BrokenCowboy: Sports Views with a West Coast Bias

Mighty Mighty

The magnitude of the victory cannot be overstated. When the Stanford Cardinal stunned the best team in the history of college football (also known as USC) with a 24-23 victory on Saturday night, the national story obviously focused on the Trojans.

In case you hadn't noticed, Pete Carroll's squad has been pretty good lately. The Trojans had gone 63-6 since 2002; their 35-game home winning streak was the nation's longest; odds makers had favored them by an absurd 41 points. Added to all this was the fact that Stanford starting quarterback T.C. Ostrander was out for the game, replaced by a back-up who had one career pass completion. Even the most optimistic Cardinal fan would've felt nauseous thinking about all this around lunchtime on Saturday. By dinner time, though, even the most optimistic Trojan fan would have trouble finding the silver lining in this season-shattering loss.

Sure, Stanford had the inexperienced quarterback, but it was USC's Heisman candidate, John David Booty, who threw four intereceptions. Stanford's Tavita Pritchard, meanwhile, made the plays when he had to, converting a fourth and twenty to keep the game-winning drive alive only moments before lofting a touchdown pass on fourth and goal to break 90,000 hearts.

Yes, the Trojan offense dominated the game, outgaining the Card 459-235, but 110 of those yards came on two long USC touchdowns, and another fifty-six came on another pass play. You can't eliminate those yards, but if you could, the yardage differential would be much less significant.

USC's story may have ended, but the Cardinal's has only just begun. Some experts have called this the greatest upset in the history of Pac-10 football, and others have compared it to Appalachia State's win over Michigan last month, and at first glance that seems about right. Stanford, after all, entered the game at 1-3. Their only win had come against San Jose State, and they had been outscored 141-51. Somehow, though, those numbers don't tell the entire story.

If it's possible to play well while getting waxed, the Cardinal did exactly that in their losses to UCLA and Oregon. Against the Bruins, they actually stayed in the game into the fourth quarter. The 45-17 margin was inflated by one UCLA touchdown on a short field after a failed on-side kick and another tack-on score with 20 seconds left. Three weeks later Stanford looked on the verge of a shocking upset over the highly-ranked Oregon Ducks when they scored 28 points in the second quarter and took a 31-24 lead into halftime.

It almost didn't matter that Stanford wasn't winning these games. The attitude of the program under new head coach Jim Harbaugh had taken a 180° turn from the previous regime, a change which had begun with Harbaugh's first day on the job. He took the helm with confidence, announcing to the world that he would "attack the job with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind." He gave great interviews, calling out the University of Michigan and USC coach Pete Carroll, and somehow convinced ESPN to bring their cameras to Stanford's spring practice field.

Through the first four games of the season, I loved what I was seeing from this Stanford team. They were running the ball almost twice as effectively as last year, and the defense actually made plays. Every aspect of the team was better than the squads former coach Walt Harris had fielded, and I had no doubt that Harbaugh was the reason. My fear, though, was that moral victories would get old. I wondered how long Harbaugh would be able to keep his players focused on the effort rather than the scoreboard; I even wondered how long Harbaugh would be able to keep that focus.

I wonder no longer. This single victory (and it won't be the last of 2007) has given the program credibility. It gives the players a reason to work harder in practice each week, and it gives Harbaugh and his staff a story that will surely play well in living rooms on the recruiting trail. Perhaps the best story in the history of college football.

Playoffs? We're talking about playoffs?

If there's one thing we learned yesterday in Ann Arbor -- aside from all that stuff about counting chickens before they're hatched -- it's this: college football does not need a playoff system. Playoff proponents mindlessly repeat the same mantra: championships should be decided on the field. What they ignore, however, is that in Divison I-A college football, unlike almost every other team sport in the world, what happens on the field is important every week, not just in the waning days of the season.

Like most Michigan fans, I knew the Wolverines were playing on Saturday, but I couldn't have told you which lamb had been chosen for the slaughter in the Big House. It hardly mattered; the truly important games wouldn't start for at least a month. But under the current BCS system, every game is important.

And so when the Stanford/UCLA game was interrupted with the news of Appalachian State's 34-32 defeat of Michigan, I was absolutely stunned. I don't think I thought about the magnitude of the upset at first (the general consensus seems to be that if this isn't the biggest upset in the history of college football, it's pretty close), but I was immediately aware of one thing. Over the course of four hours on the first Saturday of September, an entire season had disintegrated.

