Gone Bowling

Although by 8:30 tonight, this argument will be inconsequential I'm still going to make it. And I know I'm showing my colors and immodestly showing my bias by campaigning for VT in the national championship but my ultimate goal is here is to ever so slightly offset the equally immodest bias of the national sports covering media outlets. Outlets like ESPN and CBS that constantly push, for reasons unknown to myself, for one team or another despite the facts or reality.

Last night, Sportscenter and College Gameday Final profiled all the teams with a shot to squeak into the national championship, most likely to play the Ohio State Buckeyes. Of course, the Buckeyes are one of the teams ESPN is constantly pushing on us, singing their praises every chance they get, year in and year out. However, I do believe Ohio State is deserving of the spot, being the third ranked team, so I'm not going to include them in this argument. Each respective show had mentioned VT in passing when listing the potential candidates for the national championship and had subsequently profiled the teams, even going so far as the televise telephone conversations with some of the coaches. I was waiting and waiting for them to profile VT just like they had each of the other teams. Finally, the clock struck 2am and still nothing. They barely mentioned Kansas either, and no disrespect here, but Kansas played no one all season. They should have been treated like a good mid-major by the pollsters and placed somewhere in the middle of the top twenty-five to languish. I'm sure an Kansas wouldn't agree with me, but we all have our opinions right?

Needless to say, the big two ESPN pushed were LSU and USC. LSU I can understand. They won their conference championship, they've played one of, if not thee, hardest schedule in all of college football and their two loses came in triple overtime to ranked teams. There resume is pretty damn strong and honestly, I think they're the ones who'll win the spot.

USC on the other hand deserves no consideration for one reason and one reason only. The lost to Stanford. You cannot go to national championship game if you've lost to Stanford. I'm sure it's in the rule book somewhere. If you need more convincing, look at their schedule. They only played four ranked teams all year and got beat by one (Oregon). One of those ranked teams was Cal (ranked #24 at the time) who, in a purely USC moment, also lost to Stanford this week. And if you need yet another reason, they didn't exactly blowout UCLA last night. And yet there I was, sitting on the couch last night, listening as Pete Carroll calls in to Sportscenter and politics his team for the national championship. If I was answering the phones at the ESPN studios, I would have hung up on him because there's no way it wasn't a prank call. If ESPN wasn't so up Pete Carroll's rose-scented ass, he would have never gotten on TV and USC would have never been mentioned as a legitimate contender for the national championship because they're not.

Which reminds me of the other "it" word being thrown around by the ESPN "analysts" to describe teams: hot. USC was mentioned multiple times as one of these supposed "hot" teams. So what's the definition of "hot" you might ask? Good question. Does winning four games in row, only scoring more than 24 in one of those games, make a team "hot"? Does it matter that two of the four were unranked and one of the ranked teams was the aforementioned Cal to whom they almost lost (24-17 final)? So unconvincingly winning games over lesser opponents is what makes you "hot", even the hottest team in the nation? I would have never guessed.

The other school described as "hot" was Georgia and with good reason. Comparing USC and UGA, should give us a better understanding of the ridiculousness of this whole thing, don't you think? UGA won its last 6 games in a row, three of those opponents were ranked. Remember that's only one less than USC played all year and as many as they beat. They were all conference games, something even more impressive considering they play in the SEC, arguably the best conference in all of college football. They beat Florida, the reigning champs, Auburn, a rival, and Kentucky. Over that stretch they averaged over 30 points a game and against Florida and Auburn they broke the 40 barrier. That sounds a little more like "hot" to me. Unfortunately, especially for UGA fans, I think Georgia is going to get screwed the most by the BCS. They might be one of the best teams in the country right now and I think they are, but I doubt the voters will reward them with a well deserved shot at the national championship. If everyone thinks you should have to win your conference championship to play for the national title, why didn't they just make it a rule?

So we've covered LSU, USC, Kansas and UGA. Who else is getting the championship spotlight that my not deserve it. I guess that just leave Oklahoma. The team that Mark May, ESPN college football analyst token black guy, said should be in the national championship. A team ranked 9th in the BCS standings. They'd have to move up 7 spots, jumping all the teams I've already mentioned. Sure, the win last night was impressive but it makes me wonder what the hell happened against the powerhouse that is Texas Tech? Or what about the stunning meltdown in Boulder? Texas Tech was only three weeks ago. Are we going to put a team in the national championship that's as inconsistent as these guys are? Hell, they only played two ranked teams all year, Texas and Missouri twice. You can't lose to unranked teams twice in one year and expect to have a shot at a national title. And yet here's Mark, a supposed expert, bandstanding them on national television. In what was previously thought an impossible mission, he actually made Lou Holtz look smart. Inconceivable.

How does VT match up against these "contenders"? Glad you asked. Tech played five ranked teams, beating three and both losses came to the number two teams in the country. A shellacking at the hands of LSU early in the season when Tech was playing with a offense line riddled with inexperience and decimated by injury and a near miss to Boston College that, if yesterday's ACC championship win proved anything, we should have won. The only team that could possibly claim to have "better" loses would be LSU's two triple overtime thrillers. VT ended the regular season with five straight wins, two over ranked opponents, and averaged almost 35 points per game to compliment their top rated defense. That's one less win than Georgia and one more than USC over the same stretch, the hottest teams in the nation. Tech won its conference championship, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Should VT be in the national championship? I don't know. But what really irks me, and the real point of this entire diatribe, is the injustice VT suffers at the hands of the press in terms of coverage. They give air time to wholly unworthy programs with a big name and constantly ignore the school nestled in the hill of Southwest Virginia. I'm not looking for favoritism here, just equal time. Just give VT a profile, a mention, a little time as many of the voters will be influenced by the news reports they watch the press deliver. A perfect example of the problem is Notre Dame. The get national coverage through NBC which televises their pathetic games, all because at some time before I was born Notre Dame was actually good and wasn't simply getting handed BCS bowl bids for nothing more than name recognition. Not to mention that Lou Holtz somehow not so surreptitiously slips in Notre Dame reference in every show, something he should have been fired for, among a multitude of other things, long ago.

How about, instead of pushing personal agendas and party lines, the sports media actually try basing their expert opinions on fact and give every team, big or small, the proper coverage they deserve? Oh, what a wonder world it would be.