Week 1 of the college football season is in the books, and everyone is already confused. There were a lot of great games to talk about. Upsets like Jacksonville State beating Ole Miss, by the way teams that think their city is a state should never win. I could complain about schools like Alabama, Penn State, and Miami playing chumps to start the season, which is the reason I like college football and don't love it. The thing that stuck out most to me this past week was the non-BCS schools playing great.
I hear a ton of people trashing non-BCS powers TCU, Utah, and Boise State because they don't play in an "elite" conference. People saying things like "If you put them in the SEC they would get destroyed." Yeah that is fine if its your opinion but that same thing is true of teams like Oregon, Penn State, West Virginia, and Clemson. I know the argument about there are bad teams in the Mountain West and WAC. I know there are no bad teams in the Big Ten, Big East, Pac-10, ACC, SEC, or Big 12. Oh wait, I forgot about schools like Indiana, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Louisville, Syracuse, Kentucky, Iowa State, and Washington State just to name a few. The truth is every conference has more weak teams than good teams.
Utah, TCU, and Boise State do everything they can to get respect from the BCS. They know that their conferences are looked down upon so they make tough out of conference schedules. Very few of the "elite" teams play any tough teams out of conference. Boise State, TCU, and Utah all played ranked opponents to open their seasons, and they all won. TCU beat #24 Oregon State, Utah beat #15 Pittsburgh, and Boise State beat #10 Virginia Tech. All high quality wins. The sad part is come seasons end, when bowl bids are being handed out, their tough early schedule will be forgotten. Everyone says that if these non-BCS teams had to play the top teams they would be blown out. The thing is when they do play the non-BCS teams win. Everyone has seemed to forget the 2006 Fiesta Bowl when Boise State beat Oklahoma. There is no reason to hate these great teams just because the BCS is a bad system.