Michigan had entered the game with a lofty ranking in the polls and a soft schedule which didn't seem to offer any challenges until the late November matchup with Ohio State. Their goal was no less than a trip to New Orleans for the BCS Championship game, but now all that has changed.

Instead of trying to keep his team from looking ahead as they roll from one victory to the next, coach Lloyd Carr will spend the next week trying to molify alumni who are already angry about recent failures against Ohio State, dodging pointed questions from media who smell blood in the water, and hoping to refocus a team led by a core of seniors who came back to Michigan to win a national championship which is now an impossible dream.

So the Appalachian State victory would be a huge story even if viewed on its own. But if there were a playoff system, the Wolverines coud rest easy, knowing that they could still win their way into the bracket and compete for their championship. The loss would be embarrassing, but it could arguably have no effect on their season. (In fact, a loss like that coud even give a team the motivation necessary to plow through the rest of its schedule.) But the BCS system gives the game added significance and vaults its importance into the stratosphere.

So the next time someone tells you that college football needs a playoff system, just tell him that there already is one. Round one was yesterday, and the Wolverines have been eliminated.

It Ain't Broke

Now that the Ohio State Buckeyes have found their way back from the woodshed and the college football season has been put to bed, maybe it's time to take a look at the game and what needs to be fixed. In short, nothing.

Sure, everyone who's anyone -- even the national champions' head coach Urban Meyer -- is shouting for a playoff system, but I don't buy it. The arguments are numerous, and unless your glasses are thicker than Joe Paterno's, you've read them all enough times to recite them by memory. Here they are in a nutshell:

1. Settle it on the field!
Wait a minute, isn't it already settled on the field? What exactly did I watch the other night?

2. If it's good enough for Division II, Division III...
Do you wanna guess how many Division II football playoff games I've watched? Well, I've watched about a million bowl games.

3. But the NCAA basketball tournament is the best two weeks in sports
Well, an NCAA football tournament -- with, say, four rounds and ten teams -- would be like the Bataan Death March. The last team standing might literally be the last team standing.

4. A playoff system is the only fair way
Really? Tell that to the eleventh ranked team. There will always be someone to complain.

5. Computers can't identify the best team
Heading into the BCS Championship game, the computers, the coaches, the writers, and the Daughters of the American Revolution all agreed that Ohio State was the best team in the land. Turns out none of them could identify the best team.

The bottom line is this -- the BCS system is fine. Loyal readers might remember that I've blasted the BCS in the past, but now I see it as the perfect compromise between the unbending bowl system and the fool's gold of a playoff system. Last year's game of the century between Texas and USC, for instance, would've been impossible without it.

This year's game of the century, a Fiesta Bowl that reminded everyone of games played beneath streetlights with each participant dreading his mother's inevitable call for dinner. When Boise State unleashed their perfect storm of trick plays, they did so knowing that even if they won, there would be no tomorrow. The finality of the Fiesta Bowl gave the Boise coaches the freedom to pull everything out of the hat. More importantly, imagine if that game had only been a national semi-final. Do you really think Ian Johnson would've asked his girl to marry him if he had to get ready to play USC the next week?

Speaking of the Trojans, USC is the perfect advertisement for the college game. As the NFL continues to eat its head coaches with Kobayashi-like efficiency, the sport's most eligible coach doesn't seem interested. Pete Carroll, the mastermind behind this current Trojan Dynasty, has seen his name bounced around from Arizona to Miami in connection with numerous NFL job openings and enormous piles of money.

But Carroll isn't going anywhere. Whether he's bringing Will Ferrell in to liven up a summer film session or concocting a Halloween prank in which his star running back appears to be thrown from a building, Carroll surely knows that the fun would end if he were to make the jump to the NFL. (He's been there before, afterall.) And when his Trojans were celebrating their decisive win over Michigan in last week's Rose Bowl, there was Coach Carroll, running around the field like a 20-year-old, jumping on his players, imploring them to enjoy every minute -- whether they were national champions or not. (By the way, you can write this down right now: the Trojans will be national champions next year.)

