Small Taters

Poor Boise State. I don't care for college football and this is exactly why. Oh, their win sounded thrilling. I loved seeing the highlights, with the Statue of Liberty play closing it out and everything.

Even better, I learned the proper technique for a successful Hook and Ladder. Some dope in our Thanksgiving morning game always shouts "Hook and Ladder!" in the huddle, despite that we can barely complete a 3-yard pass in the November Chicago wind.

But we try it anyway, it never amounts to much, and the Boise State Hook and Ladder showed me why. We've always got the Hook at a dead stop when he catches the pass and the guy taking the lateral doing all the running. Most often, the pass-catcher gets tagged down before he can even flip it out.

Boise's was classy as hell, where the pass-catcher started running laterally, with the 2nd man coming the other direction for the pitch. It was like a reverse within a Hook and Ladder. If Brian Baldinger were there, he'd have shouted "Hook and Ladder! And a DOUBLE reverse!" before his head finally and mercifully exploded.

It all made me look up the name of their mad friggin' genius of a coach. It's Chris Petersen, and he's a first-year coach! Unbelievable the way he got those guys to slug their way onto the biggest ... check that ... a big stage.

Boise State was barely allowed to play in a BCS bowl at all from what I've read. Now they finish undefeated and the most thrilling team in a while, and no one gets to see them play again, let alone prove they can be beaten.

I won't belabor it, but what's the point of playing all these games if you can go undefeated and win nothing? A few years ago, ESPN's catch phrase for college football was "Every game counts." And right away, as a college football detractor, I wanted to know how it is that every game counts.

For the most part, once a team loses a game (or to be thorough, let's say 2), none of their games count anymore. They're no longer in the running for the title.

And in Boise State's case, none of their games counted from the beginning. They beat all comers, now it's just over. I'm no college football expert or even a fan, but I have enough common sense to see that none of their 13 wins counted for anything.

They may be the best team of all time. They may have flawlessly run the Fumblerooski, The Jerry Lewis, and The Habeas Corpus to beat Ohio State. I'd watch, but apparently there's no need to have the game. A bunch of old farts will have a vote to tell everyone what's what. That's way more exciting than a football game.