These Utes?

I don't get a lot of calls from my brother-in-law, so I was a little surprised when my wife handed me the phone a few nights ago, and told me it was for me. When I got on the line, he asked me this question: "Did you see the Championship game?" Since my brother-in-law is not what you might call a huge fan of spectator sports, I was immediately intrigued.
"Championship game?" I stalled. I wondered if there was some clever connection to his love of chess or some cynical observation on my own obsessive relationship to sports.
"The college football championship," he reasserted.
And now I knew exactly what he was talking about. "How 'bout them Utes?" I asked rhetorically, knowing that his home in Moab, Utah suddenly gave him proximal rights to root for the University of Utah. Not Brigham Young, or the team from Utah State. They didn't finish the season undefeated and win their bowl game. The Utes did.
"Well, yeah. How 'bout them Utes?" Responded my brother-in-law, just a tad chagrined that I was able to determine his meaning without a lot of extra inquiry. The Utes are exactly what the Bowl Championship Series didn't need. Some little school that played a perfect season, and oh by the way beat some pretty stiff competition including Oregon State back in October and the Crimson Tide of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
Sure, the Utes might have faced an ugly uphill battle against the likes of the Florida Gators or the Oklahoma Sooners, but that's why they play the games, right? As a result, there will be plenty of chest thumping and pontificating across the Beehive State as the "top two" teams as determined by a network of computers and buckets full of money go at it in the Fed Ex "Mythical National Championship Game." So what's a football fan to do?
Well, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff contends the BCS unfairly puts schools like Utah, which is a member of a conference without an automatic bid to the lucrative bowl games, at a competitive and financial disadvantage. He is investigating the Bowl Championship Series for a possible violation of federal antitrust laws. It reminds me of what a friend used to say about his high school's football team: "We didn't always win the game, but we always won the post-game fight." Utah might not win the National Championship, but at least they might win the post-game litigation.