Singing the Memphis blues?
The only ranked team in Texas: Case Keenum & The Coogs are rolling and likelyBCS locked out
Case Keenum
Kevin Sumlin
With the entire college football world focusing on No. 1 LSU vs. No. 2 Alabama, it's almost gone unnoticed that there is only one ranked team in Texas.
It's not the University of Texas, which has gone from aiming for national championships to celebrating becoming bowl eligible. It's certainly not Texas A&M — the most talented, and heartless, team — in the state. And it's not Baylor, where Robert Griffin III's Heisman Trophy campaign has suddenly become more bumpy than Bank of America's disastrous debit card fee plan.
Only the University of Houston and record-setting quarterback Case Keenum find themselves ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 on this monumental college football Saturday. The Coogs are the kings of Texas, if not yet the toast of the state.
Houston checks in at No. 14 in the AP Top 25, with no other Texas universities on the list. The Cougars moved to 9-0 for the first time in school history by destroying an overmatched 1-8 UAB team 56-13 Saturday night. Keenum threw for 407 yards in the game, breaking former Hawaii quarterback Timmy Chang's all-time NCAA passing yardage record in the process.
Another game, another major record shredded by Keenum. Houston's sixth-year senior has now thrown for 17,212 yards in his career. And those aren't even the most impressive numbers hovering around these Cougars.
UH is No. 13 in the all-important Bowl Championship Series (BCS) standings — with UT a surprise No. 21 on this list, even before this Saturday's 52-20 trouncing of a Texas Tech team that somehow beat Oklahoma.
The Coogs are the kings of Texas, if not yet the toast of the state.
But all these lofty heights may not change anything about Houston's bowl destiny. Unless fellow non-automatic qualifying school Boise State (No. 5 in the BCS) stumbles in its last five games, the Cougars appear locked into the Dec. 31 Liberty Bowl in Memphis — if they continue winning. That's where the Conference USA champion goes if that team's not moved into a BCS Bowl. And this year, the Liberty Bowl could find itself with a Top 10 team.
College sports numbers guru Jerry Palm predicts that UH will end up playing Mississippi State from the SEC in the Liberty Bowl.
In a way it's a cruel twist that Case & The Coogs are having their dream season in a year in which another non-automatic qualifier school (Boise) is so good. If Boise State wasn't around and Houston moved into the Top 12 in the BCS (almost a certainty if Sumlin's team keeps winning), the Cougars would be assured of a spot in one of the big-time, big-money BCS bowls. UH would be looking at a bowl with a $17-million payout rather than the $1.7-million-paying Liberty Bowl.
And Case & The Coogs would be playing in a high-profile primetime spot rather than at 2:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve.
The BCS is required to take one non-automatic qualifier school that finishes in the Top 12 of the BCS standings — but only one. Unless it loses somewhere along the way to December (and Boise State will be favored in every one of its remaining regular season games), the Broncos will be that one.
It might sound unfair to UH fans, but that's the BCS. It's not designed to be fair to the underdog.
One of the strengths of this Houston team is how it's not obsessed over future scenarios though. Neither being BCS blocked by Boise State or finding out the program's likely Big East bound as early as next season has derailed Case & The Coogs' roll.
The Cougars have become one of the Top 13 teams in America, by arguably being the most improved team in the country.
The Cougars have become one of the Top 13 teams in America, by arguably being the most improved team in the country. Houston's kept getting better as the season's gone on, something that's easy to miss in the team's typically supersonic victory margins.
It's hard to see UCLA staying within four points of UH the way it's playing right now — like the Bruins did in the Cougars' season opener. It's impossible to picture Louisiana Tech coming within a moment of toppling UH now — the way it happened in that 35-34 Cougar escape on Sept. 17.
On Sept. 5, I called Texas A&M "the best team in Texas hands down." It turned out I was wrong. But not just because of the ultra-talented Aggies' Tony Romo-worthy choke mechanism. Mostly because Case & The Coogs got so much better. The Aggies would still have ended up as the state's No. 1 team by the end of Thanksgiving night — if it wasn't for UH's leaps and bounds growth.
"We've got a lot of things out in front of us in our regular season," Sumlin said earlier this week. "It's a lot of fun."
Even if the Cougars are BCS blocked.
