Utah is about to make “what if” a reality.
Photo by Marvin Gentry-US PRESSWIRE

There are many college football debates that can never be settled.

Could Auburn have beaten USC in 2004? Was Herschel Walker better than Barry Sanders? Are Oregon’s uniforms hideous or genius?

There is one debate that is about to settled and it’s going to impact the national championship picture as long as the BCS remains.

What would happen if an elite “mid-major” team played a BCS conference schedule?

Since the 1998 birth of the Bowl Championship Series 11 teams from outside the six Automatic Qualifying conferences have finished the regular season undefeated but not one has played for the national championship. The argument has always been that if BCS-Buster X played in BCS Conference Y they’d have three or four losses.

Now we finally get the answer. Utah, welcome to the Pac-12. The whole college football world is watching.

The Utes went to (and won) two BCS bowl games as members of the Mountain West Conference. If they can do the same against a Pac-12 schedule it breaks down the final barrier for the so-called Non-Automatic Qualifying conferences.

It means Boise State can play for the national championship.

What will it take for Utah to make the case for its Non-AQ comrades? It’ll have to be something very close to what the Utes accomplished in the MWC. They went 12-0 under Urban Meyer in 2003 and 13-0 under Kyle Whittingham five years later. In between and since they haven’t missed a bowl game.

For the argument to work Utah needs to be competitive in the Pac-12 right away. If you give them a one-season cushion on the five-year cycle they need an elite season by 2014. How elite? It’ll have to be at least a 10-win regular season to keep the discussion going. Eleven wins or better would hammer the point home.

If, however, Utah ends up being nothing but a middle-of-the-Pac team the strength-of-schedule trump card will continue to be played ensuring the biggest trophy is always held up by a member of the power conferences.

What about TCU moving to the Big East? Don’t the Horned Frogs share some of this prove-you’re-still-great burden? The problem is the Big East hasn’t played for a national championship since Miami and Virginia Tech left. TCU will have an automatic BCS bid but they’ll still be viewed at the bottom of the totem pole beneath the other AQ champions.

That is, of course, unless Utah tears it up in the Pac-12.

One single program may seem to be too small a sample size but it’s all we’ve got. College football polls are already based on incomplete information. With so few games and even fewer heavyweight non-conference matchups voters have to look for any possible way to compare teams with vastly different schedules. Holding up Boise State, the new king of the MWC, next to Utah, the old king, is going to be a natural comparison.

The odd twist is the Utes themselves don’t care about any of this. They already have their golden ticket. If they win the Pac-12 they play in the Rose Bowl. If they go undefeated they play for a national championship. It doesn’t matter if it takes four years or 14 years or 40 years, Utah is set.

But Boise State cares. TCU also needs Utah to win. Interestingly enough, so does BYU. Any outsider program that wants its 12-0 record to be taken seriously needs the Utes to find big success in their new home.

On the other hand, the teams that have the most to gain if Utah fails are the members of the big six conferences, including the other 11 schools in the Pac-12. They don’t need an extra argument in favor of somebody from the Mountain West playing for a national championship. They don’t want two undefeated teams from Conference USA and the WAC claiming they both deserve BCS bowl bids in the same year.

The powers that be want to be able to say Utah beating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl was a one-game fluke and now that they’re playing with the big boys week in and week out we won’t see them running the table for a long, long time.

The un-powers that be hope to be able to point to Utah as proof the football teams at the top of the Non-AQ leagues are just as strong as anyone else’s football teams, and just as worthy of playing for the crystal football.

The debate is almost over.

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Scott Terrell will be happily watching the Pac-12 South this year. Take a peek at Twitter and Facebook.

The Arizona football season is only half finished.

Three Pac-10 games, three games packed with stress to the final gun. Forget the injured players; are the fans going to survive the season?

Not only did the Cats stay close enough to get your hopes up, not only did they take a late lead on an improbable run, not only did they let Stanford fly down the field for what would have been a game-losing touchdown, but on top of all that the officials took what seemed like an hour to figure out how much time went off the clock on an incomplete pass to set up 3rd-and-10. As the seconds went by the blood pressure went up. Are they trying to torture us?

I know we should be happy with a win any way it comes, but I’m up for a nice blowout victory any time now.

It’s not going to happen against UCLA. Don’t you try and talk yourself into it. No. I don’t want to hear it. The Bruins just posted their highest point total in six weeks and Norm Chow is going to be salivating as he watches game film this week.

I fully expect another close game on Saturday. I am already preparing for another ending that will trigger a prescription spike in Southern Arizona.

Don’t fall into the what-if trap. We The People are funny that way. Fan math says you earned every win you got and you should have won all the close losses. Remember how we turned 3-8 into 5-6 after the Wisconsin and WSU losses in 2004? What did that get us? 3-8 in 2005.

This is our team. We have a quarterback who makes all things seem possible, and a defense that makes the other team feel the same way.

How bad is it when your QB throws for 400 yards and he isn’t even the game’s top passer? As soon as David Hasselhoff stepped up to the mic we should have known we were going to end up needing CPR.

There was a lot of strategy déjà vu at the end of this one. Stanford found itself in the same position we were in last week: up nine on the road facing fourth down in the red zone. Just like Stoops, Harbaugh elected to push the lead to 12 instead of going for the kill, only Stanford’s kicker missed.

That had to factor into Harbaugh’s thinking when confronted with the 4th-and-2 from the UA 8 and the lead down to two. Interestingly enough, Stanford was now playing the role of Arizona in last year’s game. Kick the field goal – which is what Stoops did last year – and you avoid losing by a field goal but you leave open the possibility of getting beat by a touchdown – which…you know.

Because of that I can understand why Harbaugh went for it. A two-possession game with five minutes left probably ices the win. He was playing to win the game right there. I get that.

But calling a passing play? Arizona thanks you, Jim. I know Gerhart was hurt, but you had been just killing us with that seven-lineman formation in short-yardage situations. Your #2 running back couldn’t run through one of those massive holes?

Add in declining to put the ball on the 40 after the kickoff out of bounds (dusting off a rule I didn’t even know still existed), and taking a delay-of-game after a timeout with less than a minute to play, and…I’m just glad it happened to someone else for a change.

Those of you watching the game on TV, were you ready for it? After Nwoko’s run made it 38-36 you knew it was coming, and the Versus stat team did not disappoint. “Arizona is 2-16 in its last 18 games decided by three points or less.”

The funny part is, by scoring a touchdown instead of a field goal this win doesn’t even count against that stat. For the record, Mike Stoops is now 3-1 in games decided by four to six points. He’s undefeated in games decided by exactly five points. I have no idea what that means.

Three points, five points, thirty-five points, a win is a win for this team. We’re right where we wanted to be at the halfway mark: 4-2 record, 3-0 at home and…ranked in the BCS standings?

Wow. That came out of nowhere. From barely getting votes in the human polls to #22 in the official standings after the computer polls are factored in. Thank you, Iowa and Central Michigan! It doesn’t help gain one yard against UCLA but, hey, at least it makes it easier to find Arizona on the scoreboard all week.

I hope your doctor’s phone number is just as easy to find…

The Wildcats play again this week.