The college game is fine without a playoff system, trust me. There will always be a Leprechaun dancing in South Bend, a bulldog named Uga growling on the Georgia sidelines, and an embarrassing group of drunks masquerading as a marching band in Palo Alto. Business as usual.

¡Fiesta!

If you're like me, you had absolutely no intention of watching the Fiesta Bowl on Monday night. You had already spent enough time watching football over the past few days and you were tired from a crazy New Year's Eve party that saw you passed out on the couch at your in-laws at 11:30 (not because of alcohol, but just because you were flat-out tired). And since the kids had just been put to bed and you were itching to dive into Season 2 of The Office on DVD, you figured you could skip this bowl game. The Fiesta Bowl would just have to go on without you.

But if you're really like me -- and this would be spooky -- your wife got hung up scouring eBay for paper tags and shiny metal boxes (for lemmings, perhaps?), so you had some time to kill. Thankfully, there was Boise State, Oklahoma, the two coolest plays in any football playbook, and the best college football game ever played. Well, at least since last year's Rose Bowl.

If you watched the first half, you probably weren't too impressed. And if you were watching on the east coast, you certainly turned it off in favor of a reasonable amount of sleep. Boise State led 21-10, and although that would make for an interesting Cinderella lead in Tuesday's papers, it probably didn't hold too many viewers. Midway through the third quarter the Broncos had pushed their lead to 28-10 after Marty Tadman returned an interception for a touchdown, breaking Sooner hearts and sending Boise into a tizzy. Somewhere in the bowels of the Idaho Statesman reporters were arguing over potential headlines: early exit polls showed "Atta Boise!" with a slim lead over "BCS: Broncos Crush Sooners!"

But as the gushing announcers kept reminding us, Sooners don't give up. They scored twice, a touchdown to get within shouting distance and a field goal to pull within eight, and things were interesting again.

Suddenly pushed, the Broncos became conservative in the closing minutes and left Oklahoma enough time to mount a game-tying drive. After Quentin Chaney managed to catch a deflected pass from Paul Thompson and the Sooners converted their third shot at the two-point conversion, the game was tied and overtime seemed a certainty.

Here's where a great game became unforgettable.

Boise State's first play following the Oklahoma touchdown produced another Sooner score. Bronco quarterback Jared Zabransky looked to his left and threw a pass that hung in the air long enough for Oklahoma's Marcus Walker to pull out his T-Mobile cell phone and ring all five of his Faves before snatching the ball out of the air and waltzing into the endzone. The Sooners were up 35-28, there was just over a minute to go, and the game was essentially over.

Except it wasn't.

Like every plucky little underdog should, the plucky little Broncos battled on, reaching midfield with eighteen seconds to play. The official scoring of the play that followed reads like this: JERARD RABB 35 YD PASS FROM JARED ZABRANSKY -- but that's not really what happened. On fourth and 18 Zabransky threw a strike to Drisan James at the thirty-five. James then calmly turned and flipped the ball to a streaking Rabb who scampered untouched into the end zone. The hook and fucking ladder. In a bit of foreshadowing, the cameras caught Boise coach Chris Peterson talking into his headset: "I think we'll just go for one." And now we really were going to overtime.

Oklahoma's offense took the field first in OT and scored in one play, almost as if they knew they were playing but a bit part in this drama. Adrian Peterson scored, then cleared the stage for the Broncos.

With the playbook already open to the last page, coach Peterson got even funkier when it mattered most. With his team on the five-yard line, he sent his quarterback in motion to the left so that running back Vinny Perretta could take the direct snap and loft a touchdown pass to Derek Schouman in the right-hand corner of the end zone. Sure, that was nice, but nothing like what was coming.

Eschewing the tie, Peterson decided to go for two. The Broncos lined up with three receivers out to the right. As Zabransky snapped the ball he turned deliberately in their direction and quickly brought his right arm up and appeared to fire a pass to the right -- while slipping the ball into his left hand and handing it to Ian Johnson who sprinted to the left and scored easily. The Statue of fucking Liberty, maybe the only play that could top the hook and fucking ladder.

If you're like me, you backed that play up at least a dozen times, watching it over and over until you believed that yes, it really had happened. These two teams really had scored twenty-two points in the final eighty-six seconds; a team from Boise really had beaten a team from Norman, Oklahoma; a non-BCS team really had gone undefeated, further diminishing the entire BCS system. It had all really happened.

