Football

I'm certainly not the first one to get a post about the weeks happenings out there. And the fairly obvious didn't escape the grasp of Tyler or Brett. Basically, the MWC had a very good weekend, particularly OWNING the PAC-10. (a.k.a. USC and the 9 dwarfs.) Brett covered the whole spread for the conference well, but I just want to add:

BYU over UCLA -- I missed the game, as we went to Grand Canyon for the day. (Note, it isn't The Grand Canyon. This is one of the things I learned there.) As BYU utterly destroyed UCLA, and the middle/bad portion of the rest of the conference beat up on ASU and Arizona State, maybe I'll be spending all of my Saturdays down south. Also, I've been pronouncing UCLA as "Uck-luh" for some time now. I'm now appending this to "Yuck-luh". BYU clearly more than met expectations in this game.

Utah over USU -- Utah unfortunately could not have surpassed what was expected of them without winning 70+ to nothing. Against a team so bad all you can do is not screw it up, which they didn't.

UNLV over ASU -- If you watched UNLV play Utah last year, and ASU this year, you'd think they were pretty good. If you watched any of their other games, you'd think they're terrible. I don't understand. Also, this was at ASU.

SDSU/San Jose State/North Dakota State/Wyoming -- Brett points out that Wyoming escaped vs North Dakota State, and SDSU lost to San Jose State, but "at least it wasn't North Dakota State." Actually, The gap isn't that big. A few notable teams from the tail end of Sagarin's rankings:

• #93: Northern Iowa (I-AA)
  
• #96: San Jose State
  
• #105: Washington State
• #113: North Dakota State (I-AA)
  
• #121: San Diego State
  
• #135: Utah State
• #167: Idaho

My point is that bad I-A schools (USU/SDSU/ISU/etc.) can be worse than good I-AA schools (UNI/NDS/App St. [#73]). It's certainly hard to compare the relative strength of the ends of what are really two different spectra, and we're judging off of 2 or 3 games worth of data, but according to Sagarin, North Dakota State is the 14th best I-AA team, which places them ahead of 21 I-A teams.

Professional soccer leagues in Brazil have a system where the worst teams each year move down a division, and the best teams from the lower divisions move up. This would be the equivalent of a good AAA baseball team (the Bee's for example) becoming a major league team next year while a bad MLB team (Mariners) would get pushed down to AAA. You can always earn your way back up the next year. Obviously in baseball this wouldn't work, as the minor league teams aren't independently owned and operated, but you get the idea. You actually earn your place, but we all know that college football frowns on that sort of concept.