sportsRANT: Rutgers wrencher

So, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights have finally beaten a top-15 ranked team.

‘The Judge’s 33yard field goal with 18 seconds remaining sealed a 28-25 come-from-behind victory over 3rd ranked Louisville, Thursday, and shattered their Big East rivals’ hopes of a National Championship bid. It also dropped another football sized monkey wrench into the creaking BCS machinery.

Although one-by-one the three undefeated Big East pretenders are picking themselves off the challenge from the maligned conference just won’t go away. Rutgers defeated previously unbeaten Louisville who just last week won-out over lossless West Virginia; and Rutgers have yet to get past West Virginia whom they play in their final regular-season game if they are to go undefeated.

If they do remain unconquered. If  only Ohio State or Michigan remain undefeated with them in the rankings, then do they Jersey boys deserve a run at the title?

Having shutdown a potent Louisville defence for two and a half quarters after the Cardinals explosive 25 point start – something the vaunted Miami defence couldn’t muster – and with that ranked victory in hand they surely have a case to make.

In the end it’ll come down to what feels most right, and this ‘cake’ still has some baking to do yet.

But some straws the BCS will be clinging to are:

• An emotional Rutgers outfit stumble next week or at the least in that final game against the Mountaineers.
• The USC Trojans stride to their rescue with statement wins against Notre Dame and Cal to stake a strong enough case as a one loss team
• One-loss Florida rises to the occasion and finds the offence to impress as much as its defence
• Notre Dame’s hype machine (and Brady Quinn) goes into over drive after a comprehensive defeat of the Trojans and the Golden Domers surf the tide of rising public relief into Title contention.
• Ohio State’s showdown with Michigan is a decided by a jaw-dropping bone-headed blown call and the national outcry demands a rematch for the national championship — Hey! That’s one they *can* control … Isn’t it?

However it all turns out … ask yourself is this (the dialog and discussion and debate generated) better or worse than a decisive cash rich playoff tourney to definitively decide the best team?

Then ask yourself this … ’the best team at what’?

At sudden death football? At beating the attrition of a season’s battering? At copping the best matchup?

What do we really want from our BCS National Championship? When we know that, then we can rant about how shoddy the formula is.

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