Mo Johnson is a 1992 graduate of the University of Tennessee and has followed SEC sports pretty much all his life (40 years). Despite a miltary career that took him around the world, he was always able to keep up with sports in the Southeastern Conference and especially the UT Vols. In October 2006, Mo started the web site: secsportsfan.com, to provide unique and comprehensive coverage of SEC sports from the fan perspective. Much of the country is in the midst of the first real cold snap of the season, but you'd never know it from the hot air coming out of Michigan. Lots of upset people blowing a lot of steam over nothing.
The final computer and human rankings were thrown into the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) cauldron and low and behold a live Gator was pulled out. By the way, it was the human voters who saved the day because the BCS computers had the Florida Gators and Wolverines dead even.
I don't know what the computers were thinking, but anyone who saw Florida come from behind to beat Arkansas 38-28 Saturday night, December 2, 2006, to win the SEC Championship know what I'm talking about.
What a thrilling game? Florida showed its tremendous team speed, talent and ability to make big plays when it was needed. Talk about going for it? How about that 4th and 10 fake punt -- from its own 15 yard line while trailing in the 3rd quarter? That took guts! That was the play that earned the Gators a trip to the National Championship game to face Ohio State on January 8 in Glendale, Arizona.
Florida is a conference champion with a 12-1 record. Michigan is the runner-up in its conference with an 11-1 record. It's difficult to understand how anyone could possibly think a second place team (with one less victory) should go to the National Championship game over all the other conference champions.
And, we are not talking about a dominating conference in the Big-10. I mean, nothing against the Big 10, it's a fine conference, but it is clearly no SEC. Just take a gander at the BCS final top 20, which has five teams from the SEC and three from the Big-10. How about bowl bids? SEC -- nine bowl bids (most of any conference). Big-10 -- seven bowl bids.
How about non-conference schedule? The SEC was an amazing 41-7 versus non-conference opponents in 2006. This .854 winning percentage blows away any other conference. So, Florida is the Champion of the toughest conference in the nation.
Florida had the toughest schedule in the nation (opponents winning percentage of .643). The Gators had four quality wins over Tennessee, LSU, Georgia and Arkansas. Michigan only had two quality wins over Notre Dame and Wisconsin.
How boring it would have been to see Ohio State and Michigan for a second time this season (104th time overall). Instead, we have two great conference champions from different regions of the country. Florida and Ohio State will be playing against each other for the first time in history. I can hardly wait.
Certainly the BCS system is flawed. College football needs a playoff, no doubt. With the current system there are always more than two teams at the end of the year that can make a strong case they should be in the National Championship game. Someone always feels jilted.
However, if you have to pick only two teams to play for the National Championship -- this year those teams have to be Ohio State and Florida. The only thing I don't understand is why there is even a controversy. It would have been a disgrace to pick Michigan over Florida. At least for this year, the BCS got it right. It was an easy choice.
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Mo Johnson is the publisher of SECsportsfan.com (www.secsportsfan.com). For more information, go to www.secsportsfan.com/sec-football.html for SEC football or www.secsportsfan.com/floridagatorsfootball.html Florida Gators football.