Friday, December 05, 2008

Friday 12/05 A.M. Quickie:
BCS, SEC, Griffin, UT, Spurs, NFL Week 14

And so it has come down to this: If Oklahoma and Alabama win, they go to the national title game. If Oklahoma and Florida win, they go to the national title game (god help us all if not). If Oklahoma loses, Texas will almost certainly face the Alabama-Florida winner, even though Texas didn't win its conference division, let alone its conference.

There is your lead of today's SN column.

But let's not lose sight of the best game of the season, tomorrow: Alabama vs. Florida for the SEC title. It's AP No. 1 vs. AP No. 2 in the final regular-season game of the year. The winner (presumably) goes to the national title game. Bama has the best D in the country (or at least West of USC); Florida has the most dynamic offense in the country.

You can hate the BCS. You can hate the SEC. You can hate Saban. You can hate that I'm a Florida fan and talk about the Gators here a bit more passionately than I do about other topics. But any college football fan -- or even a casual sports fan just looking for THE college football game of the year to tune into on a cold December Saturday -- can appreciate that this sizes up as an awesome game.

Meanwhile, I was watching that Oklahoma-USC game when Blake Griffin took that shot to the jewels -- that was about as low of a blow in college hoops as I can remember. It seems fitting that, after that, he ate USC up and his inspired play was likely the difference between a close W and an emotional L in Norman.

I doubt Texas' win over UCLA in hoops was much solace to Longhorns fans freaking out about the BCS situation. But it was a signature win for their season -- it should put everyone on notice that Texas is among a very elite batch of teams for whom anything less than the Final Four should be considered a disappointment, even a failure. (UCLA remains one of them, but should take a backseat behind Texas.)

Question for UT fans: Could this year's hoops team beat last year's team with Augustine? Or how about 2 years ago with Durant? There is something to be said for mature talent trumping more talent. The NCAA Tournament is full of stories like that.

Meanwhile, maybe I was premature to call Chauncey Billups the Quarter-Season NBA MVP. Although when he struggles, you see what happens to the Nuggets.

Complete SN column here. More later. 4 p.m. tomorrow can't get here fast enough.

-- D.S.

2 comments:

Precourt said...

Texas is in the elite group, they lost to Notre Dame at a neutral site, yet not too long ago you called Notre Dame a "not top 10 good" team, just to lessen the impressiveness of UNC's victory over ND.


You started to see the light after the absolute dismantling of MSU in Detroit, you will be blinded by the end of the year.

Serious question: do you think it is possible for them to go undefeated in what seems to be a somewhat down year in the ACC.

Michael W said...

If your scenario holds true (OK, FLA, AL control their own destiny, so to speak, while TX is in if OK loses), doesn't that mean that the BCS got it right this year? I mean, if that really happens, the only possible thing to complain about is the Big 12's stupid rule. OK/TX vs. SEC champ sure looks like the best possible outcome, and it's what we're going to get... we think.

Lord help us all if Florida beats Alabama and 'bama somehow sneaks in, though.