Here Come the Western Teams!

Photo courtesy of Howtowatchsports.com

As I previously discussed in this post, there is a perceived sense of East Coast bias in the sports media, specifically at ESPN. College sports, particularly football, can be susceptible to this claim. So it comes as a nice surprise that when the new AP top 25 college football poll was released, 5 of the top 20 teams are from states west of the Rockies. They are (rankings in parentheses):

USC (3), BYU (9), Cal (10), Boise State (12), Utah (17)

While USC is a traditional powerhouse, others like Boise State and BYU aren't. These schools are at a fundamental disadvantage compared even to the likes of USC or Cal because they are in a non-BCS conference.

The BCS is the Bowl Championship Series. It's the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange and National Title bowl games that help determine a national championship. Certain conferences have guaranteed slots in these bowls, while others don't. For example, the Pac-10 champ is guaranteed to at least go to the Rose Bowl, if not the national title game. Boise State's conference, the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) does not have that guarantee. The BCS has relaxed the rules a bit to allow for non-BCS teams to play in a BCS bowl, but in order for that to happen, the team pretty much has to go undefeated.

Arguably the most memorable BCS bowl has been the 2007 Fiesta Bowl between Boise State and Oklahoma. It symbolized everything about the modern college football scene. Boise State, the outsider finally allowed to join the dance was the utter underdog against a potent Oklahoma team that was used to playing in the big bowl games. But one famous play left a mark on the status quo of the football bowl system...



Now, almost two years later, Boise State is back in the top 15, but this time, fellow Western teams have joined the fray. BYU has been good the last couple of years, but after their upset win against Oklahoma, they're in the top 10. Cal is in the top 10, though they won't stay there if they don't beat USC later this season. Cal's Rose Bowl and/or title hopes rest on that game. Utah may make a run as well, but with BYU and Boise State ahead of them, it's going to take a lot of surprises to bump them up. Either way, the Mountain West conference will be a slugfest between BYU, Utah, and TCU and the stakes can be very high this year.

As for movers and shakers for this year, I think Oklahoma State, in addition to Boise and BYU will be the darkhorses for the national title. If we can't have a playoff system like March Madness, than this will have to do. The unfortunate reality in college football is that the powerhouses seem to always win, because of the vast financial resources available to them via boosters. Florida, Texas, USC, Ohio State, and LSU are consistently in the hunt for a title, sometimes just based on the history of the program (in the case of Michigan the last few years.)