Why all the Parity?

Whether it's Clemson losing at home to Maryland or Wake Forest losing at home to Navy or Florida losing at home to Ole Miss or Georgia getting beat 31-0 in 30:00 minutes of football or a pathetic Michigan team coming back from 18 down to beat top 10 Wisconsin or USC getting beat 21-0 by Oregon State at half, the parady is just killing me.

I'm not sure why all of a sudden these upsets are becoming the norm in the college football world, but it all started last season when teams ranked #1 or #2 lost to unranked teams SEVEN times. I happen to think it's because every week is the super bowl. You can't afford to lose and control your own destiny. I think its ironic that the fans love an underdog, but hate the BCS. The BCS, in my opinion, is what causes all of these upsets. The pressure is on every week to perform as good as the number next to your team name and god forbid if you don't, you lose hope in winning a national title. Pre-season rankings are just for the fans and shouldn't even come into play until week 7 or 8. They are strictly for the purpose of getting pre-season chatter going for the fans to talk about whose team is better and ranked higher.

USC could still be the best team in the country, but since they had one bad half of football, they are barely in the national title discussion anymore. The only thing USC should have to do since losing to Oregon State is get a lower seed than other teams (if we had a playoff). They shouldn't be considered out of the championship race. Should UNC have been left out of the chance to win a national title in basketball in 2005 when they opened with a loss to UC Santa Barbara? No.

The only thing the BCS does, that I am in favor of, is making each week so exciting knowing that you can't slip. To me, for my Missouri Tigers, it's very intense waking up every Saturday wondering if we're going to lose and take ourselves out of the race. If we get by, it's just another week that we are still at the top of the polls, controlling our own destiny. However, for my Missouri sqaud, as good as they are they have not been able to beat the two most successful programs in the Big 12, Texas and Okkahoma. They have always been the cream of the crop in the conference and when their athletes come to play it seems like Missouri's size and depth really shows.

I've been told by some die-hard, life-long Missouri fans that this team is "different." Well, we'll see how different they are starting this Saturday when Missouri tries to win in Lincoln for the first time in forever. Although Mizzou is a favorite their for the first time (which is different) they still have to run out of that tunnel and see all the red. Chase Daniel wasn't up to the challenge in Lincoln in 2006, but he must be on his A game if the Tigers want to get out of there with a win.

This game Saturday will go a long way of showing me how we are going to handle some adversity. We have not faced any this year and if something goes wrong in Nebraska, how will these "different" Tigers react? Only time will tell whether this high-powered offense, slightly above average defense and solid special teams can play with the big boys, the teams who are always up at the top, always getting the best recruits, always re-loading instead of re-building. Only time will tell.