Yes, We Can

After the awesome, kind of cool, terribly boring addition of the (mighty!) UCONN Huskies to the 2010 Michigan Football schedule I decided to delve into the OOC schedules of recent years to find any trends. The schedules are often times made years in advance, as seen with our home and home scheduled as far out as 2013 with UCONN. Follow me into the shit after the jump. Continue Reading “Michigan Scheduling Getting Weak?” »

South Florida is currently second in the BCS Rankings. Their resume is the best of any undefeated school and at the end of the season would be second only to LSU (if they win out). They boast two quality wins: @Auburn and West Virginia. They put up 64 points on UCF, a team Texas struggled to beat and handled the rest of their business. The next half of the schedule looks like this: @Rutgers, @Uconn, Cincy, @Syracuse, Louisville and @Pitt. All the remaining games are in conference and each team will be up for a chance to knock off one of the nation’s best teams. Simply put if they go 12-0 they deserve a chance to play for the National Championship.

The only thing that can tame the Bulls is the name on the front of their jerseys. If it was Michigan, USC or Alabama the story would end here with, win out and you’ll be playing in New Orleans. However, many analysts and writers (not the more liberal bloggers) think USF should be penalized because they have been playing football for just 10 years. An example scenario being argued is an undefeated Ohio State being bumped ahead an undefeated USF and behind a one loss LSU. At the heart of the argument is the question should the prestige and tradition of a program influence voters?

Obviously I am going to argue no. Tradition or prestige does not positively or negatively correlate to how talented and good a team is this year. Wins in an era without the BCS, spread option, equal scholarships and at present geriatric players shouldn’t count towards a team now in 2007. I think everyone including analysts and writers will concede this argument. However, the bias will still be there because writers need Texas versus USC to write about and networks need Florida St versus Oklahoma for people to watch.

Outside of Tampa residents, USF alumni and Jenn Sterger not many people care about USF. The relatively small USF fan base leads to the bigger problem: money and the bottom line. Traditional powers bring in more money, yield higher television ratings, create more buzz and sell more newspapers. Each part of the BCS, except the non-biased computers, all have something to gain from USF not making the BCS Championship Game. Too bad the computers are only 1/3 of the current BCS formula.

Again, if South Florida goes undefeated they deserve to play for the National Championship. They will have the quality convincing wins deserving of every pollster’s vote. In a team sport characterized by athletes playing for the love of the game let’s not deny a hard working program a chance to build their own tradition because of money.

Nothing funny about this post. Just some good news for Genarlow Wilson.

Incredibly, it looks like the state will keep him in jail at least another 3 weeks while they appeal the judge’s ruling. Crazy. Let’s just hope the judge upholds his ruling and throws out the appeal.

For those of you who do not know Wilson’s story, he was college football recruit and honor roll student tried and convicted of aggravated child molestation after receiving consensual oral sex from a 15 year old when he was 17. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was pinned with the label of child molester. He has been in prison since February 25, 2005.

To read more about the story check out these links:

• Outrageous Injustice – Great Piece by the WWL
• Why is Genarlow Wilson In Prison?
• Girl’s Mother Defends Wilson