And then there was Ian Johnson being interviewed in the corner of the end zone, answering questions about Ohio State and Cinderella and respect. And then, even as the idiotic Chris Meyers did his best to ruin the moment, Johnson was down on one knee and asking the head cheerleader to marry him. She's read the same fairy tales we all have, so of course she said yes.

And if you're like me, you backed that play up several times, too, even calling your wife to the couch to watch with you. And as the star running back held the cheerleader in his arms and tears ran down both their faces, you wondered if maybe you had been wrong. Maybe it wasn't possible.

Afterall, who would ever believe a story like this?

A Letter to the President

Dear Dr. Hennessy:
If you and I had passed in the street last week, I certainly wouldn't have recognized you, and you probably wouldn't have taken notice of me either. We are stangers, you and I, but that doesn't stop you from sending me an annual letter updating me on the state of my alma mater and monthly pleas for donations to the Stanford Fund. To date my total contribution to the fund has been zero dollars and zero cents, but the letters keep on coming.

Do you remember me now, Dr. Hennessy? Whether you do or not, you're probably wondering why I'm getting in touch with you now. It's simple, really. Just a little free advice.

Do not spend another dime on the football program. At this point, it just wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. I know what you're thinking, Dr. Hennessy, and you're right -- the $90 million dollar stadium looked pretty impressive on TV. But trust me when I tell you this: it was a waste of money.

Let's take a look at how things are going so far. The season started with an understandable loss on the road to the University of Oregon, but then came the debacle at San Jose State. I mean, really, San Jose State? The loss was bad enough to inspire a lengthy diatribe on the internet, but I still held out hope that the next game against Navy would be different. It was only a service academy, afterall. I should've known better.

Things started out well, as the focus of the telecast was on the new stadium. (And by the way, if you were responsible for getting Bill Walsh and Jim Plunkett in the booth to keep things slanted in our direction, that was money well spent.) Over and over we were told about the closeness of the stands, the additional restrooms, the television monitors at the concession stands, and the extra scoreboard, all of which seemed to justify the hefty price tag, but all of that positive PR ran out only minutes into the opening quarter.

I'm not sure how much you follow college football, Dr. Hennessy, so out of respect for you, I'll go slowly. Your background is as an engineer, so you're probably looking for some data to sink your teeth into. Chew on this: In the first three games of the season, Stanford opponents have rushed for 298 yards, 351 yards, and 368 yards. This is absolutely preposterous. The Stanford defense ranks last in the nation in rushing defense, and it isn't even close. They sit comfortably in 119th place, a cool 76 yards per game worse than #118 Buffalo.

What exactly does this mean? When you can't stop your opponent from running the football, you can usually expect to lose. And when a team is as bad at stopping the run as this team has been, that news travels faster than a racy secret at a high school dance. We can expect to see more of the same from here on out.

Speaking of which, let's peek at the upcoming schedule. Sadly, I don't see too many potential Ws. Take a look: Washington State comes to the Farm next, and this is a game we had better win because if we don't, things will get ugly fast. After that matchup with the Cougars we head south for a sure loss to UCLA. A week later we fly to South Bend where we'll be beaten so badly that dental records will probably come into play.

After that there are only two possible wins, but I'm not feeling overly confident about either of them, home games against Arizona and Oregon State. With a certain loss at home to USC and almost certain defeats on the road to Arizona State, Washington, and Cal, the possibility of a winless season is looming. The best case scenario right now looks to be 3-9.

And for all of this, I blame Walt Harris. As convincing as this defeat was, there was a moment when the game could've swung in the opposite direction had Harris not decided to conduct a clinic on game mismanagement. Stanford trailed 10-0 when they mounted a drive in the closing minutes of the first half, moving the ball fairly quickly into Navy territory. With all three timeouts in hand, it appeared the Stanford offense would have an opportunity to put the ball into the end zone and head into halftime trailing by only three points. Instead, Harris chose not to use his first timeout until his squad arrived at the Navy nine-yard line with only nine seconds remaining in the half. He used his next two timeouts to set up a field goal, but it hardly mattered.

