Coach's Corner

The Bowls have now ended and we have not two, but three teams with a legitimate claim to being the best team in America. The BCS can have their version of the national champion, and the Trojans were emphatic about making their claim.

Still, the kids from Utah and Auburn have to wonder if they, and not the BCS winner, were really the best team in the country. They, too, went unbeaten this year. Who is to say that USC could have beaten either of them?

So here we are at the end of the bowls and still no system for picking a true national champion.

Regardless of the end result, after over dosing on football I’m considering checking myself in. For many years I was always involved in a bowl game myself. Consequently, I never got to really watch a lot of the other games. As a coach, if I had any extra time, I usually spent it watching more video of the up coming opponent or being involved in one of the many entertainment activities that go along with bowls.

Now that I’ve been out of the game and the Huskies haven’t been bowling, I have watched close to 15-20 bowl games a year over the past two years. It has been a mixed bag as there has been some absolutely incredible finishes and there have been some games that were real porkers.

What I realized thru the bowl season is that I really didn’t care who won any of the games. I was just watching football simply because I loved the game. I might amend that to say I’m addicted to it.

I watched the state high school championships games. I watched all the Monday night football games. I watched the Sunday night games. I even taped some of the games so I could watch them again.

Of course when you live in the woods with a big screen there is nothing else to do but still I think I did reach the edge of saturation.

I admit my west coast bias and always root for the Pac-10 or any school out of the west. Naturally I really liked Fresno State’s overtime victory over Virginia and was proud of the way Pat Hill’s group shut up the announcers who all but appointed Virginia the winner. Oregon State’s victory over Notre Dame was a mixed feeling for me because I knew Kent Baer and some of those ND assistants would be becoming Huskies. Still, after the way Notre Dame dealt with Tyrone, I maintained my conference allegiance and pulled for the Beavers.

By far the most disappointing performance by any the teams in all of the bowls was turned in by none other than the genius led California Bears. The Bears were exactly what Texas proved they were: imposters! They didn’t look like they belonged in the Rose Bowl, and may not belong in the upper echelon of the Pac-10. I can’t believe the kid from O’Dea decided to go to Cal. Sure they have had two nice years and sure they are the number 1 ranked academic public school, but they’re still the Bears. If Tedford thinks he can change that liberal faculty and their pathetic football traditions then more power to him.

His team was unprepared, uninspired, and after the first quarter, it was obvious they had read too many of their own clippings. His statements afterwards were idiotic. They stunk.

Arizona State played exactly the opposite type game by starting slow and finishing it in a rush with one of the most exciting endings of any of the bowls. But, to be real, Purdue had been to El Paso three times in a row. I don’t care what Mike Price and his staff says - that place is one of the real arm pits of college bowldom. The Sun Bowl is not only misnamed but also misplaced.

One of the most anticipated and exciting bowl match ups proved to be just that. The Louisville-Boise State game lived up to its hype with a thrilling shootout and 84 total points. Although I am basically a defensive oriented coach, I really appreciated how both schools simply discard that side of the ball and chose instead to play hybrid offenses and let the other team score so you can score right back. A football version of run and gun basketball. I actually did see a coupled of good tackles but if that’s what Hawkins is all about then I’m glad he stayed in Boise.

That leaves us to USC representing the Pac-10 (Snow White and the Nine Dwarfs). They truly have it rolling and I’m just hoping Leinart declares for the NFL and gets out of the league. Maybe LA will get a new franchise in the show and Carroll will follow him. Maybe Tyrone will pull some strings and we will just flat beat them next year and we can all go watch the Rose Bowl again. That is of course, once they give the Rose Bowl back to the conferences it belongs to.

Oh well, it was a marvelous run of games and although I missed the Silicon Valley bowl again and the Emerald bowl with Navy and New Mexico, I am proud to say I paid my dues watching somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hours of football.