Review: 2009 BCS Championship Game

Finally, we got a BCS title game that was worth watching after halftime. In fact, that's when it started to get good. I thought both Florida and Oklahoma played hard, but both also played sloppy. The game was still a toss up until the last five minutes, and even then, there was the feeling it could somehow go either way. Here's a few quick thoughts on the final game of the 2008-09 college football season.

Oklahoma - Oklahoma was painfully predictable on offense, particularly when inside the five yard line. I'm not going to pick apart the second goal-line stand by Florida, as it was a fluky interception that halted that scoring threat. But the first stop was inexcusable by Oklahoma and Bob Stoops' staff. After being held to no gain on a third-down run to the left side, I said to myself, "Oklahoma is going to run it to the same spot, and Florida knows it." Oklahoma did, and Florida did, too. It was the kind of goal-line stand that will go down as a key series in college football history. No, it wasn't as dramatic as the 1978 stand by Alabama against Penn State, but it was just as painful for the losing side. I'm still convinced that if Oklahoma ran it to the right, or called play action faking left and throwing right, the game would have been very different. It's a shame for the Sooners, because Sam Bradford played very well, and the offense was really able to move at will otherwise. Did anyone notice how Thom Brennaman and Charles Davis (the announcers, both of them!) had no clue it was only third down? Yeah, it's a basic concept that was lost in the shuffle, I guess.

Florida - I wasn't rooting for Florida. I'm not crazy about Tim Tebow. But I love Percy Harvin. If he decides to return for 2009, I would vote for him over Tebow for the Heisman. Harvin is head-and-shoulders above any other college player, when it comes to hitting the home run. And Harvin wasn't even fully healthy! I thought Oklahoma ran the ball with surprising ease outside of the goal lines, which told me only one thing: the Gators defense got lucky. That's not to say luck is a bad thing. Florida created its own good luck in this one, with super-timely turnovers, and benefitted from Oklahoma's disastrous play-calling inside the red zone. Tebow's two picks were terrible, and he still has a lot of work to do on his pass game. But the real star of the game was Florida's scoring defense. The game would have been ugly, if it hadn't been for (again) the goal-line stands and the incredible turnovers caused by the Gators. Outside of Harvin, the Florida offense was not impressive at all, and I'm now wondering which is the culprit: is Oklahoma's defense that good? or was the SEC offenses exposed as really "Big Ten" offenses with a better national image?

General Observations - I was shocked this morning when I heard Brent Musburger tell Mike & Mike in the Morning:

"We came to an SEC, Big XII shootout, and a Big Ten game broke out!"

I wasn't surprised that he made the observation that the game was much lower-scoring that we had expected. But I couldn't believe that he used the Big Ten as a measuring stick. It got me thinking, doesn't Musburger's statement just prove that there is really nothing wrong with the Big Ten, other than its national perception? Heading into the fourth quarter, this game was 7-7. Heading into the fourth quarter of Penn State's win over Ohio State in Columbus, the game was 6-3 Buckeyes. But that Big Ten game was viewed as two offensively weak teams, battling it out in boring, stone-aged football. Wasn't that exactly what we saw last night? Actually, Florida runs the most stone-aged of stone-aged offenses, the single-wing! Oklahoma runs a pro-style offense, with a drop-back passer and a north-south run game. I still don't understand why it's fine for two really good teams to win a shootout, yet, if it's a slugfest, something's got to be wrong.