To be fair, A LOT went wrong in this game, and a lot has gone wrong for the Card all season long. One starting wideout (Mark Bradford) is likely out for the season, and the other (Evan Moore) missed most of Saturday's game. Fullback Nick Frank will never play again. And in Harris's defense, most of these players weren't even recruited by him.

The problem, though, starts and ends with him. He's about as interesting as the color beige. I try to imagine this man sitting in a recruit's living room, trying to convince a young man to spend his football eligibility toiling in futility, and I just can't. Walt Harris should be selling vacuums, not scholarships.

So if you've got the itch to commit any more of the university's money to the football program, think again. Don't pitch another penny in that direction until you do something about the man in charge.

Well, there is one thing, if you can't resist. For a mere $8.95 you can purchase the domain name FireWaltHarris.com. Believe it or not, it's available.

Sincerely, Hank Waddles, '91

Cardinal Colored Glasses

In my younger days, I was fairly obsessed with Stanford football. It started on the first weekend of my freshman year when our RAs shepherded our entire dorm to Stanford Stadium for a game against San Jose State. The Cardinal lost by a touchdown that afternoon, but it didn't really matter. Later that fall I would suffer through a 49-0 pasting at the hands of UCLA, paint an S on my skinny brown chest for a game against Oregon, and enjoy the first of several Big Game victories over the Cal Bears. Somehow, I even thought the band was cool. I was hooked.

I stood alone in a dismal rainstorm to watch the Card lose to Utah four days after the Loma Prieto earthquake in 1989; I baked like a raisin in the sun as we were crushed by Washington in 1990. During my four years as a student, the team struggled to a cumulative record of 16-26-2. It would be generous to call this mediocrity, but things weren't all bad. We never lost the Axe, our 3-0-1 record highlighted by the greatest legitimately decided game in the history of the Big Game.

Trailing 25-18 in the closing minutes of the 1990 edition, we scored a late touchdown to pull within one, 25-24. Coach Denny Green had come to win, though, so he scoffed at the extra point in favor of a two-point conversion -- which failed. A lot happened in the next few minutes -- Cal fans storming the field, delay of game penalties, on-side kick recovered, desperate pass completed -- but everything came together when John Hopkins hit a field goal to seal a miraculous win as time expired.

I celebrated first by running senselessly across the astroturf of Cal's Memorial Stadium, then by challenging my friend Jack to race up the two poles which had held the net behind the goalposts. Jack went on to becme a rock climber, and I went on to become an English teacher, so it shouldn't have been too surprizing when he won the race and I fell about twenty feet and broke my arm. Still, it didn't really matter.

The funny thing is, I think I became a bigger fan after leaving the university. After graduating and returning to the Los Angeles area, my dedication began to exceed normal bounds. It was nothing for me to drive four hundred miles after work on a Friday evening just to watch a relatively meaningless game against Oregon State on Saturday afternoon before hopping back in the car on Sunday morning and cruising back home.

I'm certain that on some level I was just clinging to my alma mater and avoiding the rest of my life, but on its surface it really was about the football. I lived and died on Saturday afternoons. When we lost a tough game to Notre Dame and a friend of mine nursed his depression by spending an hour sitting in the dark beneath a birch tree outside my ex-girlfriend's dorm room, I was only laughing on the outside. Part of me was sitting right next to him.

Recently my expectations of the program have changed. Part of it, I suppose, has to do with growing up, not unlike the young Democrat who cringes at the bite taken out of his first real paycheck and suddenly registers Republican. (Don't worry, though, that hasn't happened yet.)

I finally began looking at things more realistically. When I sat in the stands in Pasadena on January 1, 2000, I was painfully aware that it might be decades before the Mighty Card made another appearance in the Rose Bowl, so I soaked up every moment. (Come to think of it, I still owe Jack for that ticket; since he still owes me for the broken arm, I guess we're even.)

But even though I don't look for ten-win seasons, BCS points, and annual bowl games for Stanford football, I still have some expectations -- none of which have been met this season.

First of all, I expect the coach to have some semblance of confidence, and perhaps at least a modicum of personality. A bay area cable outlet airs something called the "Stanford Cardinal Farm Report," a weekly review of Stanford sports. Coach Walt Harris gets about five minutes of time, during which he reviews the previous week's game and looks forward to the next. It's not like watching paint dry, it's like listening to paint dry. Beyond boring. And what was his response in the season preview when asked about his team's bowl prospects? "Well, we've got a chance." I didn't see the rest because I had to race out and buy my season tickets.

