The problem with Utah

With Rick Reilly dismissing the Florida v. Oklahoma game, stating that Utah is the actual national champion, I feel obligated to argue against the Utes.

While the Mountain West was a solid conference this year, Utah didn't do enough in the Mountain West (which, let's face it, isn't the SEC or Big 12) or in non-conference play to warrant a top 2 ranking heading into bowl season, in spite of their 12-0 regular season.

You can't bring the Alabama win into the discussion because you can't use a bowl win as a justification that a team should have been in a different bowl because that information isn't available when the bowl match-ups are constructed.

Thus, Utah is left with victories over the following teams (rankings are final BCS ranks and all records are regular season records):
11. TCU (10-2)
16. BYU (10-2)
Oregon State (8-4)
Air Force (8-4)
Colorado State (6-6)
UNLV (5-7)
New Mexico (4-8)
Wyoming (4-8)
Michigan (3-9)
Utah State (3-9)
San Diego State (2-10)
Weber State - FCS

At the end of the season, the Utes held 2 wins over top 25 teams. How does that compare to OU and UF? OU beat Texas Tech (#7), TCU (#11), Cincinnati (#12), Oklahoma State (#13), and Missouri (#21). That's five top 25 wins for the Sooners. UF only had two - Alabama (#4) and Georgia (#15) - but the rest of the Gators' schedule was much more difficult that the schedule for the Utes, with non-conference drubbings of Miami and Florida State and conference tilts with LSU, Vandy and South Carolina (plus, the loss to Ole Miss). And, Florida made up for a lack of top 25 competition by taking teams to the woodshed. Before the SEC Championship game, every Florida win was by at least 23 points and the last 8 were all by at least 28. That's a dominant stretch.

Utah didn't have a particularly rough schedule and they barely squeaked out quite a few games. I'm not in favor of running up the score. Beating a team by 50 isn't necessarily more impressive than winning by 30, but winning by 3 makes you wonder. And, while Utah won all of their games, they had multiple squeakers, including two against teams with losing records (25-23 over Michigan and 13-10 over New Mexico). Utah also pulled two out at home: agaisnt Oregon State the week after the Beavers upset USC (31-28) and late against TCU, 13-10. While TCU put up an impressive record, they failed to show anything in non-conference play (beating Stephen F. Austin, Stanford and SMU) that makes you believe they are an elite team. Sure, they beat a mediocre Pac-10 team, but they were outclassed early in the season by OU (35-10) before OU even got rolling. The other prominent MWC team, BYU, displayed it's superiority (yes, that's sarcasm seeping through) by beating up on the bottom-feeders in the Pac-10 (UCLA and Washington) ... and UW would have had a chance to win in OT if the refs hadn't insanely penalized Jake Locker, but that's neither here nor there. So, the Mountain West has three teams in the top 16 based on what? The ability to beat decent competition? Ahhh ... their pretty good records. The three MWC juggernauts marquee win is Utah over Oregon State at home by 3 points with the Beavers coming down after taking down Pac-10 giant USC.

Hmmm ... I'm not sure Utah is such a clear cut choice to play for the national title. A good story ... maybe. Deserving of consideration ... probably, because they finished the regular season undefeated (but, so did Boise State ... and the Broncos went to Eugene and beat the Oregon Ducks - who finished 2nd in the Pac-10, ahead of the Beavers) 37-32). But, come on, are you really ready to say Utah would beat OU, UF, UT, or USC for the national title? I'm not.