John Blanchette

Picking an Olympic team is serious business, and apparently not to be trusted to the vagaries of do-or-die competition. Still, if the U.S. skating aristocracy wanted to do this right, surely it could figure a way to include in the process the Sagarin Ratings, the Colley Matrix and the Harris Poll. All are ingredients in the happy stew that is the BCS, the final word – OK, acronym – in utterly confounding and dubious ways to decide what should be settled in the arena, and it’s hard to believe that skating can stomach being one-upped by college football.

To review: In the past week, Oregon State suffered a 51-point defeat at home to a school that hasn’t played Division I basketball in 30 years, then showed up in Eugene a few days later and beat the team which sat atop the Pacific-10 Conference standings. And so we put it to you, the college basketball fan: Why not the Cougs?

Paul Allen is a dirtbag. And that’s meant in the best possible way. The way Jim Mora meant it.

PULLMAN – Returning to the scene of Thursday evening’s crime, the heavy vibe at Friel Court not 48 hours later suggested that 5,967 grudge-holders had come looking for a new reason to express their lingering outrage. Surely they found fault with nearly every call that went against the home team Saturday, whistled by the unfortunate trio assigned to clean up after the mess left the other night. That’s when head bandito Mike Littlewood spirited away what would have been a Washington State victory over Oregon in overtime by forgetting that Rule 0, Section 0, article 0A states “Good judgment: have some and use it” – and that every other rule in the book hinges on that.

A big fellow named Tiny Gallon rang out the old year with a bang – and a crash. With more than 11,000 spectators jammed into the Spokane Arena to say goodbye to 2009 and root on the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the 6-foot-9, 296-pound freshman from the University of Oklahoma pushed everyone’s New Year’s Eve celebrating on hold when he shattered one of the backboards.

BOISE – Five pass receptions in today’s Humanitarian Bowl and Bowling Green’s Freddie Barnes owns the NCAA single season record. This is a bigger lock than a senator from the Mormon Belt holding hearings about the BCS to score points with his electorate. And Idaho coach Robb Akey is OK with that. To a point.

BOISE – Among the cottage industries spawned by college football, the manufacture of hoary bromides is likely the busiest – or surely no worse than second behind the office pool. A particular golden oldie posits that “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” Author credit should go to Coach Epictetus of the Fightin’ Stoics, but since he couldn’t silk-screen it on a T-shirt in his day, it has been passed off as original thought by every Knute Rockne trying to will his team back from a two-touchdown deficit.

If a college football coach truly is a teacher, then he must be ready to skedaddle for the next job if only to impart to his players life’s most essential lessons: •Always look out for No. 1, especially if you’re hip deep in No. 2, and;

After the parade downtown Tuesday afternoon, there was a charter plane waiting to whisk the University of Montana Grizzlies off to Chattanooga, Tenn., and this weekend’s FCS championship game – for the fifth time this decade. Wonder if the citizens would be as amped for a fifth trip to the ShamWow Bowl? Would they even look up from their pints of Olde Bongwater to see the team bus rolling to the airport and a flight to the Freecreditreport.com Bowl?

SEATTLE – So what’s your poison? Try to rebuild without the greatest player from the greatest run in school history – a true once-in-a-lifetime supernova – with new recruits, a summer European tour and the daily brick-and-mortar of practice?

MOSCOW, Idaho – As the whistle blows on the irony train pulling into Vandal Station, nobody is quite so pleased with Boise State’s return to the BCS party than the University of Idaho. Sometimes, happiness is a moral dilemma.

It’s the thought that counts. And in the most thoughtful gift of the season, the Gonzaga Bulldogs gave their peeps something to completely freak out about Saturday – something they can chew on maniacally at the upcoming wave of Christmas parties aside from peanut brittle and divinity fudge.

On the day the nation’s leading scorer visited McCarthey Athletic Center, it seemed relevant to brush up on the telling top-gun data in the 143-game history of the fence-line feud between Washington State and Gonzaga. Because, of course, this was going to be Klay Thompson against Zagworld, right? One on five?