The second thing I need is for the coach to be at least as smart as his players. Harris looks confused on the sidelines and his game plan might have cost the Cardinal its first win last week against San Jose State. After giving up an early (and easy) touchdown to the Spartans, the Stanford offense took over, scoring 27 straight points to take control of the game. The passing game was clicking as quarterback Trent Edwards exploited an overmatched Spartan secondary by tossing four touchdown passes in the first half, including two to wideout Evan Moore. It was so easy that it didn't seem fair.

And then everything changed. I can only imagine that Harris slipped into a heat-induced coma at halftime and wasn't able to take in any fluids. That can be the only explanation for what transpired in the final thirty minutes of play. After rolling up 283 yards in the first half, 178 of which came in the air, Harris decided to dial things back a bit in the second half. Edwards threw only eleven passes after the half, and three of those came in the Card's final drive after they had finally lost the lead for good.

Eight passes before the final series. Eight. Maybe he was trying to develop the running game. Maybe he was trying to keep the clock running. Or maybe he's just an idiot.

So suddenly this week's game against Navy, the sacrificial lambs chosen for the opening night of Stanford's brand new stadium, doesn't look like the gimme it once did.

Which brings us to my third expectation. As the season moves on and the losses continue to mount, I have to be able to look at Big Game as winnable. We don't have to win every year, but I don't think it's too much to expect the Stanford football team to be competitive with Cal's. That wasn't the case last year, and it doesn't look any better this year.

So as far as I'm concerned, that's three strikes for Mr. Harris. It's been nice having you around, but it's time to go.

I'm ConVinced

Okay, forget everything I've ever said here about the BCS and the virtues of the old bowl system. I don't need to see the Big-10 play the Pac-10 in the Rose Bowl, I don't care that the Fiesta Bowl isn't really a major bowl, and I don't care if they ever play the Cotton Bowl again.

Twenty-four hours after the barn-burner that went down in Pasadena last night, I'm sure of one thing: if I can get a game like that even once a decade, I'm ready to bow down at the altar of the BCS and kiss the toes of Lee Corso while I'm at it.

While there have been numerous criticisms thrown towards USC coach Pete Carroll, I can't go along with any of it. Alright, you can argue that maybe he should've punted the ball instead of going for it on fourth down, and you can wonder why he had a Heisman trophy winner standing on the sidelines during the most important play of the season, but I keep thinking of one thing: how can you really second-guess a man who has built the best team any of us will probably ever see?

This Trojan team won thirty-four straight games playing under rules specifically designed to make dominance like that impossible. It featured an offense in which one Heisman Trophy winner (Matt Leinart) regularly handed the ball off to another (Reggie Bush). The team somehow ignored the pressure of its crown completely, showing uncommon resilience when the streak looked certain to die in the desert of Tempe, Arizona, the hallowed ground of South Bend, Indiana, or even on their own home turf at the unlikely hands of upstart Fresno State.

You simply cannot criticize the architect of this team. When he chose to go for that first down, gambling just as he had at South Bend, he was betting on his team, showing complete faith in an offensive line that had been dominant throughout the second half as Lendale White pummelled the Longhorns time after time. (Okay, one quibble: I agree with the choice to run White, but wouldn't Reggie Bush at least made for a nice decoy on the play?)

And if you criticize Carroll's decision and attempt to lay this loss at his feet, maybe you didn't notice that Texas quarterback Vince Young laid down what must be the greatest individual performance in the history of college football, no hyperbole required. Remember when you used to play touch football in the street and the older kid who lived around the corner would play quarterback for both sides but wouldn't be allowed to run past the line of scrimmage because no one would have a shot at catching him? Well, that was Vince Young last night, except he broke the rules all night long.

When the dust had finally cleared a few minutes after Young's last-minute fourth-down touchdown changed the course of college football history and likely sent the entire state of Texas into a state of shock, all Young did was hand the ball to the nearest official and walk back to the huddle for the two-point conversion. No celebration? Perhaps because the numbers spoke for themselves: 267 yards passing, 200 yards rushing, three touchdowns, one national championship.

