My View on Mid-Major College Football teams

Jon Becton might have you believe that I'm not a fan of mid-major college football teams...this is not entirely true. I'm not a fan of mid-major teams who don't play anybody all season and whine about why they should be in a BCS bowl. Yeah, Boise State somehow won in '06 against an Oklahoma team that had a high school quarterback-converted to college wide receiver-then back to quarterback for his senior season. Fantastic. The stuff movies are made of, especially the cheesy proposal after the game. But this is 2009, and this team is still riding off that victory. Of course you should go undefeated in whatever conference Boise is in (the WAC...appropriate title). But a season where an extremely average Oregon team is your toughest competition won't cut it.

Now, I'm sure that many who are reading this will, if you haven't already, will point to the weak schedules of some of the teams in automatic qualifying BCS conferences, particularly out of conference, take Florida for example. And I agree, there's no reason for the defending champs to have the 119th hardest schedule in the country, but being in a conference that is extremely competitive does afford you some luxuries.

For instance, your Floridas-Texas-Alabamas of the world can lose one game, maybe two and still make the national championship game, as they should. You have to judge a team on the level of competition of who they play the majority of their games against, which is their respective conference. As of today, when you face an FCS team in UC-Davis and 8 other teams that rank between 60 and 105 in the CollegeBCS.com ranking (yes you, Boise State) won't cut it.

Now, as much as it pains me to say this, Utah obviously had a good team last year and they showed that against Bama. But another luxury afforded to schools that are proven is that they are ranked more favorably in the polls because of their ability to consistently recruit top talent. Mid majors don't necessarily have that ability, and the polls reflect that. That's why Utah finished the year as #2 and started this year as #19 in the AP poll. They have to consistently show and prove.

To wrap this up, I respect mid-majors more for scheduling a hard, or at least competitive, schedule and losing a couple of games, than taking the Boise State route and whining about why they should be in the BCS and how they get cheated, etc. Once they learn that the only way to gain respect is to consistently challenge top talent and do it with success, then maybe it'll reflect in the polls. Who knows, maybe I'll even cheer for them.

Cheers to BYU after they got massacred on the 19th,

JIP