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Marsha's Salt Lake City Blog

Is TCU's Bowl Matchup a Sign of Disrespect?

Monday December 7, 2009

I admit that strictly speaking this isn't a Salt Lake City story, but like many Salt Lake football fans I'm excited about Mountain West Conference champion TCU's unbeaten season. TCU (4) is the second Mountain West team to "bust" the BCS, after Utah did it in both the '04-'05 and '08-'09 seasons.

TCU's situation this year is a little different from Utah's last year because they aren't the only NCAA Division I team with a perfect record. There are five unbeaten teams this year, including the Alabama Crimson Tide (1) and the Texas Longhorns (2), who will play for the national championship Jan. 7 in Pasadena, California.

TCU came within a hair's breadth of playing for the national championship themselves, something that likely would have happened except for a a last-second (literally) field goal that allowed the Longhorns to beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers last Saturday. Now, the Horned Frogs will play the unbeaten Boise State Broncos (6), another team from a non-BCS conference (the WAC), in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona Jan. 4 in what has been dubbed the "BCS Buster Bowl" or the "Mid-Major Bowl."

The TCU-Boise State matchup is a repeat of last year's Poinsettia Bowl, which TCU won 17-16. Publicly, TCU coaches and players say they're thrilled with the matchup, but their fans have been vocal about their disappointment, saying TCU deserved the chance to prove themselves against a leading team from a BCS conference, such as Florida (5) of the SEC or Cincinnati (3) of the Big East.

What do you think? Is this year's Fiesta Bowl the "kids' table" of BCS bowls, or is it a great rematch of unbeaten teams who played in an exciting bowl game last year?

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