How great was this game? Even as the Longhorns took that final three-point lead with only nineteen seconds left on the clock, you still believed that that it wasn't over. Maybe Reggie Bush would settle under the kickoff and take it to the house. If not, maybe Matt Leinart would find Dwayne Jarrett streaking down a sideline for six. In the end, though, as the game ended with an incomplete pass, it didn't really matter.

And believe it or not, we have the BCS to thank.

In This Corner...

As we get ready for the next game of the century this January 4th at the Rose Bowl as the unbeatable USC Trojans take on the Texas Longhorns, there will be countless stories written about how we've gotten to this place where national championships are decided by computers and coaches who can't see beyond their own playbooks. Isn't there a simpler way?

Ron Walter has found it and presents it for us at his well put together site, HeavyweightFootballChamps.com. As you can probably tell by the name, Ron has decided that it might make more sense to determine our national championship the way they do it in the boxing world. Don't worry about strength of schedule or margin of victory, don't campaign for votes or try to figure out a computer's logarithm. All you have to do is this: To be the Man, you have to beat the Man. You can argue about how much sense it makes, but there's no doubting that it's a lot more fun than the BCS.

Also included in the site is a listing of the entire line of heavyweight college football championships stretching from the very first (Rutgers in 1869) all the way to the current belt-holder -- you guessed it! -- USC. I've asked Ron to think about disclosing some more of his data, so we might soon see a list itemizing the number of weeks each team has held the championship. Until then, I'll just have to wonder how many weeks my Mighty Card has stood at the top of the mountain.

Cardinal vs. Irish, Make It a Double

At the tail end of a season that was somehow encouraging and disappointing at the same time, the Stanford Cardinal hosted the BCS-ready Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday, and although the Irish got the win they expected, not much else went as planned in what was the final football game played in Stanford Stadium.

Brady Quinn, a Heisman candidate thanks to the golden helmet he wears on game days, started things off by tossing an 80-yard touchdown pass fifteen seconds into the game, and things looked bleak for the Mighty Card. This was a team, afterall, that had fallen to the non-Division I Aggies of UC Davis in September and been embarrassed by the rival Cal Bears only last week.

Sure, the game was tied at fourteen at the half, but when Cardinal starting quarterback Trent Edwards went down early in the second half, the fans started getting restless and the demolition crew started getting ready.

But that's when things changed. Back-up QB TC Ostrander entered the game like a gunslinger and began fearlessly slinging the ball downfield, exploiting Notre Dame's soft defensive backfield, and suddenly we had a game on our hands. Ironically, though, the game wasn't decided by a pass, a run, or even a defensive stand. Instead, it all came down to poor game management on the part of the Cardinal coaching staff.

Here's what happened. Trailing by six with just a few minutes to play, Ostrander threw a missile down the left sideline to a streaking Mark Bradford who was pushed out of bounds at the four-yard line after a 76-yard gain. While the stadium was rocking in anticipation of one last victory, all I could think was this: don't score yet.

With two minutes still left on the clock, a touchdown at this point really meant nothing. With the oil of Notre Dame's prolific offense waiting on one sideline and the vinegar of the Cardinal's porous defense cowering on the other, it was clear that Ostrander and the offense needed to take some time. Run the ball a few times, if only to force the Irish to burn their two remaining timeouts.

But they scored quickly -- much too quickly, as it turned out. I'm sure that any coach alive will tell you that you cannot assume a score. You have to worry about getting into the end zone first before you consider defending your lead, right?

Wrong. Six plays, eighty yards, and fifty-one seconds later, and Notre Dame was back in the end zone, back in the lead, and back in the BCS. If Stanford had been able to run another thirty or forty seconds off the clock, would it have made a difference? We'll never know.

The good news, though, is that Stanford had two shots at the Irish this weekend. When I woke up on Sunday morning and checked my trusty TiVo, I discovered that it had a special treat waiting for me: Stanford vs. Notre Dame, 1990.

