Good teams hate them. Average teams love them. Conference commissioners rely on them. Bowl committees don’t want them to disturb their plans. And fans seem to have a mixed reaction to the whole deal.
But college football conference championship games are here to stay, for now anyway. The Atlantic Coast Conference and Conference USA will host a conference title game this year for the first time, joining Thursday’s Mid-American game, and Saturday’s Big 12 and Southeast contests. Add to that the Commander-In-Chief’s trophy and a Pac-10 game to decide its title, and the weekend is filled with hardware.
The Big 12 championship pits North Division champ and upset-minded Colorado against No. 2-ranked Texas. The Buffaloes could use the game to up their attractiveness to bowl games. The Longhorns just want to get to the BCS title game at the Rose Bowl and can hardly be bothered by a team they blew out earlier in the season. Texas is a 27-point favorite, by the way, and the over-under is robust 60 1/2 points. By the oddsmakers’ tally, the score should be about 44-17. We’ll see.
Also, Florida State – on a three-game losing streak – could ruin No. 5 Virginia Tech’s season in the ACC game; No. 13 Georgia takes on No. 3 Louisiana State for the second time in three years in the SEC game; No. 1 USC can clinch the Pac-10 title and a trip to the BCS title game with a win over No. 11 UCLA; Army and Navy play in the 106th meeting between the academies and will decide the Commander-In-Chief’s trophy for the first time since 1996; and Tulsa takes on Central Florida in the Conference USA game.
WEAK IN REVIEW
The Nuggets lost consecutive home games this week, to New Jersey and New Orleans/Oklahoma City – hardly elite teams. Call it Chris Andersen’s revenge, but the Nuggets have given up an average of 103.4 points in their past five games, after allowing 83.3 in the previous four, according to The Post’s Adam Thompson. How do the Nuggets expect to compete with the likes of Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki if they can’t stop the Hornets’ Desmond Mason, who was averaging 7.4 points before scoring 26 in Denver?
WHAT WE’D LIKE TO SEE
A little bit of restraint for to the hype about Indianapolis’s potential undefeated season. Remember when there was much hype for the Broncos when they were 11-0 in 1998? Heading into the 12th game, the Broncos – who finished 14-2 and rolled past the Falcons in Super Bowl XXXIII – faced two teams that finished above .500. The Colts have three teams left on their schedule – Jacksonville, San Diego and Seattle – who are well above .500 and play two of them, the Jaguars and Seahawks, on the road.
THE COUCH
On: Try as you might, but it will be difficult to escape the NFL and college football on your television this weekend. So why not change gears and check out another level of gridiron play? The two biggest classifications of Colorado high school football decide their championships Saturday in grand style. The Class 5A and 4A title games at Invesco Field at Mile High go off back-to-back, beginning with the 4A game at 11:30 a.m. and the 5A kicking off about 2 p.m. And for the first year in CHSAA history, both games will be televised by the same network. Altitude will air the games with Avalanche play-by-play guy Mike Haynes on the call, Colorado Sports Hall of Famer Irv Brown on color and Will Jones doing Suzy Kolber duty as sideline reporter.
Off: The 2005 Birds of Prey World Cup Week at Beaver Creek hits its stride this weekend as a preview of the upcoming Turin Games. But the rest of us want a taste of the powder, too. The fall school semester is winding down, and the weekend television sports offerings are dwindling. So the mass rush to the slopes really gets going this week – and at just the right time. All that cold and wind in the metro area this week means one thing: snow and more snow in the mountains. As of Tuesday: Beaver Creek had 7 new inches of snow; Copper Mountain had 12 fresh inches with runs opening fast; Keystone was 83 percent open; 21 lifts and 2,150 acres at Vail were open; and Steamboat has snow forecast every day until late next week. Now’s the time, bums.
AROUND TOWN
The teams may be meeting for the 256th and 257th times this weekend, but the annual University of Denver and Colorado College hockey matchups are hardly commonplace. The matchup, which awards the Gold Pan to the winner of the season series, kicks off its first leg with a home-and-home beginning tonight at 7:30 at the World Arena in Colorado Springs, with the second half Saturday at 7 p.m. at Magness Arena. Denver, ranked 15th nationally, has struggled this season against ranked opponents, going 1-5-1, and is fifth in the WCHA league standings. No. 2 Colorado College has more wins than any team in the country and is third in league behind No. 1 Wisconsin and No. 4 Minnesota. This is serious college hockey, with lots on the line.
