Hawaii could get and deserves a split national championship, if they can blow out Georgia. There are several sects that believe that Hawaii deserves to be in the National Championship. There are several sects that think that Georgia should be in the National Championship Game. They both have compelling arguments. Hawaii has the best argument because they the only undefeated team.
I know what you are saying. You will bring up Boise State from last year. They came undefeated from the same conference and beat Oklahoma. They did not even get second look for the National Championship. The problem for Boise State was how they beat Oklahoma. Boise State can score, but they used a lot of trick plays in that game. They ran them to perfection, but when you use a lot of trick plays it usually denotes that you are not good enough to win on your own merit. The national media was not impressed enough. The win on a trick play did not tell everyone that Boise State was a National Champion.
If Hawaii can blow out Georgia they deserve a split National Championship. Everyone is saying that Georgia, USC and Oklahoma are the three hottest teams. If Hawaii goes undefeated and beats one of the consensus best teams, they deserve it. The knock on Hawaii has been their schedule. If they can blow out Georgia, they will answer all questions about their strength of schedule. If they can blow out Georgia, it will prove to everyone that Colt Brennan should have gotten more Heisman votes.
Georgia is favored in the game and they should be. They played in the SEC and came our of it with only two losses. They have been an incredibly hot team since their Tennessee loss. They have no shot at the Split National Championship. Everyone will say that Hawaii had no business in the Sugar Bowl, if Georgia wins. Please do not think they are in a lose lose situation. They can hand it to Hawaii and win the Sugar Bowl. That is any SEC teams dream. Do not pitty Georgia too much. 
December 4th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Negative. This has almost no chance of happening. These “sects” of people don’t exist, and if they do, their votes do not count. The Strength of Schedule of Hawaii won’t allow anyone to rank them anywhere near Number One, since they are undefeated now and are only at 10. This is just a pipe dream. I wish there was a playoff where Hawaii could prove their stuff, but I don’t think they deserve a split even if they beat Georgia big.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Look at the dates. Georgia and Hawaii play on Jan. 1st. If they blow out Georgia, the world will have 6 days to debate it. National Championship is on Jan 7th. This will not be a snap decision. That plays in Hawaii’s favor.
December 5th, 2007 at 12:41 am
I don’t necessarily disagree with what you are saying, but I don’t have a lot of faith in the think headed AP votes. The only example that I can draw off of is the Boise State Victory over the heavy favorite Oklahoma (a 2 loss team). Even after finishing the season 13-0, Boise State finished the season at # 5 and only received 1 first place vote. It is not the best example, but it shows that the AP voters will stick with the big names, and will likely not vote Hawaii over the LSU OSU winner.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Hawaii will make a great case for non-BCS conferences in receiving automatic berths if they reach the required spot in the final BCS standings, but not much more. Hawaii will beat Georgia that did lose to Tennessee which lost in the SEC championship. That doesn’t mean Georgia couldn’t have beaten LSU, but LSU is (by default of winning its conference championship) the class of the SEC. Similarly, Ohio State is the class of the Big Ten. Hawaii struggled to win many of its games this year, including falling to Washington 21-0 before rallying on its last minute drive with 4 minutes left in the game. Beating Georgia would be great, but it won’t be for a split national title.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Remember, the BCS is all about the politicking, and June Jones has gotten on that train as of late. Once the Heisman ceremony is done and gone, what will Jones talk about beside Colt Brennan winning? Yes, Hawaii not getting respect from the BCS. If they blow out Georgia, he’ll probably lay it on real thick. And so, while I don’t believe Hawaii will even sniff the championship, I would not be surprised if the debate rages in the wake of a big Hawaii win.
December 6th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Uh, what was that about trick plays? So presumably your wins only count as long you play as dumb as your opponent? What that amounts to saying is that when the higher rankings don’t match up with the victors in actual games, the scoreboard must have got it wrong. In other words, if Hawaii loses, it loses; if it wins, it loses. Of course, if you’re Ohio State, the opposite is true. Allow me to say that if Hawaii beats Georgia, no matter what the margin, the debate won’t be beginning–it will be OVER. UH will be national champions by any rational standard, and the rest is just the arrogance of big conference powers that think they’re too highly-ranked for something as mundane as performance on the field to matter.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Believe it or not Sane, you are one of the few people that think the way you do. You or in the minority, and you are defending something that needs a majority vote.
If you were a big football fan, you would understand the” part about trick plays”.
