Brian Kelly thinks his team is awesome.

Here’s the link to the breakdown of the final regular season Coaches Poll.

My favorite part:

Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly and TCU coach Gary Patterson each voted his team’s interest: Kelly gave the Bearcats their only first-place vote and had Alabama No. 2…

The lone vote for Georgia came from Diddy Bowden, by the way.

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Like the swallows to Capistrano…

They made the BCS selections yesterday, so you know what that means.

John Feinstein is very, very unhappy.  It’s the usual angry, mixed-up grumble we’ve come to expect from him, but I do love the send-off.  It’s as hackneyed as my header:

The year is 2009. We have put men on the moon, we have elected an African American president and we’ve invented Google. There is not a single reason not to end the BCS.

It just takes the right people deciding to make it happen. Barack Obama overcame a lot more than the specter of the puffed-up BCS presidents to sit in the Oval Office. The end of this debacle should begin — needs to begin — with him. And it needs to begin now.

It is my fervent hope that we never see John Feinstein and Ari Fleischer debate this issue.  Because I’m afraid that if we did, millions of Americans would promptly lose complete interest in college football forever.

Further adventures in “I saw it on the Intertubes, so it must be true.”

As you’re following all of the rumors surrounding Georgia’s search for a new offensive defensive coordinator, keep in mind that if you’re gullible enough to believe in anything posted on FootballCoachScoop.com, you deserve what you get.  (h/t The Wiz)

Kiffin watch: live by the paycheck, die by the paycheck

The problem with hiring assistant coaches like they’re mercenaries is that sometimes they behave like mercenaries.

A South Bend state of mind

I have no idea whether this story is true or not – and remember, the Sun Times was reporting on Saturday that Notre Dame was prepared to name its next head coach yesterday, so it’s not exactly racking up the credibility points on the subject – but if it is, I’m having a hard time seeing why the school let Charlie Weis go in the first place.  After all, they appear to see eye-to-eye on social issues, which is the number one consideration in hiring a head coach these days.

Early BCS odds

The Wiz has the numbers here.  Interestingly enough, Vegas has the biggest spread in the Sugar Bowl, although the Fiesta has moved rapidly in favor of TCU.

It’s a shame they didn’t match Cincinnati and Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl.  I’d have loved to have seen the over/under on that pairing.

Georgia and the mysterious Sagarin ratings

No doubt my curiosity about this is fueled by being a homer, but if you look at the current Sagarin ratings, you’ll find that Georgia and Arkansas have identical 7-5 records, Georgia (5) sports a better SOS number than does Arkansas (13), Georgia has a better record against Sagarin’s top ten teams and top thirty teams than the Hogs do… and Georgia beat Arkansas head-to-head.  In Fayetteville, to boot.

So why, exactly, does Sagarin have Arkansas ranked 16th, a whopping twelve spots ahead of Georgia?  An inquiring mind wants to know.

My Mumme Poll ballot, Week 14

And so we come to the last regular season ballot of 2009.  Given that the inspiration for the Mumme Poll comes from a final regular season vote, this one’s got special significance to me.

Ironically, I didn’t make a single change from my week 13 ballot.

TOP FIVE

• Alabama
• Cincinnati
• Florida
• Texas
• TCU

BEST OF THE REST

• Boise State
• Georgia Tech
• Iowa
• Miami (FL)
• Ohio State
• Oregon
• Virginia Tech

COMMENTS

• The tough call this week was whether Florida’s dismal showing in the SECCG was enough to knock the Gators out of the top five.  In the end, I decided it wasn’t.  Florida still strikes me as an immensely talented team that was poorly prepared for its biggest game of the year.  In retrospect, the Dunlap arrest was a harbinger of the team’s mental state going into the championship game.  Now we’ll get to see how good Urban Meyer is at getting his team to regroup.
• Once I got past that decision, everything else fell into place, as no other school in my week 13 top twelve lost this past weekend.
• Time spent on ballot (mainly due to navel-gazing about Florida):  30 minutes.

BCS 2010: From small things, mama, big things one day come.

With the dust settling on the BCS selections for this year, the big story outside of the title game is the Fiesta Bowl.  The first-ever voluntary selection of a non-BCS conference school is newsworthy in and of itself, but the pairing of two mid-majors in a BCS game, while justified from a record standpoint, is more than a bit risky in terms of economics.

… The two teams also played last year in the Poinsettia Bowl, drawing a 3.7 rating. There were 14 bowl games rated higher. (T.C.U. won, 34,628 people attended…

What makes this especially of interest is the does-Texas-deserve-to-play-in-the-title-game angle that ESPN tried so hard to stoke during its BCS selection special last night.  While I expect that narrative to be harped on regularly over the next month – and intensify if Alabama smokes Texas in the title game – it’s to the credit of coaches Patterson, Kelly and Petersen that they all rejected it last night in their respective interviews on the WWL.  I think they did so for two reasons:

• The impact of Texas’ near death experience against Nebraska is overrated.  Every undefeated team has had at least one close call this season.  There was a certain amount of irony in hearing Rece Davis quiz Cinci’s Brian Kelly about whether Texas should play in the title game, given Kelly’s team’s last-minute win over a Pittsburgh squad that lost because its holder couldn’t get an extra point snap down properly.
• The real reason that Texas is playing Alabama and TCU or Cincinnati isn’t is the preseason polls.  Texas started number two and never relinquished its position.  TCU began the season seventeenth; Cincinnati wasn’t ranked at all.  That’s not going to be the case next year.  If things break right, we’re likely to see a mid-major finish second in the final polls, which would be unprecedented.  If that mid-major is TCU, it’s going to be ranked in the top five in the 2010 preseason polls.  Should Boise State win, it’ll be top five – and next year will play Oregon State and Virginia Tech.  If Cincinnati beats Florida, the Bearcats will get a similar bounce in the polls.  All of that adds up next season to the most credible opportunity a non-traditional school (remember that Cincinnati is only five years removed from Conference USA) has ever had to be in the BCS title hunt.

If you’re wondering why Gary Patterson took that contract extension at TCU, in effect taking himself out of the Notre Dame sweepstakes before they even got started, it’s because he thinks he’s got a better chance to play in the big game where he’s at than coming out of South Bend.  It’ll be interesting to see if Brian Kelly comes to the same conclusion.

The other interesting thing to watch is the business side of the Fiesta Bowl’s call.  The Mountain West’s commissioner can whine all he likes about how TCU being in the BCS isn’t good enough, but it’s put up or shut up time on the fan support.  The game is likely to get a good deal of attention in the media.  If that doesn’t translate into asses in the seats and eyes on the TV, don’t expect that to be forgotten in the fairness debate, no matter how competitive a show the Fiesta Bowl winds up giving us.

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UPDATE: Dan Shanoff shares some Fiesta Bowl-related thoughts in this post.