ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Mark Schlabach

Can a team that has done so much good for the Big East actually be the most hated team in the conference?

After the ACC raided the Big East for three of its teams in 2004, West Virginia put the league back on college football's map by upsetting Georgia 38-35 in the 2006 Sugar Bowl (which was played in the Georgia Dome). Last season, the Mountaineers routed Oklahoma 48-28 in the Fiesta Bowl, giving the new-look Big East even more credibility.

But the Mountaineers still gets fans' blood boiling more than any other Big East team.

Maybe it's because West Virginia fans wouldn't let former coach Rich Rodriguez go to Michigan quietly. Rodriguez's departure before the 2008 Fiesta Bowl turned into a statewide soap opera. The university president was involved. The state's governor was involved. For weeks, college football fans read and heard about the never-ending saga, which was eventually settled in court.

Maybe it's because Adam Jones played at West Virginia -- along with Chris Henry, another one of the NFL's most notorious figures.

Maybe it's because West Virginia fans like to burn couches after big victories. Don't the Mountaineers know there are children sitting on floors around the world?

Maybe it's because the Mountaineers play a John Denver song after each home game. What's next? Celine Dion?

The real source of the hatred for West Virginia? Maybe it's because fans know their linebackers and defensive backs have absolutely no chance of catching quarterback Pat White and tailback Noel Devine once they cross the line of scrimmage.

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

There is no MAC team in the last 40 years that has been as successful as Toledo. It boasts 10 MAC championships, seven West Division titles, an 8-2 record in major bowls and was the first MAC team to have a player finish in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy (quarterback Chuck Ealey finished eighth in 1971)

The Rockets lost just nine conference games from 2000-2005. The coach goes by "Toledo Tom" Amstutz.

The last couple years haven't been nearly as kind. The Rockets have stumbled to consecutive 5-7 seasons much to the delight of the rest of the conference, because who doesn't like to kick a good team while it's down?

If the MAC is looking for a new team to dislike, Mount Pleasant, Mich., might be a nice place to start. Central Michigan has won the MAC each of the last two seasons and its quarterback was named MAC Freshman of the Year in 2006 and MAC Offensive Player of the Year in 2007. Central Michigan's love affair with its quarterback is so great it was posterized on a 60-by-30-foot billboard on the back of the scoreboard at Comerica Field in Detroit.

Did I mention the MAC's media days are Tuesday in Detroit, and that there's a big unveiling ceremony for the billboard? By revealing the billboard, Central Michigan is not only campaigning for the school and the Heisman and All-American status for its QB, it's also campaigning for the MAC's new most hated team.

Posted by ESPN.com's Ted Miller

The most-hated program in the Pac-10? 

This could go the predictable way or the more nuanced way.

USC is the obvious answer. Why? Because everybody hates a winner.

Everybody hates a six-time champion. Everybody hates a pro football factory that celebrates seven players taken in the first two rounds of the 2008 NFL draft and may nearly duplicate that number in 2009.

Everybody hates a strutting bully. Everybody assumes the worst about one, including that he may be cheating (see Bush, Reggie).

What about that band? Stop for a second, will 'ya? It's almost enough to make a guy pine for "Rocky Top." (Operative word being, almost). 

Only one horse in the world makes college football fans dream -- oh, he's so ... white -- about a case of graffiti paint.

And the Song Girls just standing there lazily doing scissor fingers at you? Could a fellow get an Oregon cheerleader or something?

Pete Carroll? Guess what... he's PUMPED! He's EXCITED! He LOVES TO COMPETE!

He talks really fast and it's annoying how much fun he appears to be having.

He's so, so... media friendly. He's SO AVAILABLE. With his OPEN PRACTICES. He acts like COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE A FUN THING TO BE AROUND.

(Wait... that's a really cool thing).

Want to see hate? Walk up to a UCLA fan and go, "Stinks about USC, eh? Boy they really own you guys. At least you have basketball, right?"

So, yeah, you can find plenty of hate for those Trojans.

