USF loss - and other funness of college sports

How about that. Another top 5 team loses to an unranked opponent in the 2007 football season. For those counting, that makes a total of 6. Unreal.

For all the hubbub going into last night's showdown at Rutgers, it seems something was loss. Most glaring, we are talking about the fact that college football fans around the nation were tuned into RUTGERS VS. SOUTH FLORIDA! Seriously, what is happening in the world of college football?

No knock on the folks from Jersey and Tampa, but this is NOT the marquee matchup everyone built it up to be. Certainly you have two programs on the rise. But let's be honest here for a minute - no one REALLY cares. There is a reason that Big East matchups with BCS implications are ending up on the ESPN Thursday night game. The folks in Bristol know full well the teams gathering momentum in the Big Least cannot compete for ratings with traditional powers of other schools. Perhaps on the field the gaps are narrowing, but as polls, computers, and the much-maligned BCS shows, college football is not always about what is played on the field.

The simple fact is, the South Florida's of the world are eons away from competing with the Texas's that dominate the national football scene (stealing of hand signs be damned). Years of prestige, history, fan support, and tradition cannot be dethroned by an upset victory over West Virginia - just like Rutgers couldn't dominate the scene in 2006 with the victory over Louisville.

In plain English, Louisville, South Florida, West Virginia, Cincinnatti, UCONN, and the rest of the Big East are not football powers. ESPN may want them to be for ratings - just like they want Matt Ryan from Boston College to be the Heismann trophy winner - but facts show these teams cannot compete on the bottom line with the major programs in the country. They may sneak up every now and then and take a bite out of national title picture, but at the end of the day - Texas, Oklahoma, USC, Florida, LSU, Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame (dammit all), Auburn, and the other big schools will find themselves pairing off for the title.

However, these games do make Thursday nights pretty fun...