ATLANTA (AP) - Enough with those jokes about the Big East. West Virginia clearly deserved its place in the Bowl Championship Series. Steve Slaton rushed for a record 204 yards and three touchdowns to lead the No. 11 Mountaineers to a 38-35 victory over eighth-ranked Georgia, which couldn't take advantage of the home-field edge Monday night in the first Sugar Bowl ever played outside of New Orleans. West Virginia rushed the ball for [bold]386 yards[/bold] on 61 attempts. It was a close game. And if you watched you couldn't tell what was going to happen, until West Virginia faked a punt in the final minutes of the game... Georgia was poised to get the ball back when West Virginia dropped back to punt on fourth-and-6 at the Bulldogs 48. Phil Brady hauled in the long snap but took off running, gaining 10 yards on the fake and a game-clinching first down. Congratulations to WVU on what was probably their biggest win, ever.
all I know is that my homeboys at USC are gonna SQUASH those rednecks from Texas tomorrow! [bold]Go Trojans!!!!![/bold]
wtf is the sugar bowl ive heard of the super bowl but never the sugar bowl then again im not american and i dont live in america.
It's American college football -- real football, not soccer! The college football system, here in America, is difficult to describe (you can ask anyone this.) Instead of a playoff to determine the champion, the top 2 teams play for the championship -- the two teams are decided by coaches, journalists, and computers. College football gets increasingly criticized every year for not having a real playoff system. There's 4 main bowls called the Bowl Championship Series, [bold]BCS[/bold] for short. They consist of The Rose Bowl (Pasadena, CA), The Orange Bowl (Miami, FL), The Sugar Bowl (New Orleans, LA), and the Fiesta Bowl (Tempe, AZ.) Usually 2 of them are played on New Year's day, a third one on Jan. 3, and the fourth and final bowl, which is the championship game, on Jan. 4. This year the Championship game is The Rose Bowl, but next year it will be one of the other 3, and so on, they rotate every year. The main thing you need to know about the Sugar Bowl, or any other BCS bowl for that matter, is that it pays pays a ton of money. For each BCS game, each team will get paid $14M (about 10 million pounds.) The teams in the championship will get even an extra few million thrown in. That's way more money than a non-BCS bowl, like for instance, the Peach Bowl, that did have a great matchup, paid a measely $2.4M. (The rest of what I wrote here, I was going to cut out because it was extremely boring and dull. But I though, what the heck... leave it in. If you think you can handle it, read on.) Before college football was played on a national-scale, teams just used to play other teams that were close to them, geographically. Eventually these groups of teams would group together to form a Conference. If you won your conference champion, that was the end of the year for you. There's about 12 conferences in college football, now, [bold]but some are better than others, and this is what brings much of the criticism to the BCS[/bold]. Some conferences have names like The Pac-10, because they're located along the Pacific ocean, and there's 10 teams in the conference. As time went on, and cross-country travel got easier for teams, people looked to make some money off of college football by paying 2 teams to come play in their city. It started out with a few bowl games each year, but today there are about 26. Most bowls developed relationships with the individual conferences, and would invite one champion from each. The Rose Bowl used to be played between the champion from the Pac-10, and the Big 10. Conferences were paid big bucks to send their teams to bowls, especially big ones like the Rose Bowl, that were sure to be entertaining. At some point, college football decided it wanted to have a national champion -- one team that was dominant over all the others. The AP Poll, or the Associated Press Poll, was made up of sportswriters who would vote on who they thought the best team was in the country. Football is won on the field, not by judges, so for a lot of people, voting for the National Champion was unnatural. But, on the other hand, the producers of bowl games, and schools made a lot of money with the system they had, so they settled on a new system: the BCS. The BCS would use votes from coaches, and sportswriters, and statistical information like wins and losses, strength of schedule, and margin of victory to compute the top 2 teams in college football. Then the 2 teams would play for the National Championship. Fingers... tired. Brain... hurting. Must... end... this... message.
This year is one of the few years that you had only 2 teams that went undefeated: USC and Texas so it was easy to set the main championship game. There's always a debate over who goes to which bowl game. Not so much this year as the actual #1 vs #2 and both are the only undefeated teams left. You also have games like last nights orange bowl. You've got Penn State-ranked #3 with 1 loss vs Florida state/ranked #22 with 4 losses-?. FSU just happened to win their conference championship game and got the automatic bid. Screwed was Oregon,which had 2 losses and was ranked at #5 in the bcs poll. I think the top 6 teams should get the bcs bowl games.This would cut down on the debate of who should get which bowl game. Every smaller division of college football has a playoff system,just like high school and the pros. Division 1 schools would lose out on those millions they get every year from those bowl sponsors/tv rights. I think they could still make that money with the playoff system. It all comes down to all schools with conferences have to split the money of those bowl games.Even the sorry ass schools that win 1 or 2 games gets the same amount of the conference champion team. Big 10 has eleven teams-need a new name like Big 11! LOL 7 of those big 10 teams went to bowl games. All that money is pooled together for those bowl games and divied up 11 ways. Penn state recieved the same amount as Illinois. The independents don't have to split the money with anyone. Notre dame keeps all their share for the Fiesta bowl,which is why they'll probably never join a conference. It all comes down to $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ We need a playoff system for Division 1 NCAA football! 1 outright champion-no co-champions,less confusion-except who gets into the playoffs. My 2 cents worth! Edit, a few #,s had to be fixed.
[Just adding to what Saugmon said] Notre Dame is definitely happy to be independent, for this year at least. They have their own television deal with NBC, too. Notre Dame needs only to finish in the top 12 to be eligible for a BCS game. Compare that to Oregon's #6 finish, and no takers. I wasn't aware that the Big 10 had 7 teams make bowl appearances, but it wouldn't be as sweet of a payday if it weren't for both Penn State and Ohio State's appearance in the BCS. [bold]Oops, I just realized: For each team that makes the BCS, their conference will be rewarded $14 mil. (It's a group effort to crown the champion.) In Notre Dame's case it does take home all the money.[/bold] I think, if there were a playoff system, everyone would still stand to make the same amount of money. Think about it: are you really going to watch more or less football than you used to? I think it's going to take some work, but eventually we'll get a playoff.
hmm, rose bowl. I think Texas is gonna win, at least I hope so, there's 3 minutes left in the game and their down 5, USC has possession.
what you talkin about weazel <?> j/k i have no idea what they are talking about i live in australia where everyone watches rugby and stuff... (i myself am not a big fan)
I live in Philadelphia and had this German musician staying with me for a couple of weeks as part of this cultural exchange thing. He wanted to see a football game so I brought him to see the eagles. After about an hour of being totally confused, he said "No wonder soccer never caught on in the United States; you can't get up and get something to eat every five mins." I got a bit of a chuckle out of it; there might actually be some truth to this observation.