But let's at least acknowledge a strong second place... let's salute the program that a couple of seasons ago had Carroll dropping a series of F-bombs at the opposite sideline for a national television audience to absorb.

(You guys in the Northwest already know where this is going, don't you)?

Let's send out a Pac-10 salute to ... the Oregon Ducks... Nike U... Phil Knight's play pen.

You know: The guys who put up billboards in Times Square for a quarter million dollars. And wear the ugliest uniforms in the history of the world. And brag about it.

The team with the absurdly luxurious locker room, weight room and training center: Thank you Uncle Phil!

And that Autzen Stadium... hey, Quacks, can you give it a rest for just a moment? It's just a second-quarter punt -- no need to make like 54,000 jet engines for the ENTIRE GAME!

And what about that Mike Bellotti. He's so, so... media friendly. He's SO AVAILABLE. With his OPEN PRACTICES. He acts like COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE A FUN THING TO BE AROUND.

(Wait... that's a really cool thing).

And, you know, win a Rose Bowl in the Modern Era before you act like you invented football.

So, sure, USC, by virtue of its annoying dominance, is the Pac-10's most-hated program.

But more than a handful of conference fans will tell you they find it surprisingly easy to muster about as much hate for the Ducks.

Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

Maybe it's the fact that Alabama once dominated this league like nobody has since or before.

Maybe it's the fact that Paul W. "Bear" Bryant is the most iconic figure in all of college football history.

Maybe it's the fact that Alabama has been caught cheating each of the last two decades, serving three years of NCAA probation in the mid 1990s and five years of NCAA probation from 2002-'07.

Maybe it's that obnoxious elephant roar at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Maybe it's Bryant's gravelly voice still being piped in over the loudspeaker at Bryant-Denny Stadium before every game.

Maybe it's the fact that Alabama is ... well, Alabama.

Love the Tide or loathe the Tide, how many college football programs stoke the passions of so many in one state the way Alabama does -- not just every Saturday -- but 365 days a year?

Just an extracurricular activity? Yeah, right.

At Alabama, it's a way of life. If you don't believe so, Tide fans will gladly tell you. They talk about past glory as if it happened just yesterday.

Never mind that they've won just one SEC championship in the last 15 years.

Yep, there's a myriad of reasons for the rest of the SEC to hate Alabama. But right there at the top is this belief among many in the Tide Nation that they're an elite program even if their record over the last decade or so says otherwise.

The operative word here is "was" an elite program. After all, Alabama is on its eighth head coach since Bryant retired in 1982. Since 1997, Alabama has lost five or more games in a season eight times.

For those keeping count at home, that's eight five-loss seasons or more in the last 11 years. And in the last five seasons, the Crimson Tide have lost 30 football games.

Elite? Mediocre sounds more like it.

With Nick Saban and his $4 million price tag aboard, Alabama fans are convinced that better days are ahead. Saban's track record suggests they're right.

He's already won one national championship while coaching in the SEC when he was at LSU.

But even Saban will tell you that this is a more daunting rebuilding task than what he faced at LSU. Saban, too, has implored fans to quit talking about winning championships and what's been done in the past at the Capstone.

He's right, because talk is cheap.

Saban said last week at the SEC media days that the Crimson Tide needed to earn their respect.

And just because Bryant won six national championships at Alabama -- the last one coming nearly 30 years ago -- nobody ever said the Tide would get a lifetime exemption into college football's most exclusive club.

Just don't tell the crimson-coated masses that.

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

This was a tough choice because the conference has changed quite a bit from a few years ago. It's young and the fierce rivalries that existed a few years ago are now just a flickering flame.

So now it's time a find a new bad boy. If this were a few years ago, I would have said Southern Miss because it had a few solid league-dominating years, including an 8-0 campaign. But now, I think Tulsa -- with its high-scoring offense -- might be the winner.

The Golden Hurricane have won the West Division two of the last three years (since expansion) and are picked to win it again this year. Their offense was the nation's best last year, and if a quarterback can emerge, Tulsa has all the pieces to be even better.

