NCAA Football Wac

Unless the NCAA takes the win away, Bobby Bowden just did college football a big favor. His Florida State team beat Brigham Young, knocking out a pretender to the throne.

Then Oregon beat fellow pretender Utah. Now if somebody could dump Boise State, we'll all have a merry Christmas.

That's not likely because the Broncos have already gone unbeaten in their one-game season. It's all over but the routing of San Jose State, Idaho, UC Davis, UC Chula Vista and UC Schwarzenegger.

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Bret Bielema will tell you that Fresno State is tough enough. No additional challenges are necessary when the Bulldogs pop up on the schedule, because they'll give you all that you can handle.

The Wisconsin coach couldn't just steer his team past Fresno on Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. He also had to deal with virtually-unprecedented circumstances during the week. It showed at times on the field, as Wisconsin twice fell behind by 14 points, but they were able to rally for a 34-31, double-overtime win.

There's no other way to put this: Oregon tailback LeGarrette Blount straight lost his mind Thursday night, sucker punching a Boise State player and requiring physical restraint to leave the stadium after the Ducks' embarrassing 19-8 loss. Boise State's Byron Hout appeared to tap Blount on the shoulder during postgame interactions, before turning away, only to take a Blount sucker punch to his jaw that floored him. Broncos coach Chris Petersen rushed in to separate him from further incident.

Blount then hopped away, only to get into another altercation with several Boise State fans seated near the field. At that point several people had to restrain him and forcibly drag him down the tunnel into an unknown but probably dark future. It's not unreasonable to speculate that his college career is over. Blount was particularly atrocious in Thursday's game, netting negative five yards on eight carries including being on the wrong end of a safety.

(Video after the jump.)

College football fans know that recruiting is considered the most important element in order to build a successful program. That's why every February, so much attention is placed on letter-of-intent signing day when recruiting classes are broken down and analyzed by experts from all across the country. And every year, the same powerhouse programs dominate the final recruiting rankings from Florida and Texas to Oklahoma and USC to Notre Dame and Alabama.

There's one winning program, however, that never cracks college football's elite recruiting list. Boise State.

It's come to this.

Due to the recession and a subsequent budget crunch, New Mexico State's football team is requesting that fans donate snacks to the team. That's not a joke, not a point of satire meant to illustrate the difference between playing at a Big Six conference and being a member of the WAC. Nope, that's the unvarnished truth.

According to the AP, "New Mexico State's budget-conscious football staff distributed an e-mail this week asking fans to donate after-practice or late-night snacks for hungry players." Why are they doing this? To help close a $1.5 million budget gap. That's an awful lot of snacks.

No one could ever accuse Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis with being exactly gracious when it comes to accepting an apology.

A day after Hawaii coach Greg McMackin made a derogatory comment toward the Irish and their tradition and apparently minutes after the Hawaii coach called to personally apologize, Weis issued a statement about the whole flap on Friday. Weis, a naturally surly guy, said he accepted the apology and pretended to let bygones be bygones.

Weis said the comments were in poor taste but that he had moved on, but clearly he wasn't about to just let it go at that.

Greg McMackin, the head coach at Hawaii, should probably call in sick to next year's WAC media day teleconference. For the second year in a row, he has said something regrettable during that event.

This year McMackin (pictured right) told a story about a banquet the night before last year's Hawaii Bowl, which pitted his team against Notre Dame. Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis told the crowd about his school's "clapping tradition," which frankly is even less exciting than you think: "WE ARE!" (clap, clap) "ND!" (clap, clap).

McMackin, it must be said, was not exactly impressed by this.

The Pac-10 has now been stood-up twice by San Jose State for dates in 2010. The Spartans are one of those programs that are willing to go out with one of those studly BCS programs and not expect a second date at home.

Just because San Jose is willing to go anywhere for a one-nighter, though, does not mean they are cheap. The Spartans have realized that their popularity with the big programs means it should be a first-class evening, one that makes it worth their while.

San Jose skipped out on its picnic with Stanford when Alabama came in with nearly $1 million for the night. Now the Spartans have decided to break off plans with Arizona State.

Buried in the details surrounding the BCS contract extension signed by the Mountain West and the WAC was this nugget in an Idaho newspaper: "The conference (WAC) will attach a letter 'that will lay out the concerns we have and basically express our strong objection to the current BCS structure,' Boise State president Bob Kustra said."

Yep, a bona fide letter. (Possible illustration, right). Thanks to the tremendous connections of the ClayNation column in conjunction with the awe-inspiring power of FanHouse, and the action news team that, er, located Gene Chizik's inaugural address to Auburn, we were able to artfully re-create this letter below:

Just a few days after the monumental Senate committee hearing on whether the BCS violated antitrust law, the WAC and the Mountain West put pen to paper, extending their deal with the BCS. And by "their deal" I mean the "big six conference and Notre Dame deal" that happens to include all other teams by the magnanimous generosity of the entity known as the BCS. Even if, you know, that entity doesn't actually exist.

Yes, the BCS is like Prince, it's name is an unpronounceable symbol. Or a pronounceable curse word. Later this week, I'm going to do a column where we come up with a symbol to represent the BCS for the 2009 season since it doesn't legally exist. But before we can do that, I have to figure out how to unlock the symbol collection on my keyboard. And let's be honest that could take me months.

In the meantime, the real question to ask here is why did the Mountain West and WAC sign the agreement and has it strengthened or weakened their case against the BCS? Proceed, fearless reader.