The World According to Oatney

NCAA football's wild weekend

What a weekend in sports, especially in college football. On Saturday, Tennessee lost to Auburn, but not in the way that the so-called “experts” predicted. (The final was 38-28.) The fact of the matter seems to be that Tennessee could have won the game, but gave the game away on inexplicable holding penalties (and other stupid mistakes). In fact, were it not for the penalty factor, we could safely say that the Volunteers might be going to the Sugar Bowl.

Auburn’s sloppy play might have something to do with the fact that they were left out of the National Championship Game in the final BCS standings released Sunday. I initially thought that it was an injustice to leave the Tigers out, since I have believed all year that their schedule was tougher than Southern Cal’s. However, in the final analysis, Auburn won the SEC Championship in very sloppy fashion, and may have squandered their own hopes by squeaking by the Vols on the same night that Oklahoma destroyed Colorado in the Big 12 Championship.

Perhaps the biggest controversy today is the fact that Texas has leaped into the BCS by moving up to the No. 4 spot, while California fell to 5th. This literally means that Cal will be denied a trip to the Rose Bowl, something they thought themselves entitled to. One thing that everyone seems to have forgotten here, however, is that between Cal and Texas, the Longhorns have played a tougher schedule, and that if you are going to award a Rose Bowl berth based on who is second-best, Texas is a far-better choice, especially if another unspoken criterion is “most likely to beat the tar out of Michigan.”

In other news: It is quite probably the biggest shocker of the year, Urban Meyer did not take the head coaching job at Notre Dame, opting instead to fill the vacancy left by the firing of Ron Zook at Florida. (Meyer goes so far as to claim that ND never offered him a job. If true, someone in South Bend had what can only be described as a brain malfunction.) This leaves the Irish in the lurch because there aren’t that many decent coaching vacancies left in D-IA…it is a mystery where the Irish are going to go for a new coach at this point. The only answer for the ND Athletic Department is to offer a reputable coach a better deal than what they have at present. Perhaps the great unspoken question may be this: Does ND have the fiscal ability to make that kind of an offer to any coach, considering that they haven’t had a major bowl payday in ages?

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 12:56 PM