Hawaii has played a very bad schedule and they almost lost several times. That is why they are so lowly ranked.
I am on your side though. I believe that Hawaii has a chance. They just have to blow out Georgia.
They have to blow out Georgia because the ” blow Out” means something to the voters. If you blow some one out, you must be the dominate team.
If Hawaii blows out Georgia on the 1st, everyone will be talking about how good Hawaii is till the 7th. Hawaii could lock up enough votes. If they barely beat Georgia on trick plays, there is no way they could jump in the polls.
That is what happened to Boise State last year.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
You talk like a child–”if you were a big football fan, you would understand”. A “trick play” is just a play that catches the opponent off guard because it’s unusual and because the opponent isn’t paying attention. Inferior performance leads to defeat. OU got beaten by the team that played better for four quarters that day. What does it matter if a team is stronger in theory if it doesn’t actually convert its potential into victory on the field?
The problem with your thinking is obvious. If “strength of schedule” could tell us which teams were better and worse, then it should have been impossible for Boise State to beat OU. Trick plays, no matter how underhanded, can never win a game on their own, and even if they could, that just means that defenses need to grow a few more brains and adjust. That’s why it’s called a game.
The truth is, especially this season, that on any given day any team, no matter how highly ranked, can lose to an opponent, no matter how low ranked. The difference in talent is not nearly as great, or nearly as significant, as sportswriters would like us to think. That’s why the psychological aspect of football gains such significance in a game. The ability to generate momentum when down and carry it through to victory is AT LEAST as important as the physical talent as divined by “experts”. We see this over and over in the rest of college sports as well as the NBA and NFL. The reason we don’t see it here is, quite frankly, matchups (regular season and bowl) that threaten the illusion that the so-called major conferences like the SEC and Big 10 always produce the best team are avoided like the plague. If Hawaii’s schedule is “weak”, it wasn’t because they didn’t try to play some of the bigger-name teams. The fact that UH was avoided like it was proves that the great conferences are scared of the little giant-killers waiting for their chance.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Sane. I agree with part of your statement. I hope you understand that.
I hope you also understand that I am not the person you need to be fighting with. You are fighting with the Establishment. The Establishment says that the big conferences are better because they regularly blow out the smaller teams. It does not always happen but it usually does.
I did not mean to slight you by my –”if you were a big football fan, you would understand” statement. I meant that most college football fans understand that Boise State received no respect from the voters for these 2 reasons.
1. Strength of schedule
2. They won on trick plays. not only trick plays but they were a big part of the win.
The only way you can jump over teams in the polls is by making a statement. When you win, it is not always a huge statement. Hawaii needs to blow out Georgia to make a statement. That is not my opinion. That is a fact. I do not vote, but that is the mentality of the voters.
Thanks for visitng the blog, and come back any time. I enjoyed your comment and hope you did not take offense at what I said. I meant nothing by it.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
IF Hawaii wins, why not? A NC with 2 loses is 2 too many. BCS screams for a playoff system. Top 8 winner takes all. All questions answered once and for all ON THE FIELD. It was a year that the unranked kicked @$$ and made shambles of the 1 and 2′s. It was a year that ranked teams dodged mid-majors playing DII’s and losing? If you want to stop the BSU’s and Hawaii’s do not pay them to cancel out. Do not make excuses when they are willing to come to your “house”. Do not claim that your conference makes them “irrelavant”. Do not have them play you at home (UF) then refuse a return game because its “too far to travel”. Put up or shut up! Stop whinning and crying because its downright pathetic.
December 9th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Sugar Bowl is the real National Champ Game
I think Georgia vs Hawaii is the real national championship game. Ohio and LSU are there because of politics. Georgia got cheated out of a title game and so did Hawaii. What other sport is there that you have the only perfect record in the country and you don’t even get a chance to be natl champ??? Ohio’s strength of schedule is not that much tougher than Hawaii and they lost. Georgia is definitely hotter than LSU right now. Anyone else agree?
December 22nd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Well said, Sane. A perfect season is an extraordinarily elusive feat in this day, and the team that pulls that off should be No.1. Boise State deserved the national championship, because they won them all. No other team did. So what if they executed trick plays to perfection in doing so? That just bolsters their claim, because trick plays are extremely difficult to execute to perfection. Winning is all that matters. If we’d had the system in place in 1980 that we have now, Georgia would have probably been denied its only national championship, even though they won all their games that year.
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Well this is one thing I am glad we never had to worry about. Georgia dominated.