Everyone knows that little kids are dumb. They will pull a pot of boiling water down on themselves, or put small objects in their mouths, or grab sharp objects by the wrong end. Parents in the animal kingdom may have to expend all of their energy protecting their young from outside predators, but human parents know that most of the time, the biggest danger to a child is himself. Protecting a baby from himself is a tiring job for sure, but if the baby survives to adulthood with minimal injuries, it can be quite rewarding.
This week, the Cougars have a task similar to that of a parent. If the Utes have their way this week, they will win the game against BYU, end the season undefeated, and go to a BCS game. Whether they win their bowl game is beyond my concern, because BYU has to make sure that all of this doesn’t happen. For Utah’s own sake. Yes, if they win, the Utes will get their moment in the spotlight, but like a baby, they are not looking at the big picture, the long term repercussions of what we do in the present.
The Mountain West is a strong conference this year. Only the SEC and the Big 12 have more ranked teams than the MWC. The Big 10 and the Pac 10 have three ranked teams along with the MWC and their average rankings is telling. The Big 10’s average ranking is 11, the MWC’s is 13 and the Pac 10’s is 17. It’s also worth noting that the Pac 10’s highest ranked team, USC, may not even win the conference because they lost to Oregon State, ranked 21, a team which Utah beat. The two other BCS conferences, the Big East and the ACC, are hardly even worth mentioning with these other conferences. They have two ranked teams each and all of them are ranked lower than the lowest ranked team in the MWC, TCU at 18.
Now, let’s assume that TCU wins this coming week against Air Force, so they stay where they are. Let’s also assume that Oregon State wins out and gets the Pac 10’s automatic BCS bid. And let’s assume that BYU beats Utah this Saturday -- again, for Utah’s own good. This would throw the proverbial wrench into the BCS workings and fan the BCS hatred flames, which can only be a good thing for the MWC. In this hypothetical near-future scenario, Boise State will be ranked higher than any MWC team, since they are undefeated, and most likely will remain so. However, a glance at the WAC standings shows that every other team in the conference has more than one conference loss. Sure the Broncos went undefeated, but who did they play? Their non-conference opponents aren’t any more impressive: a winless Idaho State team (and that’s winless in the division formally known as I-AA), a 5-5 Bowling Green team (from the MAC), and Oregon, who is currently third in a Pac 10 that was totally dominated by the MWC this year and is behind Oregon State, which, again, lost to Utah.
Now, in the automatic BCS bid picture we have the more than deserving teams from the SEC and the Big 12, and the Big 10 champion. Those are fine. But then we have whatever the Big East and the ACC have to offer, which cannot be ranked higher than the three ranked MWC teams, and Oregon State, which Utah beat already. At least one at-large bid would have to go to the Big 12 and the SEC, and USC is ranked high enough to get one as well, which means that only one non-BCS conference team will go BCS bowling. Since the BCS rewards unbeatens, this would probably be Boise State, which is where the uproar comes in.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to the college football this year has noticed the MWC. From the week it dominated the PAC 10, to its vicious fight for the conference championship, the MWC has proved that it can hold its own as a conference against many of the BCS conferences (SEC and Big 12 excluded since they are in a different stratosphere this year). And since the MWC is so competitive, and has proven itself in out-of-conference play, it would be a shame to punish it by not letting a one loss co-champion into the BCS. If the MWC doesn’t get a team in the BCS when teams from weak conferences like the Big East, ACC, and the WAC do, it would expose even more the shortcomings of the BCS system.
The current BCS system pits two factors against each other, competition and being unbeaten, and offers no way to reconcile them. If a team can come unbeaten out of a weak conference and get rewarded over a better team with one loss from a better conference, the system gives no motivation for non-BCS conferences to schedule anyone worth playing. The easiest, and most obvious, way to reconcile this would be with a playoff. The BCS could use rankings and the conference champions to fill a playoff, and the team that gets through without losing is the unanimous champion. That is the college football utopian dream I comfort myself with when a BCS nightmare jars me awake in the middle of the night. However, I understand that it is just a dream -- at least right now.
The least that could happen in the event of a BYU victory on Saturday will be talk about restructuring the BCS. It could get the ball rolling on improving the BCS conference criteria, which could very well result in the MWC getting one of those automatic bids. This could take the pressure off all the teams in the conference because they would know that in order to get to one of those cherished BCS bowls, all they would need to do is win the conference. They wouldn’t have to compete with the rest of the nation, playing against teams that will never step on the same field as them, and they could focus more easily on the game in front of them. BYU fans saw how keeping an eye on the rest of the nation can kill a team when the Cougars lost to TCU 32-7 in a game that Bronco Mendenhall calls an “ambush.” A team should only be asked to compete with the team that takes the field against them, but the current BCS system demands that every team compete with every other team in the nation every week.
If Utah wins, though, all of these arguments against the BCS will be moot. Utah will be undefeated, ranked high, and the champions of their conference. They will go to a BCS bowl and the BCS proponents will point to them and cry, “See, the system works. The best non-BCS team got in. Stop complaining.” And all the rest of us will be left to grumble that that darn BCS just got lucky this year, but they’ll see next year, they will (add some fist shaking in there for good effect, too).
So, the Cougars have a tall order. They have to stop those Utes before they go and do something foolish, like win on Saturday and reinforce the status quo. Then, next season all of the MWC teams will find themselves in the same situation, on the outside looking in to BCS candy store, hoping that the owner will feel pity on them and throw them a gumball that they can fight over.
As parents know, protecting someone from himself takes all the attention, all the energy, that they have. The Cougars are going to have to give that kind of effort at Rice Eccles Stadium. And no matter what the situation is in the game, the Cougars have to keep pushing, keep driving, keep reaching for that victory, because we have to win. To protect the Utes from themselves.
Keywords: BCS, Boise State, BYU, playoff, Utah
