Don’t sell Ohio State short. They are a much better team than the one that got blown out by USC. With Terrelle Pryor and Beanie Wells they can score. But I do think your offense can score on their defense.

is that when we beat USC, everyone will just say “oh, well they weren’t playing their hardest because they were bummed about not going to the National Championship game”

Obviously that’s the quality that the media likes to have in their champions (just look at how much time they spend on Randy Moss and Terrell Owens, 2 of the best examples of “taking games off” attitude)

His quote:

I’m guessing the Trojans open as 14-point favorites. Maybe even higher.

Last year’s spread (USC-Ill) was 14 if I remember right, that after Zook snuck into the thing.

I know there were early lines out before the Or State loss that had PSU +7. I think it’s going to be very close to a one touchdown line with USC getting a lot of the action.

It seems like people are saying we don’t deserve a lot of things.

Don’t deserve to be at the championship game.

Don’t deserve a Rose Bowl.

Soon, they’ll be saying we don’t deserve to play a SEC or Big 12 team at all.

I can’t blame USC fans (or players) for wanting something other than the Rose Bowl. A few weeks ago, Penn State fans were pretty disappointed with “settling” for the Rose Bowl too, because we thought we had the tough part behind us…so I’m sure it would be that much worse if we already played there for the last however many years in a row. I just don’t like when fans act like the game’s outcome is a foregone conclusion. A few weeks ago, Penn State fans were pretty disappointed with “settling” for the Rose Bowl too, because we thought we had the tough part behind us. It’s just that all of this Big Ten SUX ROFL LOL LOL gets annoying.

I think I speak for a majority of Trojan fans out there that Pete Carroll and JoePa on Jan 1st in the Rose Bowl would be a great game. Penn State would be the best team that we would face this year, and a good test for our defense. We still have some business to attend to with ucla, and barring a monumental upset, I look forward to the Rose Bowl against you guys. May the best team win.

But I disagree on the boycott.

The reasons I wouldn’t boycott tickets or games or whatever is because college football is very much the best “in the moment” sport in the world. It combines that nostalgia from spending years at your alma mater (or just your favorite team) and adds the world’s best tailgates, gameday atmosphere, home crowds, etc. It would be damn near impossible for me to not watch or attend a game that I had the opportunity to see.

That said, this championship based on speculation thing is just the biggest face on the planet. To put it in perspective, we might as well send the Giants and Titans to the Super Bowl now because they have the best records. How stupid is that man…championships are won in the post season.

Anyway, I feel like there is a way to set up an 8 team playoff using the existing BCS stadiums. Meanwhile, the lesser bowls could be played out like normally, inviting the teams that are top 25 caliber but don’t qualify for the elite status. This allows teams to keep playing in the post season (bowl payouts, etc) but rewards the one-loss teams with a chance to slug it out LIKE THEY DO IN EVERY OTHER SPORT!!!

However, there’s a sure chance a crappy conference like the ACC doesn’t have a team to send to the orange bowl and the conference loses that bowl-tie-in money. That’s why the conferences don’t want to do it. It also puts additional pressure to have a conference championship game….something with its own pros and cons.

In essence, you hit the nail on the head. Playoff = less guaranteed money.

Even though it ended up being a decent game..how disappointing was it to play a 4 loss FSU team in 2005/06? I know we were feeling like we could play anybody in the country that year. This years equivalent would have been playing OrSU again this year. At least this year we get to prove something in a game that won’t result in a total lose lose situation (depending on if we win or lose of course).

how could you reference Tonya Harding in figure skating, and then reference boxing but not mention Tonya Harding again?

As for the boycott, I agree that it would be effective if you could get people to go along with it, but I don’t think that quite an organized move would really happen. You’d have to convince quite a lot of obsessed people to not do what they love doing. Also: what else would we do on Saturday? (or Wednesday and Thursday if you are in the Big East or MAC)

The better idea would to boycott the BCS bowls, but that would be even harder to convince people to do, especially if their team doesn’t make it very often.

What sucks is that we’re stuck in this state that is “better than bad”, but could be improved, unfortunately it will take time, effort, and money, at least initially, to improve it, and since they’re making money by the truckload right now they have no incentive to change it. “Don’t mess with success” as the saying goes. If only they just did the right thing back in the late 90s and went to a playoff format to begin with. Hopefully they’ll add a 1 game soon, and then that leads to a +2 (rounds….3 games) and then a 3/7

but I would argue that Florida can play defense as well (or maybe it was just the luck of going against all those SEC teams with weak offenses). And while USC’s offense hasn’t been as good as it has been in recent years, they’ve hardly been bad, let alone “sucked”