We all know what happens this year to teams who make it to number 2 in the college football polls - they lose. So when Oregon reached number 2 in the BCS they were pretty much doomed. Sure enough, last night they went out and laid an egg against Arizona, falling 34-24.

So now what? BCS experts - apparently there are some of those - think Kansas is the team that will slide into Oregon's spot behind LSU. Kansas gets 3-8 Iowa State Saturday, and should be safe from the curse since they're not technically number 2 yet. But I don't know if I like the idea of Kansas playing for the National Championship in college football. It's Kansas. It would be like Florida winning the The Big Dance or something...

Oh wait.

Okay, maybe I can roll with Kansas. They have a pretty good quarterback, Todd Reesing, who is now getting Heisman consideration. And speaking of possible Heisman quarterbacks...Oregon had one in Dennis Dixon, until last night when he re-injured a knee he'd sprained earlier in the year and left the game. Dixon's season is possibly over and with it his Heisman run.

I'm not sure I like all this parity in the Heisman race, or in the BCS. Having to talk about teams like Kansas and Arizona State and for God's sake Missouri. What the heck happened to the good old days when it was Nebraska, Miami, Notre Dame and Michigan every year? Now all those teams stink. Especially Notre Dame, who are a pathetic 1-9 going into their big match-up this weekend against Duke.

How far have the Irish fallen? They're really stoked about a game against Duke, cause it gives them a chance to get to two wins. I'm still not convinced, by the way, that whoever controls such things won't change the rules about bowl eligibility real fast to get Notre Dame in even with one win. Cause seriously - if you were running some crappy bowl, like say the Papajohns.com Bowl, who would you rather have: the seventh-place team from some big conference or Notre Dame even at 1-10? You'd want Notre Dame, for the exposure, and because all the Irish fans would show up. Of course Notre Dame would lose that game because they'd be playing someone with 6 wins who would be way better than them, but no one would care.

We all know what Notre Dame needs to do about their present crisis - join a conference. Then they could get settled in playing the same teams year-after-year, and partake of the conference parity that allows teams like Purdue to make it to a bowl pretty much every season. It makes no sense for them to keep subjecting themselves to the traditional meat-grinder schedule - instead they should join Conference USA; then they could hammer on Tulane, SMU and Tulsa every year instead of getting lit up by USC, Michigan and BC. They might even make it back into the BCS if they did that. As it is, their special Notre Dame exemption is worthless to them. Time to put the echoes to sleep and wake up to reality, Irish.