[Vision2020] LA Times: After this title game, it's clear Boise State is tops

[Carl Westberg]

Boise State ended up ranked number 5 in the AP poll.  I can't bring myself 
to drink the Bronco kool-aid, but it looks like this will make the powers 
that be seriously consider a true playoff system for Division 1 football.  
Finally.  I take a deep breath, avoid gag reflex, and offer Boise State 
congratulations on a great season.  I don't feel so good....   Carl Westberg 
Jr.


>From: "Art Deco" <deco at moscow.com>
>To: "Vision 2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: [Vision2020] LA Times:  After this title game,it's clear Boise 
>State is tops
>Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 07:38:34 -0800
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-dwyre9jan09,0,3129514.story?track=tothtml
>
>BILL DWYRE
>After this title game, it's clear Boise State is tops
>Bill Dwyre
>
>January 9, 2007
>
>GLENDALE, ARIZ. - It all became clear here Monday night. They played the 
>national championship game in a football stadium named after a university 
>that doesn't have a football team. And neither team that played should be 
>national champion.
>
>Got it? Make sense?
>
>Florida sent the Big Ten back to the drawing board, where all Ohio State 
>players will be made to write, 500 times, "We are dull and slow and in 
>denial about both." Tutors will be brought in to help with the spelling of 
>the word "denial."
>
>When the No. 2 Gators stunned the previously unbeaten and No. 1 Buckeyes, 
>41-14, in the opulent new University of Phoenix Stadium, it meant at least 
>three things:
>
>.  That at least half of the announced crowd of 74,628 believed once-beaten 
>Florida was now No. 1;
>
>.  That the other half, those dressed in red and gray, no longer gave a 
>damn;
>
>.  That neither team ended the season unbeaten.
>
>Oh, yes. There was one team in Division I, only one, that made it all the 
>way through, 13-0 no less. No. 1 Boise State.
>
>Laugh if you will. Argue that there ought to be a Sacramento State Rule in 
>college football, as in, no team that plays Sacramento State can end up No. 
>1. But 13-0 is 13-0, and that 13th was, after all, against Oklahoma in the 
>Fiesta Bowl exactly a week ago, in this same stadium designed by an 
>architect who, apparently, had a mushroom fetish. Call it the Big 'Room.
>
>That victory, as you remember, was in perhaps the most exciting college 
>football game ever played, won at the end by players and a coach willing to 
>try hook-and-ladder and Statue-of-Liberty plays and go for the win with a 
>two-point conversion in overtime when the football book, especially the one 
>followed by the Big Ten, says you take no chances there.
>
>So why not Boise State? Why not, just once, when David kicks Goliath's 
>butt, call it real instead of a fluke. We all know it is not going to 
>happen, that the people who decide these things are programmed toward, and 
>by, the big college football corporations, as are the computers.
>
>But let's make the arguments, just for fun. These are the reasons Boise 
>State should be No. 1:
>
>.  The Fun Factor. The Broncos dared to be different, to try stuff. And it 
>wasn't just garbage concealing the fact that they weren't good. Ask 
>Oklahoma.
>
>.  The Blue-Collar Factor. They did what they did with a budget that 
>amounts to what Ohio State and Florida spill over the bar, with players 
>that Ohio State and Florida wouldn't even invite to the party.
>
>.  The Cinderella Factor. Their success encourages every mid-size program 
>to now believe it actually has a chance, leading to more of them trying 
>harder, being more innovative and making the quality of the college game 
>that much better.
>
>.  The Fat Cats Sweaty Palm Factor. While a few of them secretly loved it, 
>Boise State made many BCS types, whose program is designed to deliver gobs 
>of money to schools who spend gobs, fairly nervous this season.
>
>.  The Color Uncoordinated Factor. Why not more orange jerseys playing 
>games on blue fields?
>
>.  And, most important, the Ian Johnson Factor. Johnson is the sophomore 
>running back from San Dimas and LaVerne Damien, who scored the winning 
>two-point conversion on the Statue-of-Liberty play against Oklahoma, then 
>proposed to his girlfriend moments later on national TV. That alone ought 
>to get your team some No. 1 votes.
>
>But so much more about Johnson is top-ranked.
>
>His father, Sterling, an L.A. firefighter, bought a house for him in Boise, 
>and told him that the mortgage was his responsibility. "He told me 
>responsibility is a value," Johnson says. So, to make up the difference 
>between what his scholarship pays him in a monthly housing stipend and the 
>mortgage, Johnson took up work as a part-time plumber and also did 
>crocheting - that's right, a big-time football player doing hook and needle 
>- that he sold. His mother, Colleen, a special education teacher at San 
>Dimas High, taught him how to do that.
>
>Recently, the NCAA, for reasons unexplained and not yet officially decreed, 
>told him the crocheting might be a violation and he has to stop. So the 
>plumbing, which the NCAA apparently is allowing, must carry the day for the 
>moment.
>
>Johnson got out from under the sink long enough to gain more than 1,700 
>yards this season. He played more than two quarters of one game with a 
>punctured lung that left him with only 30% lung capacity and became 
>potentially life threatening had he gotten on the team plane afterward and 
>tried to fly home. A doctor in San Jose diagnosed it properly and Johnson 
>missed only one game.
>
>He played the Fiesta Bowl with broken ribs still not fully healed and a bad 
>right knee that will need surgery soon to fix cartilage damage and remove a 
>cyst behind the knee. He says he will finish college, and he says he is not 
>building his life around a possible pro career. He is a student, not a 
>two-year temp auditioning for a pro contract.
>
>Johnson, and Boise State, gave us a champion's style and a winner's heart. 
>In the end, they were the little engine that could. And did.
>
>Let's raise a foam finger to Boise State.
><< lat_both.gif >>


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_________________________________________________________________
>From photos to predictions, The MSN Entertainment Guide to Golden Globes has 
it all. http://tv.msn.com/tv/globes2007/?icid=nctagline1