BCS Bowl Predictions: Houston Cougars Will Shock Doubters in Sugar Bowl

By all rights, the Houston Cougars should be playing in the BCS National Championship Game.

I mean, why not, right? There are only two undefeated teams in the nation, and Houston is one of them. Their sin is playing in a conference the civilized world doesn't care about.

Oh well. Perhaps one day a system will be in place that will allow teams like Houston to strut their stuff in the title game. Until then, we'll all have to make do with what we have.

As far as Houston is concerned, the current system is going to put it in a BCS bowl game. This is, of course, assuming the Cougars can handle Southern Miss in the Conference USA Championship Game. If Houston wins, it will secure a BCS berth by virtue of being the highest-ranked non-BCS conference champion.

The question then will be which bowl the Cougars will go to.

It's possible Houston will be the first at-large team selected, in which case it would head to Glendale, Ariz. for the Fiesta Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl will accept the Big 12 champion, and then it basically gets to pick and choose from a list of matchups that will sell well.

Inviting Houston would work, but inviting Stanford and Andrew Luck would work even better. It helps that Glendale is a relatively short hike from Palo Alto, Calif., which should inspire Stanford's notoriously reclusive fan base to take a road trip.

Picking next will be the Sugar Bowl, and it's much easier to see Houston landing there. New Orleans is only about 350 miles from Houston as a crow flies, making it a pretty easy trip to sell to Houston's own fan base.

If all goes according to plan, Houston will be squaring off against the Michigan Wolverines, who are this close to earning an at-large bid that would put them in the Sugar Bowl.

Whomever Houston ends up facing, you're going to hear some complaining from the peanut gallery that the Cougars simply do not belong. This BCS thing is a game for manly men and manly football programs, and the Cougars don't make the grade.

To silence their critics, the Cougars would only need to come out and put on a display nobody will ever forget, à la Boise State in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

Seeing as how the Cougars have the highest-scoring offense in the country, this shouldn't be too difficult. Houston can put points on the board with the best of them, and by now we've all heard about quarterback Case Keenum and his record-setting arm.

If you haven't heard of Keenum, just know he's achieved things in his college career you couldn't achieve in a video game with the difficulty settings on easy.

Yeah, he's that good. Never mind all this crap about him being a "system quarterback."

If Houston were to roll into the Sugar Bowl and then get destroyed by a worthy adversary from a BCS conference, the doubters will have won. No doubt many of them will move to have teams like Houston stricken from BCS consideration forever.

The odds of that actually happening, I think, are very slim. The Cougars are going to get to a BCS bowl. And when they do, they're going to make sure people don't forget them.

Those who live for a college football playoff had better hope and pray that things pan out this way.

Week 14 BCS Rankings

Rank	Team	BCS Average
1	LSU	1.000
2	Alabama	.955
3	Oklahoma State	.871
4	Stanford	.856
5	Virginia Tech	.781
6	Houston	.740
7	Boise State	.703
8	Arkansas	.700
9	Oregon	.686
10	Oklahoma	.671
11	Kansas State	.570
12	South Carolina	.568
13	Michigan State	.537
14	Georgia	.535
15	Wisconsin	.458
16	Michigan	.431
17	Baylor	.391
18	TCU	.331
19	Nebraska	.258
20	Clemson	.198
21	Penn State	.138
22	Texas	.133
23	West Virginia	.124
24	Southern Miss	.072
25	Missouri	.059