The National Championship

First things first - "Mr. Bradford, this is the Downtown Athletic Club.  We hoped you enjoyed a couple of weeks with our trophy. now please deliver it the rightful owner, in Gainesville, FL."

If the BCS game didn't resolve the question of a national champion to everyone's satisfaction, it certainly should have clarified that the voters who left Tebow off their Heisman ballots should all have their voting privileges revoked.  Sam Bradford is a splendid passer at the helm of a wildly prolific offense.  But the Heisman is supposed to go to the best college football player in America, and no one can seriously debate that Tebow is the best college football player.  As a passer he is adequate enough, as a running back he is perhaps the best fullback in the SEC, but more than all of that he is without a doubt the most competitive SOB since Michael Jordan.  And his ability to impose his will on the game was the difference in the game and the difference in who should have won the Heisman.  Bradford was only as good as he could be passing against the Gators defense; when passing wasn't working, Tebow simply overpowered the Sooners.

When Texas won its championship a few years back, it was so clearly because Vince Young absolutely refused to lose that game.  Tebow's performance this week may have been more dominant than that.  (And now there's word that Tebow plans to stay at Florida for his senior year.  What could be better than a college player staying in college, even when he has absolutely nothing left to prove?  

Now to the debate.  Texas took a little of the steam out of this one by almost tripping against an Ohio State team that no one would mistake for a title contender.   Yeah, sure, you have only one loss, Horns, but with a couple of dominant programs up for the title, squeeking by everyone's favorite January punching-bag doesn't cut it.

Next off the list is USC.  Two words.  Oregon State.  Why is this decisive?  You're 12-1.  Utah is 13-0, but USC played a major college schedule.  Wrong.  So did Utah.  USC played seven games against teams that played a bowl game; Utah played six.  The difference is Oregon State.  Utah won; USC lost.  Good season, boys.  See you in September.

So it's down to Utah and Florida.  Who's the champion?  The "and 1" game would decide it.  Texas and USC can complain that they should have been in a four-team playoff, but that isn't coming any time soon.  The "and 1" could happen next year if they wanted.  

Florida beat Alabama.  Utah beat Alabama.  Line 'em up and then we'd know.  Next Saturday, with the NFL championships on Sunday.  Must see TV.

But that's only what should happen.  It isn't what did happen.  So who's the champ?  My southern bias points me to Florida.  My admiration for Tebow points me to Florida.  Watching the Gator defense shut down the unstoppable Oklahoma offense like a high schooler getting stuffed in his locket points me to Florida.  But there is that loss, at home, to Mississippi.  Didn't happen to Utah, not once.  The earned it, on the field, with perfection.

Florida gets the crystal football.  They earned it.  But so did Utah.  I'd give it to them.

Rev Up The Argument

We are halfway to having the very best argument ever in college football.  I just hope we get all the way there.  Four teams should get a piece of the crystal football.

USC pasted Penn State.  Penn State was clearly a quality team, deservedly the Big 10 representative in the Rose Bowl.  But USC was also clearly on another level.  USC lost a close game on the road.  They have as much claim to a title as any one-loss team.

Utah waxed a decidely unimpressive Alabama, in another game that wasn't as close as the score.  Unlike the Georgia Bulldogs last year, who took their BCS slight as motivation to destroy a Hawaii team that came in thinking it would prove it belonged in the National Championship, Alabama looked uninspired for most of the game.  But Utah helped that impression, as the Utes were clearly better on both sides of the ball.  The Utes are undefeated and have proven that it was no fluke.

Two teams have staked their claim to the mythical National Championship.  Two more to go.  If Texas treats Ohio State the way the last couple of BCS games have treated Ohio State, they will be hard to ignore.  Like USC they lost a close game on the road; they will have both knocked off Ohio State.  But Texas also beat Oklahoma

And then the winner of the BCS game will have only one loss and another very impressive win to show for it.  An Oklahoma victory only enhances Texas' claim - because that tie-breaker was decided head to head.  Florida can claim to have come through the hardest road - and Mississippi's beatdown of Texas Tech shows that Florida's one point loss was not so inconceivable.

It's gonna be fun.  We're gonna have at least three teams still worth voting for, and maybe four.  It's a teachable moment, when the subject is how not to decide a championship.  Stay tuned. 

Another New York Story

There are four compelling games in this weekend's Wild Card round.  The bowl season is winding down to the games of interest for the annual debate about whether the BCS has identified a real National Champion (not a chance this year).  And yet a full news cycle was dominated by the story of Thomas Jones bleating in public that Brett Favre ultimately hurt the Jets by being exactly what the Jets hired him to be - a gunslinger who refuses to accept the idea that his body won't respond to his every command.

This is a classic New York story.  Meaning the rest of us just don't give a rat's ass, but we'll hear about it days because the media is obsessed with all things New York.  And it isn't even a good New York story at that - at least Plaxico Burress had head-scratching stupidity going for him.

If the Jets had made the playoffs, we might care what one of the players said about another.  Might.

If Brett Favre had won the MVP, we might care that one of his teammates called him out.  Might.

But because the Jets fell like a stone in the last month while Brett Favre proved that an old quarterback's performance will always suffer in cold weather, this isn't a story at all.

Let's talk about the real stories after Week 17 - like an 11-5 Patriots team is sitting at home while an 8-8 Chargers team hosts a playoff game, and how Herm Edwards still has job.