Trying to find a solid piece written on the Boise State Broncos and their match-up with Oklahoma has become as daunting as finding a needle in a haystack. There are a lot of guys out there with huge blue chips on their shoulders like Drew Mays who says that Oklahoma represents everything that is wrong with college football.
Teams like OU are the guardians of the old way.
They represent a system that intentionally holds mid-major college football programs down with selective conference tie-ins to bowl games that pay out millions of dollars each year to the same teams. They represent a system that would rather vote on who plays in a national championship game rather than deciding it on the field in a playoff system.
While BSU may not make everything right with a win New Year's Day, they'll at least be able to smack the flag bearer of the old system right in the mouth.
So I guess a WAC team who beats up on the sisters of the poor and schools for the blind and deaf that are on the schedule is going to usher in a new era of college football. I'm not buying it and neither is the rest of the college football world. The truth about Boise State is that they are a good team, they really are, but they are in a BCS game as a courtesy. Put them in the ACC, Big 12 or the SEC and they finish middle of the pack at best.
Then you find the other extreme with guys like Kellis Robinett.
I know, there's really no way to justify a Sooners appearance in the national title game with their two losses, but if I had to choose the second best team in the nation it would be Oklahoma. The Sooners have won eight straight games, won a Big 12 conference that saw nine teams become bowl eligible -- so many that 6-6 Kansas was left with no bowl to play in -- and it would have been 10 had 5-7 Baylor not lost its starting quarterback with four games to go and one of Oklahoma's losses didn't happen. Everyone knows OU beat Oregon, the refs just handed the Ducks the game. That means OU's only real loss came on a neutral field against Texas when the Longhorns were at full strength. Oh, and with Adrian Peterson coming back for the bowl game, the Sooners will be that much better. In a playoff system, OU could win it all.
You won't find a bigger OU fan than me and I adamantly proclaim that no one was playing better football in the Big 12 than they were but I'm not ready to claim them national championship material just yet. Granted anything could happen in a play-off situation but OU is a top 5 team not the top team.
Thankfully I came across Steve Wieberg. who was not only impartial but was sane and made perfect sense.
They don't have a shot at a national title as George Mason did in March. But they're running with the big dogs. Against Oklahoma, the Broncos will get their first crack at one of the game's 10 all-time winningest programs.
With the game still more than three weeks away I was hoping to take some time and focus mostly on basketball but it looks like the machine is going to be pressed back into service on meaningful football coverage.