Dawgs' impressive finish won't deliver BCS title, but wait 'til next year

NEW ORLEANS -- UGA or just ugh?

Depends on which side of the gutter you were stumbling down late Tuesday night.

Will Knowshon Moreno and Georgia do to the rest of the nation in 2008 what it did to Hawaii on Tuesday? (AP)

Those plucky Hawaiians who took out second mortgages just to get within puke-smelling distance of Bourbon Street were probably cursing their travel agents. Georgia fans hoping they just saw a kickoff to a 2008 BCS championship in the Superdome had every right to be screaming up at the Bourbon balconies something that rhymes with, "Show us your grits."

All those things you thought, read and predicted about No. 4 Georgia? True, after a 41-10 victory in the Sugar Bowl that foreshadows '08 more than wraps up '07. A seven-game, season-ending winning streak sets up the Dawgs for a top-five debut next season. Freshman tailback Knowshon Moreno set himself as an early 2008 Heisman candidate with two rushing touchdowns. The defense had more sacks of Colt Brennan (a school-record eight) than the Georgia offense had touchdowns (five).

The Bulldogs treated the Warriors like the wide-eyed out-of-towners they were trying not to be. Georgia mugged 'em, thugged 'em, lei'd 'em out, sent them back to that rock in the South Pacific with enough stories about cajun food and voodoo to last until their next BCS bowl.

For the non-BCS Warriors, that could be a loooong time.

"For me," said Brennan, leader of the nation's most statistically potent offense, "it's a gigantic disappointment."

"We felt like we were the best team in the country," Georgia corner Asher Allen said. "If we would have played anybody today, we would have won."

In the end, the season of the upset did not extend to the Superdome. If you haven't noticed, we're two-fifths of the way through the BCS matchups and the games stink. Georgia and USC have won by a combined 63 points against opponents who were -- how to say it delicately? -- sub-standard.

Georgia and USC squaring off in Pasadena would have been better than the slop we were subjected to on Tuesday. But the Sugar Bowl never would have released the Bulldogs, so we were subjected to BCS jail.

This is just a bad year for matchups in the questionable system. Questionable and overwrought. Those worried about getting back to their hotel rooms before sunup after the four-hour, five-minute Sugar Bowl had commercial-happy Fox more to blame than the pass-happy Warriors.

The hype factor had better pick up quick, then, in Glendale and South Florida before the title game Monday back here. Hawaii's loyal fans spent thousands of dollars to find out that not only weren't their Warriors a match for Georgia, they didn't even resemble Boise State. The heart-warming story of an undefeated WAC champion cracking the BCS code and upsetting a traditional power lasted exactly one game. The 2007 Fiesta Bowl, to be exact, when Boise State seemingly was at the front of a revolution.

The 2007 regular season carried on the revolution, except that Hawaii wasn't doing any of the upsetting. Playing the weakest schedule in the country, Hawaii largely took advantage of those other upsets (and BCS fuzzy math) to get here. That's what beating Northern Colorado and Charleston Southern will get you.