The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins is the daughter of my all-time favorite sportswriter, Dan Jenkins, and an insightful sportswriter in her own right. In this column, she eviscerates the Bowl Championship Series and everything it stands for in classic Jenkins family style:

Try to find some legitimacy in the Bowl Championship Series. Go ahead, try. Exert all of your ability, industry and intelligence toward the task. You can’t do it. The fact of the matter is that the treasure called the college football postseason has become buried beneath corporate scams. All you need to know is that the Fiesta Bowl has a CEO. His name is John Junker, and when he testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce last year in defense of the BCS, he actually called the bowl games “independent business units” and referred to universities as “customers.”
When a sports organization is more concerned with revenue distribution than with fair competition, it is asking for problems.

The BCS system is the natural outgrowth of corrupt big-time college athletics, a subject examined in previous posts here, here, here, here and here. The good news is that the market forces of big-time college athletics are pushing the system toward change as the relative few universities that make money off of their football and basketball programs likely will likely gravitate in a few years into a collection of “super conferences” similar to the divisions of the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. The bad news is that many of the traditional rivalries of college football and basketball will be lost in the process.
Is the money worth that?

Houston Cougars 34 Southern Miss 20

The Cougars (10-3, 8-1) won their first Conference USA football championship in ten years with a Friday night win over Southern Miss (8-5, 7-3) before a raucous crowd of 32,000 at Robertson Stadium on the UH campus (that’s star RB/WR Anthony Alridge conducting the UH band during the post-game celebration). After a seesaw first half, the Coogs blew a chance of taking the halftime lead when time expired with UH at the Southern Miss two-yard line. But the Cougars regrouped and dominated the second half to pull out the win. The offensive stars were QB Kevin Kolb and WR Vincent Marshall, but the unsung heroes of the game were the UH defensive players, who limited Southern Miss to 122 yards total offense in the 2nd half. The Cougars will play Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina (7-5,3-5) from the Southeastern Conference in the Liberty Bowl on Friday, December 29th at 3:30 pm on ESPN HD.

Texans 23 Raiders 14

In a game that set back offensive football to before the invention of the forward pass, the Texans (4-9) defense played well and forced five turnovers to pull out a win despite the fact that the Texans’ offense managed only 122 yards total offense. The Raiders offense was horrifying, scoring just one TD while fumbling three times, missing three field goals, and allowing five sacks to go with two interceptions. Except for the turnovers, the Texans were worse as overwhelmed Texans QB David Carr finished 7-of-14 for 32 yards and did not complete a pass in the final 32 minutes. Inasmuch as Carr was sacked five times for 37 yards, the Texans finished the game -5 yards passing, which is not going to do much for Carr’s QB rating.

Despite Carr’s abysmal showing, the primary problem with passing game continues to be the complete breakdown of the Texans’ pass protection. Neither of the Texans offensive tackles were even slowing down the Raiders’ defensive ends as they rushed Carr, so the Texans QBr barely had time to drop back, much less survey the field and throw a competent pass. The Texans play the suddenly hot Titans (5-7) next Sunday at Reliant Stadium in Vince Young Bowl II, and then visit New England the next weekend before ending the season at home against the Colts (10-2) and the Browns (4-8). Getting one win in those final four games is possible, but certainly not likely for a team as bad as the Texans. So, my pre-season prediction of six wins for the Texans is looking like a loser.

Rice is bowl bound

Finally, congratulations to the Rice Owls (7-5,5-2) as they accepted an invitation to play in their first bowl game since 1961, the R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl at the Louisiana Superdome on Friday, Dec. 22 at 7 p.m. The Owls opponent will be Sunbelt Conference champ Troy (7-5, 6-1), which was blown out only once this season (56-0 at Nebraska) and played tough (losing 24-17) at Florida State early in the season (the Seminoles beat the Owls 55-7 two weeks later). The bowl game will be televised on ESPN2 HD.

By the way, most Houstonians (and most of the nation, for that matter) will not be able to watch Rutgers play Kansas State in the Texas Bowl at Reliant Stadium on the evening of December 28th or Texas Tech play Minnesota in the Insight Bowl on the evening of December 29th. Both games are being televised by the NFL Network, which — as noted in these prior posts — the NFL owners are withholding from most viewers who receive their television through cable companies. What holiday spirit those NFL owners have!