Traffic in South Florida delayed both schools team buses from arriving at the site of the BCS national title game on time as scheduled, a trivial tidbit to the season's final game you'd be excused for not knowing.
Oklahoma's record-setting offensive unit did eventually make it, but if you watched Florida's 24-14 win over the Sooners, you'd be excused for not knowing that either.
Because what took the field was trivial compared to the biblical 702-point offense that burned through the Big 12 and burned out scoreboards.
After a season in which they spent more time scoring in the 60s than Tiger Woods in his best week, Oklahoma's high-octane offense played like it had a pound of sugar in its gas tank, a herky-jerky rendering of a once prolific offense.
It was less like they were playing football and more like every member of the team had been simultaneously asked to recite the alphabet backwards. It was like watching Usain Bolt run the 100-meters only after twirling around enough to make himself dizzy.
And in the end it rendered 360 yards. Two interceptions. Fourteen measly points.
One awfully familiar feeling.
Another year, another bowl loss for Oklahoma. And it only seems to be getting worse.
FanHouse gathers around the TV to bring you insights from Bowl Season '08.
This is the big one, the final game of the 2008-2009 college football season between national powers Oklahoma and Florida. All week there's been grousing about the legitimacy of the BCS or lack thereof, whether this is even a championship game, blah blah blah.
Who cares! Its an incredible matchup between the most productive offense in modern college football history and one of the fastest teams in college football history. The last two Heisman Trophy winners -- Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford and Florida moose of a man Tim Tebow -- will be on the field. We've got South vs. Southwest, two explosive offenses, at least one team that has shown it can play defense, all the bright lights and a truckload of expectations.
Our FanHouse BCS Championship Game Live Blog will commence at 8 PM ET. Be there. Chat application after the jump.
Thursday night, Florida and Oklahoma will meet in Miami to play the BCS Championship Game. The winner of that game will be regarded as the national champion by their fans, by the BCS, and by the coaches who are forced to declare them as such. Nobody else has to acknowledge their legitimacy, and nobody else should.
The reasons why you, the fan, shouldn't let the BCS tell you who the national champion is are many, but they all center around the same problem. The polls, both human and computer, have far too much say in determining who gets to play for this bogus national title which usually proves to be about as legitimate as a politician's apology. Sometimes the polls get it right; more often, the poll voters whiff it.
This year the pollers sent the Gators and Sooners to the title game. A few weeks back that seemed like a reasonable conclusion. The Gators beat Alabama, the No. 1 team in the country, in the SEC championship game. The Sooners made a little less sense, given that they'd lost to Texas, a team which seemed to have a pretty strong claim themselves. But two horrible miscalculations screwed everything up, just like always.
"With us being in Florida and playing against Florida, everybody's going to think Tebow should have won the Heisman," Franks said. "But the right person won the Heisman, and we're going to go out there and show everybody the reason why he won it."
Exhibit B:
"If you look at the three best quarterbacks in the country, they came from the Big 12,"
Exhibit C:
"The three best receivers in the country came from the Big 12. The three best tight ends came from the Big 12. So we've faced some great offenses, and a lot of people don't understand that other conferences don't have what we face."
And with that, ESPN now has more than enough filler for the next few days of idle chatter before the big game. This is nothing new for Oklahoma before a BCS Championship game -- more on that in a moment -- and frankly, Franks wasn't finished talking.
Few things awe people more than the act of speed. I sit here writing this while the Daytona 500 plays out on my television screen, cars ripping across asphalt at nearly 200 miles an hour. The main event at the Olympic games is the 100 meter dash. In college football, our fastest players have quite often been amongst the most celebrated.
Reggie Bush and Adrian Peterson came along and spent three seasons simply running right by defenders. They gave way to Ted Ginn who capped his career with a kick return touchdown that was Ohio State's lone highlight in January's BCS Championship Game.
But now that those guys are gone, who is left to fill the void as captivating speedster?
For players already on college rosters, Clemson has two of the zoom zoomiest around in receiver/returner Jacoby Ford and tailback CJ Spiller, both sophomores. There are other players out there yet to make their mark and we'll be on the lookout for them. One such burner is Jamere Holland, a redshirt freshman receiver at USC who clocked somewhere in the 10.3 range in the 100 meters in high school.
Florida sophomore receiver Percy Harvin is also a superb choice, weaving expertly through defenses any time he so much as has a step on a defender. West Virginia junior tailback Steve Slaton has excellent speed and is a worthy candidate. Junior Arkansas tailback and Heisman Trophy runner-up Darren McFadden is an obvious selection here. Finally, there is junior Texas tailback Jamaal Charles who ran somewhere in the 10.2 range in high school and owns several long touchdown runs to his name.
Among incoming recruits, many people have made comparisons between Louisiana's Joe McKnight (a USC signee) and Reggie Bush, but McKnight is probably a step slower with a personal best of 10.71. There are some reports of him having clocked a 10.4, but I have yet to find anything legitimate and official backing that up. He's definitely a playmaker but I'm not sure he's quite in that class of guy who simply runs right by college defenders as Peterson and Bush and Ginn were able to do.
My nominee among this year's incoming freshmen to fill the speed vacuum would be tailback Jahvid Best, a 10.41 runner who has signed with California.
Noble reader: now that you've seen my list, I ask you now who else should be under consideration as an impact player with awe-inspiring speed? Feel free to leave a comment below.
This is part 1 of what I hope will be a weeklong series about what went wrong in the Chiefs' embarassing loss to the Colts.
My first target for blame is the media, simply because of its relevancy after the BCS Championship game. I was sitting at a Buckeye bar with a bunch of friends watching the Gators absolutely pummel the Buckeyes. I'm not a Buckeye fan, nor do I dislike them. With college football, I just like to watch a good football game. Still, it was a very nice pick-me-up to see other fans suffer as much as I suffered after watching my Chiefs lose just as embarassingly to the Colts.
The BCS Championship game was like the Colts vs. Chiefs game in so many ways. First of all, the blue team beat the red team in a very high-stakes game. Secondly, and more interestingly, the Gators went into the game as the team that didn't belong. Instead of the nation celebrating Florida's berth in the championship game, it seemed as if the media was more interested in reasons why Florida didn't belong there than why they might have belonged. All the media attention seemed to surround Troy Smith, Florida's terrific defense, Jim Tressel's sweater vest, and the Ohio State Buckeyes' dominating defense. It's almost a surprise the Buckeyes weren't handed the BCS championship trophy without even playing in the game.
Traffic in South Florida delayed both schools team buses from arriving at the site of the BCS national title game on time as scheduled, a trivial tidbit to the season's final game you'd be excused for not knowing.
Thursday night, Florida and Oklahoma will meet in Miami to play the 
FanHouse gathers around the TV to bring you insights from 
This is part 1 of what I hope will be a weeklong series about what went wrong in the Chiefs' embarassing loss to the Colts.
