Spring Break
Who should be college football's national champion?
Kellen Holtzman and Jared Jackson
Issue date: 1/15/09 Section: Sports
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Florida earned the right to be on top. The system may not be fair, but it was set up to crown one national champion. And it did.
The issue goes beyond whether or not Utah is deserving of a stake as national champions. Did Utah do everything that was asked of it? Yes. The Utes beat every team on their schedule, including six bowl participants. They won the Mountain West Conference title and beat an Alabama team in the Sugar Bowl that spent about half of the season as the country's top team.
But that doesn't mean Utah deserves the distinction of being named champions or co-champions. Nor does any team have the right to be called a co-champion.
College football is unique in lacking a tournament or playoff to crown national champions. Proponents of the BCS system cite the emphasis that the system places on winning in the regular season.
However, the BCS National Championship Game was created for a reason: to determine a single winner. Florida and Oklahoma earned the right to play for a title and no other team, whether it is Utah, Texas, or USC, should interfere with it.
A joint championship between Florida and Utah would not only defeat the purpose of the BCS National Championship, but it wouldn't be fair to Oklahoma OR Florida.
Utah would get a national championship when it didn't even have to play Florida. In hindsight, Oklahoma would be better off participating in a different BCS game if that were the case, so it could stake a claim as champion.
Despite each having a loss, Texas and USC are as deserving as Utah is. It's hard to compare a team (Utah) from the MWC to teams from two "BCS" conferences, especially the Big 12.
With teams like BYU and TCU, an argument can be made that the MWC had a better season than the PAC-10. But there is a reason why the Pac-10 has an automatic bid to BCS games and the MWC does not.
Critics will point to Utah's regular season win over Pac-10 member Oregon State. Utah knocked off the Beavers 31-28 at home, while the Trojans went on the road to Corvallis, OR and lost 27-21.
That's great, but Utah didn't play all of the other teams that USC did, making the Oregon State match-ups hard for me to use as justification over the Trojans.
Utah also boasts three wins over top-15 teams (No. 12 TCU, No. 14 BYU, No. 4 Alabama) this season. But USC has wins over two top-10 teams (No. 5 Ohio State, No. 8 Penn State) on its side, as well as wins over No. 21 California and No. 23 Oregon.
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