College Football Round Up, Week 13

Fiesta for the Irish?
Assuming top-ranked Southern California and No. 2 Texas each win their games next week to set up a title-game clash in the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl will have the first choice among the other BCS bowls to pick an unattached team.
With a 38-31 win over Stanford Saturday night, Notre Dame qualified for their first BCS bowl in five years. With the fan base that the Irish have the Fiesta Bowl would be foolish to not select Notre Dame.

"When you get yourself into position to be picked one of the top eight teams in the country, that's a very strong statement for your program," Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said. "I'm not into politicking. We're 9-2 and one of the best teams in the country, and we're going to be in one of the BCS games. I'm not worried about all those other teams, because we're going to go somewhere and we're going to make one of those games proud."

Someone Left the Back Door Open Again
All Iowa State had to do was win their last game of the season and they were in the Big 12 Championship game for the first time but Bret Culbertson missed a 24 yard field goal in regulation. The Cyclones lost 17-14 in overtime to the Missouri Tigers and sent Colorado to the Big 12 Championship game.
That was last season. This year the Cyclones left the back door open again for Colorado. Bret Culbertson missed another field goal, 41 yards in overtime, and the Kansas Jayhawks beat Iowa State 24-21 keeping them out of the Big 12 Championship game for the second year.

"It's rare in life to get second opportunities," Iowa State coach Dan McCarney said. "Sometimes you wait 10, 15, 20 or 30 years and don't get another opportunity like we did today, coming up short like we did last year in overtime. We had that opportunity today again in overtime, but again we came up short."

West Virginia Wins Big East
The ACC, Big 12 and SEC will play their conference championship games this weekend to see who represents them in BCS bowl games.
The Big East conference doesn’t have a championship game and thanks to UConn’s 15-10 upset victory over South Florida the conference doesn’t have to wait until next week to declare their champion.

West Virginia will receive criticism for playing in the watered down Big East but at 10-1 the Mountaineers are a solid team. I have them ranked #10 in my blog poll and I think they will make a solid performance in a BCS bowl. My best guess is that they will be in the Sugar Bowl against the SEC champion.

Best Offensive Performance – Oklahoma - 42 points and 581 yards against Oklahoma State
Worst Offensive Performance – Kent St. – 3 points and 116 yards against Akron

Best Defensive Performance – Memphis – 3 points and 154 yards allowed against Marshall
Worst Defensive Performance – Stanford – 38 points and 683 yards allowed to Notre Dame

photos from yahoo