The Thirsty Scholars: The BCS Mess

The Thirsty Scholars: The BCS Mess: "It's time. For years, we have talked about a Thirsty Scholars blog that would allow for the free exchange of ideas from Beantown to the Com..."

The situation has been clear most of this college football season for Boise St, which is doing all it can to make its case as being worthy of the Bowl Championship Series title game. No mater what they do, the Broncos know they probably continue to need some help. The first task was obvious. The Broncos needed to beat the" high profile" opponents in their non-conference schedule. Boise St. did that, knocking off Virginia Tech and Oregon State in the first month of the season.

The next chore is ongoing - beat all of its "non BCS" opponents handily. Boise State has done that, including a 48-0 thrashing of San Jose State Saturday night. And Boise State still needed and needs some of the high-profile schools with their own visions of a BCS title game to lose.

That has happened. Alabama obliged by getting dumped by South Carolina. The trend continued Saturday. First, previously unbeaten Nebraska (I still hate them so very much with a passion) was beaten at home by Texas. Then Whiskey upset # 1 Ohio State. The Broncos still have work to do since Oklahoma jumped to no. 1 in the first BCS standings. Oregon is # 2 , with Boise St. 3rd., then Auburn and TCU. The difference between # 2 in the AP poll where they currently are and # 3 is HUGE for the Broncos. If they are the # 3 team, people who do the non-computer polls still can come up with excuses to keep the Broncos out of the title game. But if they are # 2, it becomes more difficult to drop the Broncos. Boise State still must win the rest of it's games by a healthy margin, including a match up at Nevada on Thanksgiving weekend.

Broncos though are in much more of a position of strength . Nevada looked like a real threat until they were upset by Hawaii Saturday night. Oklahoma if they win out in the Big 12 still have the conference championship to play through. The ACC - Florida State was properly shaken up by one of the worst BC teams I've ever seen with their 24-19 escape. The SEC is a 6 team pileup. With South Carolina which beat Alabama a week ago, losing to Kentucky, with Florida faltering again, this time to Mississippi State, no team in the east has fewer than 2 conference losses. Anyone can win it, even Georgia, which started 0-3 in the conference with the "fire Mike Richt" faction growing after losing to a terrible Colorado team. (Justin your goal post smack was noted and had the blog been up we'd have gone blitzkrieg on each other for that slight.) Now Georgia has won 2 in a row and can be contenders. When did the SEC become Arena Football? Auburn's wild 65-43 win over Arkansas defies description. And they are # 4 in the BCS? Well Auburn must deal with unbeaten LSU Saturday which will be another challenge. If the Tigers can stay unbeaten until their game at Alabama, QB Cam Newton should be near the top of the Heisman Trophy voting list.

As is usually the case in college football there are no guarantees as the Bama and OSU losses showed. Oregon # 1 in the AP top 25 and Harris Interactive poll could be the next victim. I know they have UCLA Thursday but then they travel to So. Cal the following week to face a Trojan team that suddenly looked nasty against Cal.