Utah Crowned RGO National Football Champion!

Congratulation to Florida Gators on becoming the BCS Champion and AP Champion. Yes, that's right, the BCS Champion and AP Champion—not the National Champion. No one can declare themselves the National Champion unless everyone with a legitimate claim on the title has a shot.

Utah has proven that non-BCS schools will never have a shot, no matter their schedule or accomplishments. For the myriad of BCS snobs that respond that if Utah or any other non-BCS school wants to be asked to the big dance, they should join a BCS conference, I must admit that Utah has either lost its invite or that none has been or ever will be forthcoming.

The question thus remains, under the current system (because that system is not likely to change in the future), what is the best way to choose a National Champion? If everyone agrees to three simple rules, I think I have a system that could work, for this and future seasons.

First: real games are the best predictor in deciding who would win a game. Isn’t that the reason why games are played and the reason true fans everywhere, including President-Elect Obama, are calling for a playoff?

Second: in the absence of real games, objective criteria is better than subjective criteria in selecting who would win a game. Let’s face it: subjective criteria are what got us into this mess in the first place. We all have an opinion as to who is the national champion and no one is willing to concede that anyone else’s subjective opinion is entitled to more credence.

Third: the best objective criteria at present, outside of actual games, are the six (6) BCS computer rankings. Why else has the BCS made these computer rankings an integral part of its selection criteria for its BCS bowl picks? If you don’t agree to one of these rules, stop reading. If you agree, then lets crown the RGO (Real Game Objective) National Champion.

Almost everyone agrees, including the BCS computers, that the top eight teams at the end of the season were: Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Alabama, USC, Utah, Texas Tech, and Penn State. The match ups are as follows: In the East—Oklahoma vs. Florida, and Texas vs. Texas Tech; and in the West—USC vs. Penn State and Alabama vs. Utah. If you don’t like the match-ups, don’t blame me—those decisions were made by the BCS. Texas and Texas Tech are put together because they are the only two not paired in a BCS bowl.

Based on BCS Bowl outcomes, the winners in the first round are USC and Utah in the West, and Florida in the East. But how do we decide who would win the Texas-Texas Tech game in our RGO tournament? We go to the rules!

By a stroke of luck, we don’t have to go beyond Rule 1 to discover that Texas Tech beat Texas in a real game, and therefore Texas Tech is the winner. I am sure Texas fans are now going into a tizzy, but its just their opinion that they could beat Texas Tech in a bowl game, and we are crowning the Real Game Objective National Champion.

In Round 2, we are not so lucky. No real games are played so we have to rely on Rules 2 and 3 to decide the outcome. Under those rules, Texas Tech is clearly outmatched by Florida. In all six BCS computer polls, Florida is declared the winner. Even if we resorted to subjective opinion, I don’t think anyone, other than die-hard Texas Tech fans, believes that Florida would not have won that game if it had actually been played. While Florida lost a squeaker to Ole' Miss, the Rebels destroyed Texas Tech. Not to mention the fact that the Gators are one degree of separation away from beating Texas Tech in a real game, as Florida beat Oklahoma, which in turn beat Texas Tech.

In the Utah-USC match-up, the BCS computers give the edge to Utah, by 5-1. (When reading the Jeff Sagarin NCAA football ratings, be careful. The BCS only uses Sagrin’s ELO-CHESS computer result which is marked in Red and ranks Utah ahead of USC.)  Additionally, not a single BCS computer ranks USC No. 1, which is not the case with Utah. I now hear the scream of every Trojans fan: NO WAY UTAH WOULD EVER BEAT USC! Didn’t USC coach Pete Carroll declare the Trojans unbeatable after the Penn State game? Those, however, are just opinions, and not even in the realm of reality. Maybe the reason USC lost to Oregon State is because Coach Carrol was experiencing a blackout, which also would explain why he has no recollection of the Trojans’ loss to the Beavers.

Again, our task is to crown the National Champion using the objective criteria we have. I am sure the whole country would have liked to have seen a Utah-USC match-up which would be the true objective test as to the outcome, but that didn’t happen. It's difficult to imagine, however, that any reasonable person would argue that Utah would not have had a good chance to beat USC when the Utes beat the Beavers just one week after the Beavers beat the Trojans. USC has no basis to gripe anyway. They are a founding member of the system which prevented the Trojan-Ute match-up from happening. USC surely didn’t gripe when they were the beneficiaries of BCS unfairness and invited to the big dance in the past.

The RGO National Championship game therefore pits Florida against Utah. Based on pure drama, that should have been the match-up in the FedEx BCS Championship. Just think: SEC Powerhouse Florida against Cinderella Utah! The Gators’ Urban Meyer—the Utes’ former coach—against Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, Meyer’s former defensive coordinator. Can Cinderella compete at the big dance? Has the student surpassed his former master? Burning questions that will never be answered in a real game, but should have been. Looking at Utah’s crushing of Alabama, and Florida’s come-from-behind win over the same Crimson Tide, a game between the two would have been a great one, maybe the best ever.

Without a real game, however, we are left with the BCS computers as our best objective measure. A poor substitute, I know. And so the winner of the RGO National Championship is Utah, by a 4-2 margin. The Sagarin, Anderson & Hester, Massey, and Wolfe BCS computer rankings all select Utah as No. 1. Only the Billingsley and ColleyMatrix BCS computer rankings pick Florida as No. 1. Now wasn’t that exciting! Print the T-shirts and raise the Trophy! Not exactly the same as watching real games in a real tournament, but the BCS has been telling us all along that a real tournament with real games would somehow hurt the sport.

Congratulations Utah, you are the RGO National Champion! We give our thanks to all the other teams that played, they put up a tough fight. But mainly they fought to keep deserving teams like Utah from being given a fair shot.