A new decade opens with 120 teams in NCAA play all in competition for one of two spots in a game to decide who will win the ultimate prize in college athletics: The 2010 BCS National Championship.
Here on the Shortlist to the Site of the Shanghaied 'Ship we will track them all as they fall off and move up the ever dwindling roll call of championship contenders as the year goes on.
The rules for the Short List are simple and two-fold:
1) Any BCS automatic qualifying conference school and Notre Dame can lose one game to another BCS automatic berth school or Notre Dame and still remain on the Shortlist.
2) All non-automatic qualifying conference schools not named Notre Dame are removed from the Shortlist after a single loss.
This week I expect 30, or one full quarter of the teams, to be at serious risk of falling off the Shortlist after just an hour of game-play and then formally out of the the running for the year at the end of their first game right out of the gate:
Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Oregon State, Washington, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Colorado State, UNLV, New Mexico, SMU, Southern Miss, Marshal, East Carolina, Memphis, Hawai'i, Utah State, San Jose State, Bowling Green, Miami (OH), Akron, Western Michigan, Northern Illinois, Toledo, Eastern Michigan, North Texas, Florida Atlantic, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette, and Western Kentucky.
For the first time since 2006, a full year before the creation of this site, Florida, Floirda State, and Miami are all ranked. For my hometown Gators, I sense a struck by their bloated-wretched-excess-of-a-program-iceberg was what caused the condensation on BroncoGator's cheeks at the end of the 2009 SEC Championship game and that a rough disembarking with a lot of losses could be on the way sooner or later this season as a result of the collision.
I would absolutely love them to face an undefeated or one loss ACC champion to represent the SEC conglomerated-conference-superiority-complex for yet another consecutive season but maybe next year is more conducive to the Floridian orange and blue outlaw powerhouse making a contending run on the Short List I prognosticate for the ensuing season of competition. Don't worry, the locals are used to hearing that phrase where I hail from, I can assure you quite easily, so they'll survive another year without a crystal football to call their own again.
Florida State finally has a disciple of the reigning champion's coach finally no longer just waiting behind the iconic fired figurehead who once made them the second-most preeminent Floridian school. Why this is to be considered a positive thing remains to be seen as I no longer have the false idol of the Bowden patriarch to watch standing idly by, dumbfounded on the sidelines, as the Hurricanes deny him yet again for another season on the Shortlist.
Bobby Bowden took the Gator Bowl with him as his final victory over my alma-matter as part of his golden parachute and somehow a returning injured golden boy quarter-back is playing behind a proven-gold offensive line and the Sunshine State capital is smiling like they've never even seen a ball of tar on the sand as far as the eye can see from here to Arizona as far as they're concerned this preseason.
Have they watched the Florida State program the last 10 years? I know there were empty seats for such classics as the shutout at home to Wake Forest that emptied some of them with regularity recently there. How much bang for their buck the second tier state school gets in 2010 will be marginal at best I predict, but to have to play them twice for the Miami Hurricanes would be an unenviable task as the history of beating a team twice in a year often proves out.
Since this is a Miami site, as long as the Hurricanes are on the Shortlist they get the most attention devoted to them as there can be reasonably allowed in a given week thanks to the level of legitimate competition they play. As lightly loaded as UM's opener is due to the competition level provided by the Rattlers, I admit the twisted symmetry of the most talented in-state big three member having to schedule the other team from the state capitol since our cowardly Gator rivals choose to run and hide from "The U" again this year and instead schedule the other Miami (Ohio) as an opener this weekend makes me chuckle.
Next week the Hurricanes should be primed and ready for the siege of the Horseshoe in the inter-regional showdown of the year after a cakewalk in-state warm up this week, but this week as the author of this article I must confess I'm more concentrated on the game with the team in the orange and blue uniforms I do think will earn one of the coveted two spots at the top of the Shortlist when it's all over this year instead of the team I think will take the other spot on top of the Shortlist wearing orange and green that I matriculated at, as the Boise State Broncos clash with our rival the Virginia Tech Hokies, the preseason ACC favorites of the media.
After three years and a natural recruiting cycle on the job, Randy Shannon has the top BCS school in the country academically, now his window opens to match that on the field as well as he has in the classroom for the first time since he was promoted to his current role. He will have to lead his veteran team through a daunting out of conference and ACC gauntlet of a schedule to achieve what should be this edition of the Miami Hurricanes' goal for the year, the BCS national championship and I belive that opening weeks non-BCS school, "upset," of top 10 teams will be the first sign of just how wide open the field is this year for all competitors when Petersen's Broncos take down Beamer's Hokies.
At the rate of change I've seen happen in this sport since this article's inception Les Miles has gone from winning a championship by breaking rule one of this article's ground-rules by winning a championship in year one to now being on the hot-seat, Chris Petersen at Boise get the, "Joe Pa," treatment in the polls that year by finishing lower in the polls with a better record for his team that year only to have Urban Meyer, who got the "Joe Pa," treatment in the polls at future pathetic athletic conference on the west coast member Utah in 2005 two years before I started this article, win his second title in three years while again losing a game and finishing ahead of an undefeated school, thus "Jo Pa'ing," the school he had been, "Jo Pa'd," at just a four years previously, in year two, to watching a man who found a way to split a title in the BCS era win a championship while not have to split one with Chris Petersen and Boise State again to keep an unprecedented run of one conference hosting the national champion on its roster intact for yet another consecutive year.
Got all that? I had to, and I've had to be there every week of the regular season over the last three years watching it all unfold and now the signs are nigh. If you don't think anything and everything is on the table for this season in terms of what the future might hold, you haven't been having to pay attention to it happening right in front of our eyes of the last few seasons like I have obviously.
The staunchest of all traditional college football repositories in the Big 10 plus one is now ready to stage a championship game while their schools enjoy bye weeks and they decide which trophy games will be no longer annually contested in addition to the ones that have already been discontinued! Add in the repentantly scolded Trojans here in L.A. auditioning for the role of 1994's Pat Nix led Auburn Tigers and this season is even more insane than your standard one right from the start.
I see a rapidly improving at his job Randy Shannon looking and sounding more confident than he ever has as head coach this year and because of that I'm extremely encouraged in my expectations for the season about to get underway. I predict a build to an orange and green versus orange and blue title game in paralel to the greatest bowl game of all time's, the 1984 Orange Bowl with now Miami being compared to it's former championship vintage, the, "Greatest College Football team of All Time," and Boise supplying the orange and blue opposition at the site of their first giant leap onto the national stage against Bob Stoops a recruiting cycle ago.
Even if the Hurricanes fail to live up to my prediction, well, like I've always maintained from year one of writing this, I put up with Larry Coker for six years, I'm more than willing to wait two more for Randy Shannon to grow into the role while he rebuilds the program from where it was when he got it.
My Legends of the Fall remain Tommy Streeter, though I was extremely tempted to change at the last second but will stay with because I think he's a gamer who will come through when the chips are down this year in the clutch on a gut instinct, and newly humbled fellow Gainesvillian Kevin Nelson. For Nelson it was a tough welcome to paradise after he made some bold predicitons on being the starter this season at MLB. But my advice for the young man is simple:"Don't do anything stupid and go hit somebody not wearing your colors on the football field, really hard."
I hope you'll join me back here next week as we sort out the pretenders and establish just who will be a true contender for the two top spots on the Shortlist in 2010.
Copyright 2010 by Christopher Whelpton for Canespace.com