I turned the TV off at the end of the third quarter of the Sugar Bowl matchup between Hawaii and Georgia, and I went to bed.

I had the Sugar Bowl marked on my calendar as the one other bowl game besides BYU's Las Vegas Bowl that I wanted to watch from start to finish. As a Little Guy supporter and a BCS hater, I hoped that undefeated Hawaii could take it to Georgia. Turns out Georgia was very clearly the better team. The final score was 42-10, and it probably wasn't even that close.

I've been saying all season long that Hawaii's undefeated run through a weak schedule means that we just don't know how good they are. We found out last night: much worse than Georgia, and not nearly as good as I'd hoped.

I'm obviously sad that the Warriors couldn't pull it out. It would have been quite a statement against the BCS' meritless claim that six conferences are by definition better than the other five. But what it ended up meaning to me (and what no one will care about, even if they notice) is that the BCS system is truly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Georgia had bigger, faster, stronger players. One of the big reasons why is because Georgia is a BCS-conference team and Hawaii isn't. A big, fast, strong player wants to play for a team that has a chance at the national championship. A team like Hawaii, no matter how good, is automatically disqualified from the national championship picture before the season starts. Why would a top prospect want to play there?

Reading some of the commentary on the game, I am struck more than I have been before how much of the talk is about how great the SEC is, and how Hawaii made a poor showing for the WAC. I hereby declare that my new college football pet peeve* is all the talk about conferences as opposed to teams. I think it started in earnest in 2004 when Auburn went undefeated but didn't make it into the title game. People said going undefeated in the SEC is tougher than going undefeated in the Pac-10. Now every game is a reflection of each team's conference. As a BYU fan, I have to root for the hated Utes whenever they play a non-conference game because they represent BYU's conference.

But you know what? The fundamental unit of college football is the team, not the conference. Yes, Georgia is better than Hawaii. But that doesn't necessarily mean the SEC is better than the WAC. And Hawaii's egg-laying certainly shouldn't have any negative repercussions for future WAC teams that show signs of greatness (even less should it have any consequences for teams from the other non-BCS conferences).

What if we abolished conferences and just had everyone be independent? That would be a fairer way to talk about who's better than whom.

Either that or a playoff.

At any rate, the silver lining as a BYU fan is threefold:

1) We BYU fans are natural enemies of Hawaii. Remember what they did to Ty Detmer? To the nearly glorious 2001 season?

2) Hawaii will probably fall in the final rankings below BYU. (It'll be interesting to see if they stay in the rankings at all and get any credit for going undefeated in the regular season, or if the voters will say this game exposes them as a fraud)

3) Next year, if (no, WHEN!) BYU goes undefeated, they'll probably play in the Orange Bowl against the ACC champion. That'll be a lot easier than an SEC team.**

* One of the great things about college football is that there is so much to complain about.

** D'oh! There I go talking about conferences! I mean, we'll probably have to play Virginia Tech, Clemson, or Maryland -- at any rate, someone much easier to beat than the likes of Georgia, LSU, or Florida.