Halloween, the College Football Holiday

Making full and appropriate use of holidays is just one of college football’s many virtues.

The ADD-inducing New Year’s Day marathon requires no elaboration.

Thanksgiving is also brilliant. Just as Turkey Day itself is strictly reserved for a nation that needs to get its fix of laughing at the Detroit Lions, the Friday that follows is a special college football holiday of its own, meant for the bitter Big XII feuds of Texas-Texas A&M and Nebraska-Colorado.

What? You go shopping on that day?

Puhleeze! There’s more than one way to spell a word that is pronounced the same as “maul,” but the meaning is identical in both cases.

Likewise, there is Halloween, which lands almost perfectly at the midpoint between Labor Day and the BCS title game. Many programs, like the lame party guest that doesn’t put much imagination into his disguise, traditionally celebrate by shedding clumsy costumes that poorly reveal their true nature (See also: Michigan State, among others.)

Yet the best tricks and treats are the teams that put on artful disguises that will carry them all the way into the New Year before being removed. Sometimes this is a good treat, and sometimes not (we’re looking at YOU, Buckeyes.)

A pleasant surprise for most of us was the "untested Boise State" look, on full display ten days before Halloween, 2006, when the Broncos were just a failed two point conversion away from a 28-28 fourth quarter tie on the road against Idaho, a weak WAC rival. What a great costume! Bob Stoops was so surprised when they decided to take it off just before playing in the Fiesta Bowl.

And so, as we head toward the sorcery weeks of this college football season, I am already seeing some evidence of things that are not as they appear, or are at least not as they should be.

Michigan State cracking the top-25

This is just idiotic. I’m a huge fan and very optimistic about the direction of the team, but the No. 19 and No. 23 badges hung on them by the USA Today and Associated Press polls this week are so absurdly premature that it disgusts me.

They lost a close one to Cal, the only demonstrably good team that they’ve played thus far. And yet the Bears are ranked below the Spartans in the USA Today poll and not at all by the AP (which put Cal two spots below Tulsa on the list of teams also getting votes.)

Michigan Fans Booing

The generally well-heeled crowds at Michigan Stadium have taken to regularly booing the unemployed teenage boys that are doing an insufficient job of making them happy on Saturdays.

This season, Michigan football is hardly unusual in this regard. The majority of teams will get booing fans when they lose regularly. That doesn’t make it right: Booing college players is a cheap and awful thing to do to the team that you’ve decided to show up and “support,” no matter how bad the record is.

What makes Michigan fans special is that they used to boo players and coaches even when the team was winning the vast majority of its games. There were many published and anecdotal examples. The most famous of which was the case of former Michigan QB John Navarre, who was maligned so badly that one year even the crowd showing up for the spring practice game booed him.

His reputation with the fans did not improve with time.

Navarre, it should be noted, was so awful that he took Michigan to three straight New Year’s Day bowl games. He also beat Ohio State, the last Michigan QB to do it, and he's No. 2 on Michigan's list for career passing yards.

This booing wasn’t isolated to Navarre or his years with the team. Lloyd Carr was a familiar target, as were other players.

Having become so dyspeptic that anything short of absolute perfection was viewed as a failure worthy of ostracism, Michigan fans have finally gotten a season worthy of the costume that they’ve been trying on for years.

Happy Halloween, Big Brother!

Michigan's Defense

Everybody, including me, thought the Michigan defense was going to be the savior of a team that would have heavy growing pains on the other side of the ball. Whoa, has that mask been ripped off!

They now rank No. 59 nationally for total defense, behind most of the other Big Ten teams. With the meat of the conference schedule still in front of them, it’s hard to imagine that improving significantly.

Last year’s costume is still looking pretty good. Michigan's defensive coordinator last season, Ron English, wasn’t given the head coaching job and wasn’t retained by Rich Rodriguez. So, he took a job trying to help Louisville, the French Army of Big East defenses last year.

Result?

Louisville is No. 9 nationally for total defense as of this week, allowing just 252 yards per game. This is very much improved from the group that gave up 400 yards per game in Big East play last year.

Boise State’s BCS prospects

Now sitting at No.15 in the AP poll, Boise State is only the third-highest rated BCS buster candidate right now. Why is this when the Broncos are undefeated and have the best win so far of all the ranked mid-major contenders?

Boise State went on the road and beat Oregon, which was ranked at the time and is still a 4-2 football team.

Utah is ranked one spot higher, at No. 14, and none of its wins compares to beating Oregon. The Utes' best work was done in defeating Oregon State and Michigan, neither of which was ranked at the time and both of which now have losing records.

At No. 9, BYU’s “big wins” are even less impressive, narrowly defeating hapless Washington and blowing out what is now a sub-.500 UCLA.

Boise State has lost just ten games over the last six seasons, better than both BYU and Utah, and also has a bigger win on a bigger stage. The program has more than earned the benefit of doubt when it comes to polls, particularly after the Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma, which dwarfed Utah’s 2004 defeat of a mediocre Pitt in that same game.

Regardless of what happens to BYU and Utah, an unbeaten Boise State would deserve and should get a return trip to a BCS game. If that means letting two mid-majors in the BCS gate, so be it.