my friends all said on the podcast would be 1-3 at the end of the first 4 weeks used their awesome D to beat the Titans in a strange 11-19 final score game and cause 7 turn overs and the annual Vince Young benching.  Anyone know where that Heisman is?

In other Heisman not winners news Reggie Bush broke his leg in a narrow win over San Fran, 22-25.  A game where I thought Alex Smith finally looked pretty good and if San Fran hadn’t dropped 20 balls in the red zone, should have won by 2 touchdowns.

In the Oreo Dunk Off Final, older brother P. Manning put little Elisha in his place crushing the Giants 38-14, making my declaration after the first week that even though the Giants won they still suck look much better.

And finally the winner of the Crap Bowl, Oakland beats St. Louis 16-14, just in case some one cared.

Independence and Economics at BYU

Don’t ever Search for cougar and money on Google                           

I think that at this point the discussion of BYU leaving the MWC is nothing but a matter of economics spurned on by their closest rival Utah bolting to the PAC-10.  It has been reported that the PAC-10 will be paying Utah around $15 million a year after they become full members of the conference.  BYU received $1.3 million per year from their current deal with MWC conference due to their incredibly lucrative tv deal on The Mountain.

If any of you have not seen The Mountain it is about one step above public access and probably not any better than BYU’s own station BYU TV, which is integral to this project even being possible for the Cougars.  I don’t think without the fact that not only does BYU run it’s own station, but also has a fully equipped HD broadcast studio on campus that this would be even possible.

To me the process would work much like the Big 10 or Big 12 network deals.  BYU gets cable companies to carry their station, which can be broadcast in HD to as many areas that have a high number of Mormon or if they exist non-Mormon Cougar fans.  This would carry the bulk of their sports programming and bring in ad revenue along with whatever they could get the cable companies to pay them, probably 10 cents per subscriber at the top end, if anything.  This would of course force BYU TV to change their listing with the FCC from a religious non revenue earning station to a commercial station.

The second move would be to work their own deal with ESPN and other national carriers on showing specific match ups in Football and Basketball and receiving revenue from that.  With the on site capabilities it may prove more likely that national stations would want to broadcast from BYU, saving the cost of brining their own equipment and uplink systems.

There is little doubt that BYU could not get over $2 million in contracts through these methods.  The real problem then is does this allow the football program to grow?  Can they get the matchups they need to be ranked high enough to have a chance at a BCS or even national championship?  Since it’s obvious that they won’t get special considerations like Notre Dame.  Also, is there a way for them to squeeze the MWC for a bigger cut of the revenue form other sports and just leave in football, or make independent TV deals, throw their weight around like Texas, since they are the big player in the MWC now.

I love nothing more than conferences being shaken up and the BCS being affected, I am hoping things get worse before they get better in college football.

Fiesta Bowl

This will be an unusually short post, but my initial perception of the Fiesta Bowl is that Boise and TCU have by far the ugliest uniforms in college football.  They are a stunning combination of looking extremely dated in a that modern way that Nike has mastered over the last couple of years.

Specifically TCU has attempted to create a modeled, almost metallic texture to their helmets and pants that already is starting to look like that metallic finish that home stereos were given in the late 70s.  While the Broncos uniforms have the same aesthetic as the t-shirts on Jersey Shore, timelessly dated in every way.
While I was writing this the Broncos got a pick 6, so if you had any questions about what kind of sports blog this is, it's the kind that drinks Scotch and misses big plays while complaining about uniforms and making references to Jersey Shore and thinking the Culture Club reference in that Fed Ex commercial was strangely perfect.
Maybe Uj and Ron will be more to your liking.