With USC's long overdue regular season defeat it looks like the "End Game" will now feature the number three and five (or four...fingers crossed) teams in the country, it also means that both teams should seemingly have control of their own fates as far as national championship aspirations go. Of course there are many of us who wouldn't blink if it came to be that Thursday ended up featuring #3 and #8 or #11 vs. #5 in "Also Receiving Votes." This same contingency won't have to hit the rewind on their Tivos when they hear some chotch on Fox tomorrow announce that Louisville has been jumped in the latest BCS rankings by 5-3 Oregon State.
Indeed if you were taking in all the action on Saturday, then you likely observed many of the same strange occurrences that we did.
A brief recap for those who spent college football day pissed off at weddings, dance recitals or any other God-awful "family obligation":
Michigan spends four quarters trying to give the game away to visiting Northwestern but ultimately fails, limping to a 17-3 win over a two-win team that was doubled up by New Hampshire earlier this year.
So the natural response back in the ESPN studio immediately following the game is:
"Michigan takes care of business."--Rece Davis
Case two, Auburn struggles for 60 minutes, and holds on late for a 23-17 win over 2-6 Ole Miss. The line following the brief highlights on CBS:
"And so Auburn gets the job done on the road."
So two weeks ago when another top 10 team defeated a 3-4 team by 15 at their home field, a notoriously tough place to play, the response had to have been something along the lines of a "good, hard fought road win for a team still in the thick of the national title chase" right? Right?
"So Louisville struggles to beat Syracuse, and I'm not sure this is the sixth best team in the country guys."--John Saunders
All this makes about as much sense as Charlie Weis, and should be taken with the same urinated on gain of salt, but that doesn't mean that it still shouldn't piss you off.
Who it should piss off most is the young men who don the red, white, and black each Saturday (or Thursday, Sunday, Friday, Wednesday and once Tuesday). It's up to them to either change the nation's perception or get ready to stand in line for basketball tickets like everybody else.