Poinsettia Bowl Makes Case for College Football Playoff

It all came to an end for Boise State last night, their undefeated season and No. 9 BCS ranking crashing down like a TCU linebacker imposing its purple and white helmet squarely on the shoulder pads of Bronco running back Ian Johnson. So let the debate continue as to whether or not the BCS is fair, even though the Broncos lost to No. 11 TCU by a respectable score of 17-16 in the San Diego County Poinsettia Bowl.

As for Johnson he leaves the game of college football with his head held high, knowing he did just about all he could do at the school, helping bring Boise State a Fiesta Bowl BCS title, marrying his sweetheart after that game and shattering the all-time school rushing record. It was a storybook ending for Johnson and I'm not sure anyone could have drawn it up different.

But on this night, there would be no hook-and-ladder play for tiny Boise, no tomfoolery, just old-fashioned sock-you-in-the-mouth defensive football, the kind Vince Lombardi would have been proud to see. Hailed as the best bowl matchup in spite of having its two entrants left off the BCS road map, the Poinsettia Bowl lived up to all the hype, even though it was maddening that thousands of empty seats filled the cavernous stadium.

It wasn't a fitting way to watch two teams matched so evenly that the odds makers had trouble determining unanimously who would win. One outlet even went so far as to call the game a battle between two of "America's coaches," Bronco head man Chris Petersen and TCU coach Gary Patterson.

For awhile last night (three quarters to be precise) it looked like Boise State would roll, holding a commanding 13-0 lead going into the final minute before halftime. But these Horned Frogs held high-scoring Oklahoma to 35 points in Norman, something not even potent Texas Tech could do. TCU's only two losses came to the Sonners and Utah, both BCS enrants.

After the halftime gun, TCU cut a 13-7 lead to 13-10 with a Ross Evans field goal and took the lead for the first time halfway through the fourth quarter when Joseph Turner scampered through the Bronco defense on a 22-yard touchdown run.

Boise State got a field goal with 4:47 left to chop TCU's lead to 17-16 but that's as close as the mighty, unbeaten Broncos would get. For not even divine intervention could save them, their last pass intercepted with under two minutes remaining, their BCS argument firmly in the hands of those people in ridiculous sports coats, the reds, the mustards, the oranges, the beiges of power, of prestige and of greed.

It was a sad way to watch a football game that should have been played in a stadium filled to capacity with all the hoopla afforded an Oklahoma, an Ohio State, a Florida. Instead we got all that was and is wrong with the current bowl system, an antiquated notion that the playing field is level and that everyone deserves an opportunity to be a champion.

Granted, on this night the TCU Horned Frogs of the Mountain West Conference deserved the victory, but the game just proved both teams deserved something more, more than what the bowl gods gave.