Things that irritate me ...

First, we don't deserve to play for a national title. But then again, neither does LSU. So we're really discussing who is "less unworthy" I suppose. But some things from this whole experience have really pissed me off.

1. Les Miles

2. The fact that I really don't think LSU is very good. Their offense is close to being anemic. If I were pedestrian Ohio State, LSU looks pretty beatable. Oklahoma looked awesome Saturday. UGA and USC look awesome.

3. Tennessee is a bunch of good for nothing !@#$%. How did we lose to this team so badly? How can Ainge look so bad in a game that will define his legacy?

4. It starts to feel like a conspiracy after awhile. SC can't kick a field goal. Vandy can't. Kentucky can't. Then UT goes in the tank in the 2nd half. Then right after the talking heads talk about how if UGA wanted to play for a national title, they shouldn't have lost. Well what about LSU you freakin' lunatics? They put a Tebow for Heisman lovefest on. My goodness, after awhile, you just shake your head and hope for better things to come next year.

5. The Pac 10 and the Big 10 and the Rose Bowl powers that be are the real evil parties in all this. This became clear over the weekend, though I've had to piece several things together.
a) These conferences have publicly stated they're not interested in a plus one scenario, much less a playoff.
b) Clearly, the culture is such that the Rose Bowl means everything to these people and the rest of the world be screwed.
c) It is really quite brillliant: you routinely field 1-2 decent teams per conference per year. You don't play a conference championship game (either one) so one team from one of the conferences is likely to make the championship game. You then reject any team (UGA) from upsetting your fantasy world. Sure it screws up every meaningful bowl out there and gives us ZERO compelling matchups, but our conference teams all get what they deserve or better. The message to the Big 10: "See, we got Illinois in a BCS game. And we came fairly close to USC / Ohio State which would give you an ASU / Illinois matchup and screw a more deserving team out of a BCS bowl." Why would they want to change? Then, anyone left playing one of your conference teams is pretty darn unmotivated, I mean what SEC team really cares about playing Wisconsin, or Purdue, or Michigan State, or whoever?
d) One of the national guys hinted as much in saying, the Rose Bowl committee is really the one big hurdle that needs to be overcome before a playoff of any kind is on the table.

I say screw them. If they don't want in the playoff, they don't have to play. I thought Pete Carroll sounded very classy in his comments and I think USC would revolt for a playoff but what do these other aging and increasingly irrelevant Big 10 programs have to gain by a change?

6) We're left with 2 solid teams playing for a national championship. The prize we hoped for, a USC / UGA matchup also slipped through our fingers. If I were USC, I'd be almost as upset for them matching us with Illinois. WV wouldn't excite me, Hawaii certainly doesn't, VT wouldn't. Only teams I'd feel excited to play would be Ohio State, Oklahoma, and USC. And the system in place gave us NOTHING, even if you don't have a team but you're interested in college football, to be excited about. Who cares about VT / Kansas, GA / Hawaii, etc, etc, etc, etc. I'd rather we decline the invite and play Clemson in the Peach, to be totally frank. Or beat hell out of Michigan in the Citrus.

7) Polls. Pete Carroll said it best. It has turned into who had the better season vs. who is the better team. I would add, it is a mixture of both until the last week and pollsters ask, "who should play in the national title game?" That is NOT their charge. Their charge is to vote on the best teams, not manipulate their votes so that the matchups end up a certain way. That is supposed to be the SYSTEM'S job. In fact, that is the point of the system.

8) I wanted someone to ask, "What would the polls look like if WV had won?" because I think the answer would be, people would've moved UGA to 3 and not leapfrogged the voter's most deserving team. Would people have revolted against the Dawgs if they had no chance of getting in the title game? I don't think any point of history would say yes. Which proves my point that once certain things happened, people changed the way they vote and that is absurd.

9) The fact that we lost to USC was something we have to look at and take the blame for. It is what it is and no matter how I kept turning things over in my head, this was the thing that pissed me off more than anything.

10) That everyone who was involved in the discussion on who should be playing for the national title was beaten late in the year and after they were beat, they had "lost a chance to play for the national title." This happened to Oklahoma, LSU, Ohio State, USC ... everyone except UGA.

Basically, I am OK with just about anything BUT this. Go back to the old system. Allow the discussion to be limited only to conference champions. But for gosh sake, in a year where teams like UGA, USC, Oklahoma, LSU, Ohio State, Missouri (who got screwed worse than us, maybe) you have to come up with something better.

The silver lining in all of this is (depending on how our coaches and players respond) they just made a hungry team even hungrier. And LSU appears to be stuck with Les Miles and Tennessee with Phil. Les is still getting his accolades with Saban's players and I think him staying at LSU is good for the rest of the SEC. I am already excited about playing them next year!