College Football Preview: Double Stuffed

Football is finally here!

I'm so happy for football this year that I got season tickets to both BYU and Utah. I could be watching college football in person for the next 12 weeks. Not once to the teams play at home on the same Saturday!

Why Utah, you ask (considering I'm BYU alumni)? Well, it's simple, buying season tickets to Utah was the only way to guarantee tickets to the BYU vs. Utah game in Salt Lake City this fall.

Rhett, Jon and I have talked about going to the 5 games Utah home games leading up to the BYU game and making friends with the real Utah season ticket holders around us. We'll cheer, have a good time, and be a part of the MUSS (whatever the hell that is). Then for the final game, low and behold, we show up in Blue. Ahhh, it will be worth it just to see the look on their faces!

In fact, maybe I should finally buy a digital camera to chronicle my 12 straight weeks of adventure on this very blog...

Alas, I have been waiting for football to finally be here since the Giants upset the 18-0 Patriots in the final minute of the Super Bowl!

If any of you know me, I am more of a pro football fan than a college football fan. My reasoning is that in college, there are way too many teams to follow, and the same over-rated teams get the BCS hype every year; not to mention that the BCS has helped ruin the tradition of bowl games. I think the BCS has done good things (like the UCS vs. Texas national title and the Boise State vs. Oklahoma game, neither of which would have happened in the old bowl system).

College football is a better experience if you purchase tickets to watch it at the stadium (which is partly why I bought season tickets for two teams) than pro football is, but pro is better for television. Pro football has better star power, better talent and a better playoff system. College basketball gets the postseason right, but college football and its out-of-date bowl system needs new blood, and bad!

Anyway, back to college...

I have already written my BYU preview (posted on my blog two months ago on June 25th), and I STICK WITH IT. Everybody expects BYU to run the table and be the non-conference team to crash the BCS this year with a berth into the Fiesta Bowl, but I just don't see the team going 8-0 in the Mountain West Conference for the third consecutive year, especially with games at TCU and at Utah. I see another 11-2 season with a possible MWC title and a berth into the Vegas bowl (an extra home game for BYU supporters) for the 4th consecutive season.

BYU has historically let its fans down because its fans choose to live with blue blinders on, thinking that BYU deserves to be a national powerhouse. But we are just not as good as we think we are. We were a really good WAC team and we are a really good MWC team, but we wouldn't survive in the PAC-10 or any BCS conference, so why should we be expected to be mentioned with the best schools from those conferences when we can barely play .500 ball with them? We barely beat UCLA in the bowl game we were favored by 10 points in. We lost to Tulsa! And we lost two years in a row to Boston College (almost the cream of the crop in the ACC). If you look through BYU history, we've generally played average against real teams. Sure we beat Pitt and Michigan to win the 1984 title. Sure we shocked No. 1 Miami in Provo, only to lose at Oregon a month later. Sure we went 14-1 in 1996 and barely beat Kansas State in the Bowl Game, but we lost at Washington that year and beat up on Rice and UTEP in that crazy 15-game schedule that including barely getting by Wyoming in Las Vegas in the WAC championship. We just aren't as good as we think we are on a national level.

I know our offensive line is better, but we have a lot of new faces in the secondary. So tell me, why 12-0 this year with a BCS berth? I know we have the favorable schedule to do it (with Washington, Utah and TCU being our tough road games), but please don't expect it Cougar fans. It's simply too lofty of an explanantion.

Other things to expect from the 2008 college football season...

Georgia won't be in the title game. They are the preseason consensus number 1 team, but they will crumble under the expectations.

LSU and Florida won't be in the title game. They just are not ready.

Oklahoma has a really good shot at making the title game. YIKES. They only have to get past Texas with their cupcake schedule. Hopefully that doesn't happen 'cause Oklahoma hasn't done squat in the BCS since 2000, yet they keep going back back to BCS bowls (qualified or not).

Ohio State could be in the national title mix, but they have to play at USC in week 3 (a lock for a loss), and could lose one Big Ten game to pretty much anyone.

Missouri lined up a cupcake schedule, with a returning senior QB in Chase Daniel, but I think the football gods will frown upon that and they will lose.

TCU and Utah should be as good as advertised, and TCU could sneak away with the MWC title. Utah tends to choke early on, and TCU gets BYU at home.

Hawaii will stink, but we all knew that already.

West Virginia won't be great with a new coach in place.

Clemson can make the title game with their talent and returning QB, if they get by Alabama in Week 1. I like Clemson a lot, even if Bowden Jr. is a terrible coach.

USC should be great this year. They've been too quiet since Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush left.

And I hope this is the year that two PAC-10 teams finally represent in the BCS bowls. The PAC-10 should have been screaming about this every year! It's not fair that the Big 10, Big 12, SEC and even the Big East have all gotten two bids almost annually and it hasn't happened once in 10 years just because they play on the west coast. They play the toughest and truest conference schedule. They play the toughest non-conference schedules, so they should be the ones that reward the top two teams from their conference into BCS bowls for double dipping in the BCS pie.

One last thing, I hope 2008 is the year that the PAC-10 qualifies two teams into BCS bowls. There are ten BCS bids now. There used to be eight. There are six BCS conferences: PAC-10, ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, and the Big East, which means that two spots are always open for "wild card" bids. Those spots almost always go to a BCS school (with the 2004 Utes, 2006 Boise State, and 2007 Hawaii as the only non-BCS conference selections).

Every season, those extra spots are given to other BCS conferences except the PAC-10 (usually, it's USC). It's not fair that the Big 10, Big 12, SEC and even the Big East have been awarded two teams. The PAC-10 has never received a second team to play in the BCS game. The PAC-10 should be screaming about this every year! They play the best conference schedule and always have the best non-conference schedule, yet it has not happened once in 10 years just because they play on the west coast, and they don't generate the TV ratings like Ohio State and Michigan can. It's just not fair, and I don't think the PAC-10 commissioner raises enough stink over it.

I'll raise it for him! That's the only thing I want this year because I know that BYU isn't BCS busting this year. If they do, great. I'll eat my words. But I just want PAC-10 to finally get some love when I'd put their top two up against the top two from any other BCS conference any day of the week, especially championship Monday!