Should #1 and #2 be allowed to play each other again in the BCS national championship game? No, of course not. Regardless of whether they’re the two best teams in the country at the end of the year, it would be pointless to allow a rematch in the national title game. That would be like allowing the Yankees and Red Sox to replay each other in the World Series after the historical 2004 American League Championship that Boston won in 7 games. They were clearly the two best teams in the majors that year, but that’s the way it goes in sports. We could go back over the past 20-30 years and find dozens of examples where the best teams didn’t play for the national or world championship in any sport, college or pro.

BYU has more in common with Notre Dame besides independence. Both programs had lofty expectations for this season. Both have three losses. And both could easily be undefeated at this point in the season, were it not for turnovers. Notre Dame had 13 giveaways in their three losses (5 vs. USF, 5 vs. Michigan, 3 vs. USC) and BYU had 12 (2 vs. Texas, 7 vs. Utah, 3 vs. TCU) and those stats aren’t totally reliable for the Cougars because they had 2 other botched punts against Texas Christian which were essentially turnovers that gave the Horned Frogs possession inside the red zone on one and on the BYU 37-yard line on the other.

With Pat Forde’s recent defection to Yahoo! Sports from ESPN.com and Bruce Feldman’s departure earlier this fall from ESPN to CBS College Sports, ESPN doesn’t even rank in the top 3 for online college football analysis. The top three online college football writing staffs are now at Yahoo!/Rivals (Forde, Ahern, Buchanan, Huguenin, Dienhart), SI.com (Mandel and Staples) and CBS (Feldman and Dennis Dodd).

You’ll note I left Graham Watson and Dan Wetzel off the Yahoo! Sports lineup and that’s because they’re not college football experts or analysts. A recent example of Watson’s shoddy and opinionated reporting refers to Mike Leach as having a “sordid past” while covering his interest in the Arizona head coaching position. Seriously. Leach hasn’t done anything to warrant describing his past as “sordid” (which is defined as morally ignoble, base, vile, dirty, filthy). Adam James even admitted under oath that he got into the electrical closet and videotaped himself as a joke.

Speaking of James … the biggest joke among college football awards is the new “Pony Express Award” which is intended to honor the memory of former SMU running tandem of Craig James and Eric Dickerson as it searches for college football’s best tandem each season. Considering that the former Mustang tandem helped usher in the death penalty at Southern Methodist, and the fact that James misused his position at ESPN to lie and blackball Mike Leach at Texas Tech, this award has a load of baggage on its saddle already before its even been handed out for the first year.

Best potential trap game this weekend … #6 Oregon at Washington (with road game at #4 Stanford next week).

Toughest final four regular season games … #13 Michigan (at currently 5-3 Iowa, at currently 6-3 Illinois, #9 Nebraska, #29 Ohio State) – tied with – #3 Oklahoma State (#17 Kansas State, at currently 5-3 Texas Tech, at currently 4-4 Iowa State, #7 Oklahoma).