Post Weekend Thoughts: Tuesday Edition

This past weekend had some good and some bad. The good was covered mostly by Nic with his excellent NFL post so I wont cover the NFL much in this recap. The bad was a little spread out, with that in mind lets get to it.

The NBA: So as we have made pretty clear here at the Upper Bowl we basically care a lot about the Jazz and a little about the rest of the NBA. As a result it would make sense that we here at the Upper Bowl were disgusted by what happened to the Jazz on Saturday. Just in case you missed it, the Jazz lost to the 2-17 Minnesota Timberwolves! Now one of the other wins that the Timberwolves have on this year is at Denver, so the loss while embarrassing is not the disgusting part. The disgusting part of this loss is that it is so typical of what the Jazz do. Case in point, the Jazz just won their 3rd straight game against the San Antonio Spurs last night, a quality opponent. The Jazz also have won 7 out of 9 games. They are a very talented team that apparently just decides not to show up on certain losses (example: Losses to OKC, Sacramento, Minnesota, Houston). Without those embarrassing losses the Jazz would be a mere 1/2 game behind the Lakers. So as a Jazz fan it is so frustrating to love a team that is so wildly inconsistent. The good from last weekend was the Jerseys that the Jazz wore on Friday night, the retro green jerseys are phenomenal, and I read this morning that they will be worn 9 more times this year. That is something to be excited about.

College Football: There were some pretty good games last week. The Thursday night game between Oregon and Oregon St was fantastic. The Cincinnati and Pittsburgh game Saturday was full of great offense and high drama. And the Texas and Nebraska game was a nail biter that went the wrong way at the end. With all the action wrapping up the end of the regular season the BCS Bowl bids were decided and the other bowl bids handed out. Here is a quick look at the matchups we care about here:

BCS National Championship: Alabama vs Texas
Rose Bowl: Ohio St vs Oregon
Orange Bowl: Georgia Tech vs Iowa
Sugar Bowl: Florida vs Cincinnati
Fiesta Bowl: TCU vs BSU
Las Vegas Bowl: BYU vs Oregon St
Poinsettia Bowl: Utah vs Cal

I think BYU and Utah both received good opponents in their respective bowls. I should say now that I think Utah definitely has the easier game, Cal is without their superstar running back Jahvid Best, and their passing game isn't very effective. Utah should continue their bowl game dominance. BYU however has a very good Oregon State team that has one heck of play maker in the backfield. I am not sure who I think will win this one yet. More to come on that another day. The matchup's that I really want to focus on right now are in the BCS National Championship, Fiesta Bowl and Sugar Bowl. First of all, after the performance Alabama had on Saturday look for them to win the championship in terribly lopsided fashion, Texas is no more deserving of the National Championship bid than TCU, BSU or Cincinnati. The real injustice of the BCS comes in the Sugar Bowl and Fiesta Bowl pairings. The 4 teams participating in those games are all deserving of BCS spots, however TCU getting paired with BSU in the Fiesta Bowl is a slap in the face to all Non-BCS schools. Here is a similitude to help you understand why. TCU and BSU are like 2 young teenagers at a big family gathering at Thanksgiving. You know how big family Thanksgivings go, the adults are at the big table and the kids are at a fold up card table in a spill safe area in another room of the house. The big table gets all the really good food while the card table gets a lot of the food but a lot of stuff just never makes it over to the card table. The oldest kids are always stuck in a precarious position. As they reach 16 or so they have shown that they are definitely too big to sit at the card table and they have behaved well enough to deserve a spot at the big table and finally get access to all the food and grown up conversation that is at the big table. But the adults kind of like the way things are and they like the somewhat exclusive nature of the big table. They do understand however that the oldest kids need to get a little something to keep them happy. Now the adults have tried having one of the oldest kids at a time at the big table. This has worked OK except now the oldest kids are really showing that they deserve to be there and they seem to really really enjoy it. Well the adults don't exactly like this so this year they have decided to sit the two oldest kids at the big table, kind of. This year the adults come up with a brilliant idea, lets have the two oldest kids sit at a different card table that is in the same room as the the big table. This way the oldest kids get access to all of the same things the adults do but none of the adults have to be embarrassed by having one of the oldest kids out eat them or show that they deserve to be there perhaps even more than the adults. And as a little twist the adults decide to make the two oldest kids compete in an eating contest, the one who wins will get some respect, but not that much because they just out ate another kid, not an adult.

Now this may or may not have been what your families Thanksgivings are like (my bet is it's not) but this is very much like what the BCS has done to BSU and TCU this year. The two teams had stellar years and TCU in particular could play with anyone in the country. But despite all of the past success by Non-BCS teams, Utah and Boise St in particular, TCU and BSU are getting the ultimate slap in the face and being told that they are invited to the "big table" but they have to play each other! They don't get an opportunity to prove themselves against bigger name teams like Florida or Cincinnati. That way they would have had the opportunity to both go home winners and carry the Non-BCS banner into the next year. But now they will compete and one will lose and the team that wins will get very little respect for their win. In a year that we all thought that the BCS was really feeling the pressure to change soon the BCS has found a way to win yet again. Showing us even more definitively that we will never achieve a playoff in college football and the little guy will always be the little guy. BCS: 1 Million Non-BCS: 3 (the number of wins they have in BCS games)

And that is our View from the Upper Bowl for now.