Boise State and Virginia Tech gave us a fitting end to a great opening weekend of college football on Monday night.
The third-ranked Broncos staged a late fourth quarter comeback to edge the Hokies, 33-30, and put themselves squarely back at the center of a debate that will rage into January. Kellen Moore’s 13-yard touchdown pass to Austin Pettis with 1:09 to play sealed another huge victory for Boise State’s program and helped the Broncos stake their claim to a chance to play for the BCS national championship.
We know what some of you BCS conference snobs are going to say. You’re going to point to Boise State’s schedule and insist that they don’t play anybody, that the WAC sucks and that if they had to play SEC-type opponents week-in and week-out that they would fall. That might be true, but I don’t see Florida or Texas or Ohio State lining up to play the Broncos in a home-and-home situation. Those guys are scheduling Miami (Ohio), Rice and Youngstown State in their respective opening weeks and making sure that they try to mix in The Citadel every once in a while. I don’t see the Pac-10 throwing out a horrendous Washington State program (the Cougars went 1-11 last year and got absolutely pounded by Oklahoma State in their opener), inviting Boise State to join the party and watching everyone’s strength of schedule get a boost. USC, UCLA, Washington and Cal want no part of playing or trying to recruit against these guys. The Broncos are headed to the Mountain West in 2011, a significant upgrade from the WAC but still not enough for most of college football’s bluebloods to give Boise State any respect.
Let’s take a step back and try to look at this from a neutral perspective. One of the best things about living in the Northeast is that it’s possible to see things in college athletics, especially football, without bias. I see the Hokies agreeing to a ‘neutral site’ game less than 300 miles from their campus and over 2,300 away from Boise State’s Smurf Turf – and still losing. FedEx Field holds about 90,000 paying customers, and 75,000-80,000 of those people were Virginia Tech fans on Monday night. This was as close to a road game as the Broncos could have gotten and they still didn’t flinch, even when they were staring at a 30-26 deficit with less than two minutes to play.
What else do I see? Virginia Tech was the true overrated program in this matchup. Frank Beamer is 7-29 against ranked teams since he took over the Hokies in 1987 and a dreadful 1-18 against teams in the top-5. And people still insist that Virginia Tech is a perennial national power? No chance. When Boise State has had its chance to play against the big boys it’s gotten the job done, knocking off Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, beating Oregon and TCU last season and now tripping up the No. 10 Hokies despite a stacked deck against the Broncos that would make a Blackjack cheat start to blush. End the debate right now about the schedule and believe what your eyes tell you. Boise State is an elite college football program. It’s not something that the sport’s kings want to hear, and they clearly want no part of seeing it across the line of scrimmage.
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