After fighting off a hangover and rolling out of my dorm room at the crack of dawn, I had watched that game with a few friends long ago in the only Palo Alto bar open for morning business. Watching it again on Sunday morning fifteen years later, I was struck by the amount of talent on that Stanford team. Future NFL players like Ed McCafffrey, Bob Whitfield, Glyn Milburn, Tommy Vardell, Kevin Scott, Ron George, and Chris Walsh, not to mention future politician Cory Booker, all contributed to the Cardinal's upset of then #1 Notre Dame. Drawing up the game plan that day was head coach Denny Green, and working the sidelines like a maniac was a young assistant coach named Tyrone Willingham. Looking back at it, it didn't really seem like much of an upset.

But there was one moment that jumped out. As his team was driving towards what would be the game-winning touchdown with four minutes left in the fourth quarter, coach Green wanted a timeout. But instead of just stopping the clock, he instructed quarterback Jason Palumbis to burn the entire play clock before taking the timeout.

Green saw the big picture. He was leading a severe underdog against America's team in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus, and he was leaving nothing to chance. He had confidence that his offense would be able to score (Touchdown Tommy Vardell would notch his fourth score of the day to put his team ahead for good), but he saw no point in leaving any extra time for the Irish to mount an answering drive. As it turned out, Rick Mirer gave it his best shot over the final minute, but he ran out of time.

It would've been nice if current coach Walt Harris had run across this game at some point during his film study last week, but my guess is that he didn't see the point in scouting a game that was played a decade and a half ago. It's a shame. This weekend's game might've turned out differently if he had.

BCSin' with the Magnificent Seven

As college football's regular season nears the half-way mark, a young boy's fancy turns to thoughts of the BCS and the national championship game. Dozens of polls are out there, and as often as the powers that be tweak the BCS formula, there will still be people ready to step up and complain about it.

As for me, I won't be completely happy until they scrap the whole thing and go back to the old bowl system, which seemed to work just fine for fifty years. But since that will never happen, I thought I'd come up with my own BCS -- the Broken Cowboy System for determining the best team in the land.

Alright, it's not really a system, just an excuse for me to write about some of the teams in the running. So here goes.

First, the only teams eligible are the undefeated teams, of which seven remain. Let's take a look at the contenders, in reverse order:

7. Texas Tech
This is a nice story. All I know about Texas Tech is that the fans have a tradition of throwing tortillas on the field. As much as I like that, it's not enough to give them a national championship. Nice year, fellas.
First Loss: October 22 at Texas. And I don't think it'll be pretty.

6. UCLA
This is also a nice story -- gotta love those scrappy lil' Bruins. There's even been some talk out here in LA about UCLA possibly running the table and reaching its December showdown with USC at 11-0. As much as I'd like to see that happen, just so that the national college football media would have to take a break from its east coast fixation to fly out to SoCal and check in on the biggest game of the year. Sadly, I don't see it happening. The Bruins have had far too many near misses, and the train is about to jump the tracks.
First Loss: October 29 at Stanford. I have no business making this prediction, but it's too late now.

5. Georgia
Not much to say about the Bulldogs except that I really used to love Herschell Walker. They couldn't win a national championship with him, and they won't this year without him.
First Loss: October 29 at Florida. This will be the biggest game of Florida's season, and the Gators won't leave anything in the bag.

4. Virginia Tech
And so Virginia Tech scores only 28 points against Maryland? Kind of confusing. Marcus Vick seems like the real deal, but it won't be enough.
First Loss: November 5 vs. Miami. The Hurricanes will still be trying to figure out a way into the national championship game, so they'll be sharp.

3. Alabama
You know where the Tide was ranked in most pre-season publications? About thirty or forty spots out of the top 25, that's wear. The fact that they've gotten this deep into the season without a loss should be cause enough for celebration, but they've got a more wins left on the schedule. Sadly, they won't reach the top of the mountain.
First Loss: SEC Championship Game vs. Georgia. And the BCS breathes a huge sigh of relief.

2. Texas
Ah, Texas. Why does everyone love Texas so. Yes, they're good, and yes, Vince Young is a magician in the pocket, but they're still not the best team in the land.
First Loss: BCS Championship Game, January 1 vs. USC in the Rose Bowl. Basically it comes down to this. Given four weeks to prepare for the Longhorns, Pete Carroll will certaily come up with something Young hasn't seen, and they'll march to the victory.

1. USC
Here's all you need to know: Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, Lendale White. Texas won't have an answer for this.
First Loss: 2006, after push their current winning streak up to forty games.