NCAA Football

Hawaii's Sugar Bowl Bid Is a Joke

Posted Dec 03, 2007 8:00AM By Adam Rank (RSS feed)

Filed Under: WAC, BCS, Bowl Games, Hawaii Football

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Hawaii is in the Sugar Bowl. The freaking Sugar Bowl. This has to be some sort of sick, perverse joke, right? Any astute observer of college football knows this can't be real. Like Ashton Kutcher is going to tell us today that we've all been Punk'd.

Hawaii should not be playing in the Sugar Bowl. They should be playing in a bowl where they belong.

The BCS Championship Game.

That's right, Hawaii deserves to be in the BCS Championship Game and it's a joke that they are not playing for the title.
Part of the charm of college football is that the regular season matters. Or at least the regular season used to matter. Now it has become more political than a Senate judiciary debate. Coaches are practicing filibusters as opposed to, you know, actually going out and winning games. Two-Loss Miles is better at deceiving the media than he is at drawing up an actual game plan to beat some of the mediocre teams in the SEC. There was a time when college football teams were judged by their wins, not how they could spin a conference loss. But Two-Loss Miles has become the master of that.

He opened the season by bracing the media for LSU's impending losses. Noting that his team was going to choke in the regular season because the Pac-10 was soft. Two-Loss Miles took shots at the Pac-10, building a straw-man defense to mask his inevitable losses to two of the dregs of the SEC.

But hey, it worked. The media seems intimidated by Two-Loss Miles, with nobody willing to stand up to him.

And don't think I'm overlooking you, Ohio State. Normally, your inclusion to any bowl would signal a blowout of epic proportions. Thankfully, LSU doesn't play much defense and Two-Loss Miles' nincompoopery – and the fact that he comes from Michigan – shows that he should be ready to choke this game away for you. Be honest, nobody is going to confuse Two-Loss Miles with Bill Walsh. For that reason, Ohio State, you have a chance but you have tripped over your own sweater vest, too.

LSU and Ohio State have both taken turns as the front-runner in the polls, and you failed. At home. Against mediocre teams.

All Hawaii has done is win all of their games. No campaigning. No begging. No press conferences. Hawaii has just gone out and won football games.

Weird, I know.

The knock against Hawaii is that they do not play anybody. Or at least that's the myth. The truth is that nobody wants to go over and play Hawaii. That's hard to fault the Warriors. Go play them if you have a problem with their schedule. But LSU probably can't get out of that commitment to play Bayou Banjo Tech. If you aren't willing to play the team, you can't complain about their schedule.

And while Hawaii was running the table, LSU was losing to mediocre teams like Arkansas who fired its coach after the season. LSU played most of its games at home. It played one tough road game this season, at Kentucky and they lost.

Does anybody else feel like they have taken crazy pills when they hear LSU's justification? Like Two-Loss Miles has balls of steel for even suggesting that his team deserved to play for the national title.

The truth is, the SEC doesn't play anybody of note. The conference has perpetuated this myth of invincibility by refusing to play anybody of note in the non-conference schedule, then living off the legend of being a tough conference. But the truth says otherwise when the SEC venture outside the South, because they get beaten badly. Kind of like the Confederacy.

Arkansas tried to stay with USC in recent years and were humiliated. The seventh place team in the Pac-10, Cal, spanked the SEC Eastern Conference Champs, Tennessee. Alabama lost to Louisiana-Monroe. Some superiority. But who did LSU beat? Oh that's right, LSU scheduled one of those nobodies from Hawaii's schedule, Louisiana Tech.

The Tigers did beat Virginia Tech, but as Lil' Hater on The Hater Nation noted, "Half of the Virginia Tech team was still under suspicion of mass murder." (What, too soon?)

And really, why should they have to play anybody? If the media is going to buy into that bull (expletive), there is no need to play anybody tough. Two-Loss Miles can just take the time to prepare the spin cycle when Nick Saban's his team loses.

The truth is, Hawaii deserves to play for the national championship and LSU really has no argument. Sure, you could reason that LSU is the better team, but this isn't about that. Underachieving teams don't deserve to be rewarded for losing. It's that simple.

Besides, if this was about putting the best teams into the title game, USC would take LSU's spot.

No, Hawaii was screwed. But instead of complaining and campaigning -- which is what Two-Loss Miles would have done -- Hawaii is going to be the bigger men here and just be happy for the opportunity to compete. Hopefully they can expose the SEC for what they really are. But it looks like they already have.

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