What We Learned from This Season's Bowl Games

As the college football season wraps up Thursday night with the BCS championship game from Pasadena, we can reflect on the college bowl season and try to figure out what we gained.

We learned is that the ACC is not that good, the Big Ten is better than it’s given credit for, the SEC has some mortal teams, the SEC has some lucky teams, Missouri’s band is controversial (blame ESPN), Tim Tebow is really, really good, the East Carolina kicker is not really, really good, Cincinnati was severely overrated—or maybe the Bearcats missed their coach, and that the Mountain West Conference deserves a BCS automatic berth.

What we didn’t learn was who is the best team in college football.

Isn’t that why the Bowl Championship Series was founded? Wasn’t it created so that we get the best two teams on the field to play each other?

Do we have that this year with Texas facing off against Alabama? Some would say yes. I don’t necessarily disagree, but none of us really know for sure.

Watching Boise State play TCU in the Fiesta Bowl was great fun, and it was a hell of a game. But wouldn’t it be great to see Boise State play the Texas-Alabama winner for the real national championship? One more game with the nation’s remaining unbeaten teams.

Boise State is just the second team in college football history to finish a season 14-0. The other team was Ohio State in 2002. That Buckeyes team won the national championship on the field with its dramatic overtime victory over Miami in the Fiesta Bowl.

We entered the bowl season with five undefeated teams. Alabama was No. 1, followed by Texas, Cincinnati, TCU, and then Boise. TCU was ranked fourth in the final BCS polls, while 12-1 Florida was sandwiched between the Horned Frogs and Boise State in the rankings.

Florida dismantled the Bearcats in the Sugar Bowl to end Cincinnati’s unbeaten season and outside shot at a share of the national title. The Gators were ripped apart by Alabama in the SEC championship game, so what does Florida’s romp over Cincinnati and Tebow’s stellar performance tell us?

Did Florida simply have a bad game against the Tide? Was Cincinnati simply beaten like a drum by a better team? A little of both?

The same questions could be asked about TCU in its loss to Boise. Andy Dalton had his worst game of the season, throwing three interceptions against the Broncos in the 17-10 defeat. Many college football writers, myself included, thought TCU deserved the berth in the BCS title game over both Cincinnati and Texas. So did we get an unmotivated, and unfocused, TCU team in the Fiesta Bowl because their eyes were still on Pasadena?

It’s happened before.

In 1998, No. 4 Kansas State was shunned from a BCS bowl, and promptly lost to an unheralded Purdue team in the Alamo Bowl. Two years ago, Big XII champion Oklahoma felt snubbed when the BCS selected Ohio State to play LSU in the BCS title game. The Sooners then stated their case by laying an egg in the Fiesta Bowl, losing big to West Virginia.

Is this what happened to TCU? Or was Boise simply underrated and the better team? I still maintain that TCU would have been more motivated to play Florida in the Sugar Bowl, and could have beaten the Gators, Tim Tebow and all. Boise State then would’ve played Cincinnati in the Fiesta.

Of course, if TCU would’ve beaten Florida in that hypothetical game, we’d then have three unbeatens instead of two, and we’d know even less than we know now.

This column can also be found at The Alton Telegraph.