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.)

A Billy Donovan Update

Back in June, I wrote on University of Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan's flip-flop on coaching the Orlando Magic professional team (for the series of entries, go here, here, and here) and the Florida Gators were expected to have a down season this year because of said flip-flop and the loss of three starters on the roster. But a look at the Southeastern Conference (SEC) standings shows Florida virtually tied with Tennessee atop the SEC East standings (Tennessee has a 3-1 conference record and is 16-2 overall; Florida has the same conference record and is 16-3 overall). All this despite a lot of new faces on the roster and being unranked in the national polls, while rivals like Tennessee are ranked as high as No. 3 in the polls.

So why no love from the pollsters? It's because Florida has beaten teams it should beat and the hardest part of its schedule is yet to come. Because of this, they're listed as a "bubble" team for March Madness. Florida still has to play Tennessee twice, Vanderbilt twice, Georgia twice, and Mississippi State. There's a lot of season left to make a move into the polls before March Madness and it will be interesting to see if the Gators can make it to the "dance".

Donovan Contract Close to Voided

Image courtest of the AP via CNN/Sports Illustrated.

According to various media outlets, Billy Donovan and the Orlando Magic are close to voiding the contract he signed with the team on Friday. Some have spoken out against Donovan due to the impact that voiding this deal has on the Magic. In Luke Winn's SI.com article, a source told Winn, '"What [Donovan] did was not taken lightly around the league. It was publicly embarrassing, and for the Magic, it was personal. If he had done this at Memphis [to the Grizzlies], it would have been forgotten more easily. But he did it in Florida, on his home turf. He gave them a ton of momentum for a new arena, for turning around the franchise, and then killed it. There are a lot of GMs that would be hesitant to offer him a job. They took it to mean he was backing away from the challenge, and that he was insecure about coaching in the NBA."' While some of their charges are legitimate, we the general population do not know the complete details from Donovan's perspective, since he has been mum for the duration of this dispute. We need to consider that he has been at Florida for 11 years and just won two national titles there. Also, Gainesville is 1 hour and 44 minutes away from Orlando, so his family wouldn't be living in the same home or town that they had been in for the past 11 years. This clearly was not a money issue (U of Florida was offering 3.5 million, the Magic offered 5.5 million a year, according to Winn). Yes, the Magic will be embarassed by this and they'll have to refund the season ticket holder who bought tickets based on Donovan's hiring, but would you want a coach who doesn't have his heart in it? It's unfortunate that he figured out where his heart was after he signed the Magic contract, but until he publicly says what happened, all we can do is speculate as to why he changed his mind.