King, good luck and enjoy your time away from your work outside the home. As the husband of the stay at home mom of my 2-year-old son I have to parse my words carefully.

Anyway, as my father used to say, the three most common words you hear at the track are coulda, shoulda, and woulda.

That sounds awfully close to the football fan saying that his 5-6 team (we'll call them the Redskins) should, could, or would be 7-4. The problem is that the 7-4 teams (call them the Giants) actually could be 10-1 and the hypothetical 10-1 team (or call them Penn State perhaps) chould be undefeated, except this all can't be true because somebody has to lose each game. Which is all just another way of confirming Bill Parcells logic that you are what you're record says you are.

The baseball version of this is "if you take away Mike Mussina's 6 starts where he got shelled in the first 2 innings his ERA would be 2.25." The problem is that if you take the pitcher whose ERA really is 2.25 and take away his 6 worst starts then its a hell of a lot lower than that.

So, if you find yourself saying that your team coulda, shoulda or woulda something, just stop and remind yourself that they would be that better record if only they were a better team.

I can't stand these bowl games anymore. They used to be great despite the fact that they were just glorified exhibitions, now they really feel like exhibitions, even the good games. My rule of thumb for which games to watch is I ask myself whether it is likely that I will even remember watching the game 2 years from now. if the answer is no I don't watch it. I watched no bowl game until yesterday, only watched the fiesta bowl yesterday, and will watch the Rose tomorrow night. That's it.

For these games to be anything other than exhibitions they need context. Sports without context is simply not watchable. That's why my wife doesn't like to watch sports with me, she doesn't know one game from the rest. Bowl games simply have no context anymore. The Rose Bowl used to be a must see almost every year, same two conferences, even if both teams were not great, the game still felt like it meant something. Same for the Orange and the Sugar with the conference tie-ins. These games were memorable.

If we're not gonna have a true playoff, can we please go back to the old system, I would gladly trade in the "BCS championship game" for the old bowl system which year after year yielded multiple good games. One example, the classic Orange Bowl between Bernie Kosar's Miami team and the Nebraska team with Mike Rozier and Irving Fryar was one of the greatest games ever. Does anyone care, or beside me does anyone even remember, that Texas was undefeated and ranked second going into the bowls. Does anyone care that Texas didn't get to face Nebraska that year. I'll answer the question: NO! nobody cares. We remember what a great game that Miami-nebraska game was. That's why I miss not seeing the USC-Penn St Rose Bowl that should have been played yesterday. If you can't give us a playoff, at least give us back the tradition that made college football unique

It seems as if a logical explanation for the risk aversion so prevalent in the football coaching ranks is the seemingly arbitrary firing decisions made by NFL GM's and school athletic directors.

For example, Mike Sherman makes the playoffs three years in a row, then has a down year with an over the hill QB and he gets axed. Where's the sense in that? Whether he really did anything deserving of being fired I don't know, but in that context it's understandable that coaches would be pretty nervous about making a decision that's gonna put the blame squarely on them if things don't work out.

King,

I totally disagree with your assessment of the 4th down call at the end of the game. USC had to do everything to avoid giving Texas the ball back. Carroll knew his defense wasn't any good there and he tried to avoid putting the game in their hands. USC had at least a 50% chance (probably more) of making that conversion and that would have just about been the ballgame. Possession of the ball is way more important than the 20 or so yards thye would have probably gotten on a punt, unless of course it was blocked or run back a long way. There was over two minutes to go and Texas still had timeouts left. They had plenty of time to go the length of the field. I think there's just no question that going for it gave USC the best chance to win.

Carroll has to take blame for wasting his timeouts though. They should have just given texas those 2 points rather than burn the last one, the game was pretty much over when they did that.

Love your point on the non 3-peat attempt. USC had just as much to claim to the title 2 years ago as undefeated Auburn did last year