Things I Think #1

One of the best times of the year on the Sports Calendar begins in late September and extends throughout the month of October when Major League Baseball finishes the regular season and storms into the playoffs, when the Football season begins and the contenders start to separate themselves from the pretenders, and when the NBA season...oh wait, let's just stick with Baseball and Football this year.  In honor of the Football season and SI's Peter King, here are my "Things I Think":

Rank This!
I think that College Football should not have rankings until at least 4 or 5 weeks into the regular season.  It really is prohibitive to the teams that are really better than how good the media or the coaches think they are while they are all on summer vacation in July.  Is Notre Dame the 16th best team in the country?  No.  They weren't in July either and they wouldn't even be ranked if the Top 25 came out today.

Houston Quarterback Case Keenum (7) would be
a fan of no media or coaches polls until October.

But preseason rankings most hurts the off-the-radar, non-BCS conference teams such as the Houston Cougars who were ranked 36th to begin the year, and have stormed to a 4-0 record, including wins over UCLA and La. Tech (who just lost to Mississippi St. in OT last week) while passing for almost 400 yards per game. Yet, if Houston was to go 12-0 this year, the highest they would conceivably climb in the BCS rankings is in the 12-20 range, well out of contention for a National Championship or even a BCS Bowl.  I don't agree with pretty much anything the BCS does but they do have this one right...the BCS rankings don't come out until week 8 of the season.

BYU Big 12 Bound?
I think BYU should not join the Big 12 simply because they are invited to join due to the departure of Texas A&M or due to the Big 12's desire to live up to their name and actually have 12 universities in the conference.  Some BYU fans may think I'm crazy for not wanting the Cougars to make the move without a second thought.  But even a ride on the Titanic looked appealing at one point.  Didn't the 4 most important Big 12 schools try to leave the conference just last week?  What if they tried to do it again next year?  Put yourself in TCU's position - TCU committed to the Big East last year only to see Pitt and Syracuse leave to the ACC last week, leaving the Big East with only 6 football-playing universities and leaving TCU with the thought that maybe a MWC with Boise State may not be all that bad after all.

BYU proved they could play with the big boys by
dropping a one-point game at Texas earlier this year,
the big question Cougar fans are asking themselves
is will they do it on a continuous basis?

Will BYU still be guaranteed to be on ESPN and/or BYUTV or will BYU be stuck on Fox Sports Midwest, which would be a small step up from the mtn?  BYU knows what is at stake and they shouldn't make the move unless they feel that the instability will be gone, the drama will stop, and BYU's desire for "access and exposure" will not be hindered by any Big 12 TV deals.  We'll probably see a lot of "BYU not interested in the Big 12" reports in the coming weeks because BYU will be in the process of negotiating the right deal for the short and the long-term.  By the way, such a move to the Big 12 would only be successful if BYU can convert 3rd downs on a consistent basis.

It's Wild Enough As It Is...
I think that Major League Baseball does not need a 5th playoff team from the American and the National League.  Going into the last day of the regular season today, the Rays and the Red Sox were tied for the Wild Card spot in the AL while the Braves and the Cardinals were tied for the Wild Card in the NL.  It's the last day of the regular season and we still don't know a single playoff matchup for the playoffs which begin this Friday!  We could potentially have two tie-breaking playoff games tomorrow!  Baseball has the longest regular season in sports at 162 games, but since the Wild Card format was established in 1995, it has created an additional level of interest that vaulted Major League Baseball out of the 1994 strike and cancellation of the World Series into a test of will and endurance for those teams trying to become the one non-division winner in each league to join the playoff fun.  If we had two Wild Card teams in each league this year, we would just be patiently waiting for the one-game playoff between the four teams in contention this year.  However, a 5th playoff team seems inevitable as both the players and the owners seem to support the idea of a one-game playoff between two Wild Card teams from each league.

No one seems to care what I think.