University of No Opportunity

UNO - The University of New Orleans - is currently playing Kansas on ESPN 2. You'd think Kansas would be kicking their ass, and sadly for Kansas, they are not. This is some of the ugliest basketball I've seen in awhile. With 5 minutes left in the first there are a combined 15 turnovers. The website doesn't say how many steals, but I'll estimate about 11. UNO is 5-23 from the floor, while Kansas is only marginally better at 9-22. The announcer just informed us that UNO has scored 2 baskets in 8 minutes and yet Kansas is only up 23-13. What happened to the Kansas of Yore? Wasn't it just a few years ago that I was watching Heinrich and Collison walk all over Marquette at the Superdome in the Final Four? What happened to the fast break offense that no one could stop? I know I don't usually keep up with teams like this until March, but I swear, I didn't think it was possible for a team like the UNO Privateers to make Kansas look so bad.

I'm also watching the Holiday Bowl and I'd like to come out here and now saying that I hope Oregon gets their asses kicked. I'm quite frankly sick of listening to the whining about how they were left out of the BCS and I'm sorry, but they didn't deserve it.

I absolutely hate the PAC 10. I don't see this as a viable conference and I'd love to see USC play some of the top teams out of the Big 10, SEC and Big 12. As much as I hate to admit it, USC is a good team, and they'd win a lot of games. But I think that there's absolutely no way that USC would be an undefeated team if they played in another conference.

In addition, three barely there wins over 3 much lower ranked opponents doesn't do much to make me see the Pac 10 (or Oregon) as a viable, competitive outfit. Maybe I'm a homer and maybe I'm biased, but I think the Rose Bowl will be more than a little interesting. I can't wait to see how USC holds up against a viable opponent. We all saw the Notre Dame game and if thats the best they can do against a 9th ranked team... My biggest fear is that they trample all over Texas because we'll never hear the end of it.

One final thought on USC. They cannot threepeat. Should they win the Rose Bowl, they will NOT have won three straight. Sure, they finished first in the final AP poll at the end of the 2003 season. However, there's that pesky nonsense about LSU, not USC, being awarded the fabulous crystal ball accessory flair. It's both ironic and moronical for ABC "the official broadcasters of the BCS" to be touting USC as a threepeat champion when the BCS does not sanction the AP championship. And by calling USC a threepeat champion, are they admitting that they messed up in 2003? Are they subtly saying that, hey, maybe this BCS stuff isn't so great, because clearly, in retrospect, USC is a good team, so maybe we should have put them in the Sugar Bowl? And with that retrospective thought process, do we keep LSU in the Sugar Bowl or does Oklahoma get to stay? With the deductive reasoning that shows that USC has turned out to be pretty good, so they should have played, don't we keep LSU? They ended up ranked in the top 10 again this year whereas Oklahoma is unranked and playing in the Holiday Bowl.

Clearly I'm taking this a little overboard, but I'm just saying that it can't be both ways. But I love the thought of the bass ackwards BCS basically admitting they scewed up and they probably don't even realize they've admitted it. I wonder whose ass they'll be kissing next year at this time.