The importance of being Oregon

There are some big college football games tomorrow — Miami at Virginia Tech, Iowa at Penn State, ASU at Georgia — but the most significant, in terms of national implications, might be Cal at Oregon.

Not because it will determine whether ESPN GameDay goes to Strawberry Canyon for USC at Cal next week (though it quite probably* will). Not because Jahvid Best’s Heisman hopes hang in the balance (though they do). Not because this is Oregon’s big shot to become a serious contender for the Pac-10 title (though it is).

No, the biggest national significance of Cal @ Oregon, thinking long term, might be what it will do for… Boise State.

Back before the season began, in looking at the longshot national championship hopes of the “big four” non-BCS teams ranked in the preseason polls (BYU, Utah, TCU and Boise), I wrote that the Broncos, although they started out with the highest ranking, had the “smallest chance of reaching the national title game if they go unbeaten, thanks to their schedule.” But I added:

That said, there are two scenarios where I can see Boise State getting to the title game. One is a crazy season like 2007-08, where everybody else has two losses. (In that sort of scenario, any of these teams have an excellent shot.) The other is if Oregon runs the table after losing to Boise, wins the Pac-10, finishes 11-1, and gets itself into the title-game discussion. An undefeated Boise State team obviously should, and I think would, stay ahead of a one-loss Oregon team that it beat. So if Oregon is in the mix based on its resume (which would, in this scenario, include wins over Utah, Cal and USC), Boise State will get to come along for the ride. Otherwise, though, I think even an undefeated Broncos squad may well be relegated to another Fiesta Bowl berth or something similar.

I later added: “Boise State…has a better shot [at reaching the title game] than in any prior year in its history, though I still think it’s a fairly small chance, given the likelihood of Oregon having a typically Oregon-like, 9-3 or 8-4-ish season.”

Well, tomorrow is the day when we find out whether Oregon is on a trajectory to have just such a “typically Oregon-like” season — or whether the Ducks are actually going to make some serious noise in the Pac-10, and perhaps nationally.

Win, and Oregon will be ranked next week — and will stay that way, barring a major upset, until at least Halloween, when the Ducks host USC. This is highly significant because it will make Boise State’s season-opening victory look a lot more respectable (much like how Miami’s win over Florida State looked a lot better after the Seminoles demolished BYU), which, in turn, will make it a lot harder to justify leapfrogging one-loss teams over undefeated Boise in the polls during the crucial month of October.

Lose, and Oregon will fall completely and irretrievably off the national radar until at least Halloween, by which point a resurgence of respect for the Ducks (based on a potential upset of USC) would come too late to help Boise State, who will probably already have been leapfrogged by several one-loss BCS-conference teams by then.

This dynamic is critical. As things have developed in the polls, Boise State may not even need to specifically ride Oregon’s title-contending coattails, as I anticipated in my preseason write-up, to get into the thick of the championship conversation. But they do need their win over the Ducks to look like a real chip. If the Ducks look just like another middling West Coast team in USC’s shadow, easily dismissed by the SEC/Big 12-loving punditry, it will be far too easy to justify dumping Boise State behind the Oklahomas and Ohio States and, well, USCs of the world. A surging Oregon would at least make the rationalization of that action more difficult.

It all comes down to something Stewart Mandel wrote on Wednesday:

I will be interested…to see how the voters treat them the rest of the way considering they’re already up to No. 8 in both polls just three weeks into the season, and inevitably, most or all of the teams above them will lose. How high will they rise before someone says, “Wait a minute — do I really believe Boise State is the [blank]-best team in the country?”

Voters are going to ask themselves that question regardless, and many will answer “no.” But how many, and how soon? That is the crucial question. A surge by Oregon into, say, the Top 15 by Halloween might be enough to convince many voters to at least hold off on demoting Boise State until November. Then, depending on how things shake out in the season’s final weeks, maybe the Broncos can even stay in the upper reaches of the polls heading into Championship Weekend, with many voters waiting to see what happens in the Big 12 and SEC and ACC title games before making their decision about whether to bump the Broncos down at the finish.

If that happens, Boise may be in position to root for upsets on December 5 — and hope the inevitable controversy over their potential last-minute demotion (and thus exclusion) takes on a life of its own, influencing the pollsters as they fill out their final ballots. When I wonder whether Boise will be “in the conversation,” this is what I mean. Will an undefeated Broncos team be under active consideration, and the subject of mainstream discussion, heading into the season’s final week? Or will they already have been placed behind a slew of one-loss teams, turning them into a BCS curiosity for the Brendan Loys of the world to talk about (a la Utah last year), while the Mark Mays and Lou Holtzes and Kirk Herbstreits focus on the “real” contenders like Florida, Oklahoma, USC, etc.?

I may be giving the pollsters and pundits too much credit in expecting Oregon’s fate to matter in answering these questions, but I think the voters have gotten smarter in recent years, and I believe the Ducks’ poll placement — not just at season’s end, but in the various intervening October and November weeks, when poll “slotting” will create and cement conventional wisdom about who’s in contention and who isn’t — will be a crucial factor in determining where Boise ends up.

Therefore, this Cal-Oregon game matters, not just to the Bears and Ducks, not just to the other Pac-10 title contenders, but to Boise State and every one-loss team that hopes to leapfrog them (like, ahem, USC), and even more broadly, to anyone who cares about the ongoing debate over how to handle undefeated mid-major teams. With Utah and BYU falling on their faces last week, and TCU’s hopes severely hampered by the resulting loss of respect for the Mighty Mighty Mountain West, Boise State is now the standard-bearer for the “little guys.” I just can’t see TCU or Houston making a run all the way to #1 or #2, whereas Boise’s already-high poll position means you’ve got to at least consider the possibility. The Broncos’ longshot title hopes are the last best chance for a mid-major to do the impossible in 2009-10.

Is Boise State going to play in the BCS national championship game? Even if they go undefeated — and please, people, let’s stop taking that for granted; I’m not pretending the WAC is the SEC or the Pac-10 or even the Mountain West, but running the table in any conference is hard — I very seriously doubt it, barring a 2007-like scenario (and even then, it’s perhaps a 50-50 proposition). Will they get a real chance at an AP split title? Probably not, though that might be slightly more likely than a BCS title-game bid, since the AP pollsters are clearly more thoughtful than the coaches, and more apt to take mid-majors seriously. In either case, however, to the extent that Boise State has a chance at all, the Broncos really, really need Oregon to win tomorrow.

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*Re: GameDay, I say “quite probably” because, assuming Miami beats VT, it’s possible GameDay will go to Oklahoma @ Miami next week, even if USC @ Cal is also Top 10 matchup (which it will be, if Cal beats Oregon and USC beats Wazzu, because Ole Miss and the Miami/VT loser will drop, allowing the Trojans to rise). But with USC-Cal being the nationwise prime-time ABC game, I give it the edge if the Trojans, Bears and Hurricanes all win tomorrow. (The Sooners are idle.)