THE Boise State is the national champion.
Follow along for undeniable proof.
The Broncos beat Oregon State 42-14. The Beavers beat Southern Cal 33-31. The Trojans beat Arkansas 50-14. The Razorbacks beat Auburn 27-10. The Tigers-Plainsmen-War Eagle beat Florida 27-17.
For an overall difference between the Broncos and the Gators of 93 points. It’s the new math.
And Boise State would beat The Ohio State University, torched 41-14 by Florida in the misnomered national championship game, by a score of 144-24.
Therefore.
Call me silly. Yes, I will go Soupy Sales on you. But I am not as air-brained as NCAA executives, BCS officials, Bowl Blazers and most university presidents, athletic directors and college coaches, who live in the medieval period.
Here I rant again, for the 34th consecutive January.
Playoffs.
Every other NCAA football division – I-AA, II and III – has year-end playoffs, but not I-A.
The claim is that players in I-A should not miss classes for several days. But it’s OK for student-athletes in the I-AA, II and III divisions to miss classes because they must be so stupid already because they didn’t play I-A, and it’s OK for Division I college basketball players participating in the NCAA Tournament to miss weeks of classes.
(I used to miss many classes for no apparent reason other than I loved to sleep late.)
The truth is: The bowls own college football. This is a Chamber of Commerce mess the NCAA has gotten us into, all because the Tournament of Roses Parade wanted some kind of sports event as a New Year’s Day curiosity in 1902. (Too bad darts wasn’t chosen.) The BCS (or, as you know, BS) was begotten by the Bowl Coalition (1992-94), which was begotten by the Bowl Alliance (1995-97) because the bowls are like a crook on the run who keeps changing his name to avoid being caught.
How about this name: NCAA I-A Division Tournament? Or The Eight Wonders of the Football World?
Eight is not enough? You want 16. Fine by me, but eight is a start. (The NCAA basketball tournament had 16 sweet teams for hundreds of years.)
There would be six conference champions from the major conferences – ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC (sorry, Mountain West) – and two wild cards from the mid-majors or independents (read: Notre Dame) or the highest-rated conference runner-up. They would be seeded based on rankings and a tournament committee. And they would play the tournament at seven major bowl sites, with a revolving bowl stadium (Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and Rose) for the true national championship.
The rest can go play in the Fruit Loops-nuts-and-bolts-and-car-dealership bowls.
If I were emperor, this playoff season would have been:
Quarterfinals: No. 1 seed Ohio State vs. No. 8 Boise State (Gator Bowl), No. 2 seed USC vs. No. 7 Wake Forest (Cotton Bowl), No. 3 seed Florida vs. No. 6 Notre Dame (Sugar Bowl) and No. 4 seed Oklahoma vs. No. 5 Louisville (Hawaii Bowl).
Semifinals: USC vs. Boise State (Fiesta Bowl), Florida vs. Louisville (Orange Bowl).
Final: Florida vs. Boise State (Rose Bowl on the Sunday before the Super Bowl.)
Florida wins in quadruple overtime 47-45, on a flea-flicker off a triple reverse in the piked position.
Lest we forget, though, the 2006 season was extraordinary. Rutgers and Wake Forest were special stories. The Rutgers-Louisville and the Boise State-Oklahoma games were two of the all-time highlights in college football history.
(Did Colorado hire the wrong coach from Boise State?)
The Ohio State-Michigan and the USC-UCLA games were very interesting. And my two favorite players were Boston College walk-on kicker Steve Aponavicius, whose field goal won the (Muffler) Bowl, and Florida backup freshman quarterback Tim Tebow, who rushed for a touchdown and threw for a touchdown Monday night.
Locally, we saw the beginning of an era at CU.
Although this season was awful, Dan Hawkins will be good. And we witnessed the end of an era at Air Force. Fisher DeBerry was very good.
And Appalachian State won the Division I-AA title, Grand Valley State Division II and my favorite team, Mount Union, Division III. They won tournaments.
Staff writer Woody Paige can be reached at 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com.
