Who Deserves The Irish?

I don’t understand why everyone’s default position about the most talented or best team in college football this year always goes to Alabama.  They have played two teams that are good enough to beat them all year and they are 1-1.  I’m not saying the SEC isn’t the best conference in the country, they are, and I don’t know that there is even a close second.  But if the third best team you played all year is Michigan, you didn’t play a tough schedule regardless of the conference patch on your jersey.  Alabama has beat the snot out of teams that are terrible………Western Kentucky, Western Carolina, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Florida Atlantic………….and they have looked very pedestrian against teams that are half decent. 

Calm down guys, we can still lose and it won't matter

I think when it comes down to the BCS National Championship Game, it should be about what teams deserve to play in that game.  With Notre Dame running the table against a schedule that included Michigan, Michigan State, BYU, Oklahoma, Stanford, and USC, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind, they deserve to be there.  So, what team deserves to play them in the title game given who they beat and who they lost to this year?  As a Florida State Seminoles fan, my answer may surprise you.

Florida

Below is a list of teams with one loss and teams they have beaten with 3 losses or less and the team they loss to and how many points they lost to them by.  This presents a resume of quality wins after the season is all played out.  Sure Kansas State beat West Virginia and at the time, WV was ranked pretty high, but as the schedule played out, that win shouldn’t mean as much since West Virginia ended up not being that good.  That seems like a pretty good measurement of who you’ve played, lost to, and beat after things all shake out.  Alabama set the precedent last year that says you don’t even need to play in your conference title game to play in the National Championship so don’t use that against Florida this year.

Florida

Texas A&M, LSU, South Carolina, Florida State

Jean shorts yes, number two, also yes

Georgia (-8)

Alabama

LSU

Texas A&M (-5)

Georgia

Florida

South Carolina (-28)

Oregon

Oregon State

Stanford (-3)

Kansas State

Oklahoma

Baylor (-28)

Manti T'eo deserves to win the Heisman Trophy

I think the National Championship game should be between the two schools I hate the most, Notre Dame and Florida.  They both have played the toughest schedules, one ran the table and one lost a game after a fumble on the goal line.  If every game really does matter, then the game needs to be determined after every game is played and not based on WHEN losses happen.  Currently, it’s all about WHEN you lose in college football and it takes away part of the entire body of work.  If Alabama had lost to A&M last week and still been playing for the SEC Championship this weekend, we would be outraged to suggest they could just win one game and be in.  The same goes for Georgia.  They got HOUSED by South Carolina and if that happened this past Saturday, they would not even be in a discussion for the right to play in Miami January 7^th.  

You need to look at the entire body of work, and for as much as I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE to say it, Florida and Notre Dame have the most impressive resumes right now and there is nothing any other team can do this weekend to convince me otherwise.  

The Sky Might Be Falling

One game does not a season make, and if I’m looking at things with the glass half full, the Bears have lost to the Packers, Texans, and 49ers this year, the sky isn’t falling.  They lost two of those games with Cutler out and one game when they lost Forte.  The defense has played one really bad game this year and it was last night.  I still think, depending on the health of Jay Cutler, and this would be assuming he doesn’t miss any more games, that they can finish 4-2 or 3-3 giving them an 11-5 or 10-6 record and hopefully securing the 5^th seed in the NFC.  

Don't worry bud, I'm sad too

Here’s the deal why, as a Bears fan, you can still convince yourself this team can make a run:

• The Bears still have a good defense.  Like I said, one game does not a season make.  It’s the NFL, not college.  Urlacher, Briggs, Peppers, Tillman, and Jennings are all still healthy. 
• Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffrey, although rusty last night, and both guys obviously had no rapport with Campbell, are still a very good WR combo, the best we have ever seen in Chicago.
• Matt Forte and Michael Bush are still one of the best 1-2 RB combos in all of football. 
• Jay Cutler makes a BIG difference with this team.  In the games he’s started and finished in the past two years, the Bears are 14-4. 
• The 5^th seed will most likely play either at New York or Dallas, and either of those would be winnable games
• Assuming they won, they would most likely play at Atlanta, another winnable game. 
• And assuming they win there, they would play either at San Fran or at Green Bay.  A tough game no doubt, but it’s hard to beat a team twice in the same season, or 3 times in the case of the Packers should Green Bay beat the Bears at Soldier Field in 4 weeks. 

 After watching last night, it’s very hard to hold this perspective, but the Bears are still 7-3 and still play 4-5 of their 6 remaining games against teams that won’t be in the playoffs. 

I can still take us to the promise land guys

Now………..with all that said, last night was embarrassing.  Every aspect of the game was poorly played and I turned the game off at halftime because I felt sorry for the team I was rooting for.  Jason Campbell, for someone who started 71 career games in the NFL, looked worse than Caleb Hanie.  The defense got punched in the mouth and never responded.  Mike Tice continues to display a lack of creativity on the offensive side of the ball.  The 49ers looked like a far superior team in every single aspect of the game.  It was a worse loss than week 2 at Green Bay for the simple fact that the strength of this team in the defense, played like an old, slow, bad unit.  In the Packers loss (and even against Houston), there was something to hang your hat on (the defense played well), but last night, you could only walk away feeling thankful that the game ended and the NFL didn’t make teams play 5 quarters. 

It’s hard to call any game in an NFL season a must win but Sunday against the Vikings will determine the course of the rest of the season.  If the Bears win, we can all take a deep breath and start to fill up our fan glasses half full again.  If the Bears lose, they put themselves in danger of not making the playoffs and we will start hearing rumblings of coaching changes, the defense being too old, and Cutler not being a franchise guy.