While Tulsa holds the spot now, I do think teams such as SMU and Houston can take it away. SMU will bring the run-and-shoot to the league, which will frustrate a lot of offenses. June Jones' Hawaii teams weren't known for their bad behavior, but as you can see from the WAC timeline, they were involved in a few altercations.

At Houston, I think new coach Kevin Sumlin will bring a special kind of toughness and even a bit of arrogance from the Big 12. Houston was accused of talking major smack to SMU last season, which caused the Mustangs to jump up and down on the Houston logo.

Let's hope both new coaches keep those traditions alive and well.

Posted by ESPN.com's Tim Griffin

Even a revered figure like Walter Cronkite can inspire hatred and jealously in the Big 12.

"Uncle Walter's" dulcet tones have been used for an advertising campaign to hype enrollment at Texas, a school that he once attended.

"We're Texas," Cronkite booms out during commercial breaks for Longhorn games at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and on network broadcasts. "What starts here changes the world."

But to most other rivals across the conference, that advertising slogan encapsulates all that they detest with the Big 12's largest and wealthiest school.

That attitude has helped many Big 12 rivals detest all things Longhorn -- from the Big Bertha drum and Bevo to "The Eyes of Texas" and the "Hook 'em" hand sign.

Longhorn fans are considered arrogant and privileged by some of their Big 12 opponents. The school's vast accumulation of wealth through the Permanent University Fund helped provide it with a huge early head start over most universities. That largesse has grown over the years, enabling Texas to have the largest endowment in 2007 of any public university in the nation.

That money, along with a deep collection of big-time boosters, has helped fuel an incredible facilities push for the Longhorns over the last few years that has left most other Big 12 schools choking in their dust. Texas coaches typically are paid more than their counterparts across the nation and most don't want to leave the Austin lifestyle if they can help it.

The Longhorns' sports marketing program made history in the euphoria of their 2005 national championship by generating more royalties than any college or university.

Recent additions at DKR Stadium have made it the conference's biggest facility and the one with the coolest trinkets. The massive Godzillatron scoreboard is the world's largest HDTV, a 55-by-134 foot conversation starter that is only 11 yards narrower than the football field.

The natural propensity of some Texans to be loud and boastful about their team's successes tends to rub many of those from outside the state in the wrong manner.

"We don't keep up with the Jones," Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds once famously said. "We are the Joneses."

Try telling that to fans of the 11 other Big 12 teams who struggle to keep up with their neighbors with the biggest house and largest budget.

The Longhorns are considered the biggest rival for all three Big 12 Texas-based schools and Oklahoma, too. Ask any Arkansas fan who they love to hate the most and you'll still hear Texas mentioned, even though the Longhorns and Razorbacks haven't been conference rivals in 17 years.

Other schools have their haters as well. Oklahoma is perceived by many Longhorn boosters on par with athlete's foot and increasing gas prices. The Sooners have also rubbed many in Texas over the years by plundering state for many great football players like Greg Pruitt, Jack Mildren, Brian Bosworth and Adrian Peterson. And the Sooners' recent success in the Red River Rivalry under Bob Stoops has been difficult for Texas fans to swallow, along with their history-making back-to-back Big 12 titles.

Colorado fans are considered to be apart from the rest of the conference because of how different the Rocky Mountain lifestyle is with many other schools in the conference. Texas A&M's military traditions, although beloved by former students, aren't exactly embraced by many rivals. And Nebraska still is perceived by many other rivals as "The Big Red Monster," no matter how quaint their fans' tradition of clapping for vanquished opponents at Memorial Stadium might be.

But everybody else sits behind Texas -- at least in the Big 12.

Why? The slogan says it all.

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

Yeah, that's right, Middle Tennessee, a team that has won more than five games just once in the last six seasons. This choice has little to do with dominance on the field and more to do with the fact that several teams in the Sun Belt think of Middle Tennessee as its rival.

Troy and North Texas despise Middle Tennessee, and now that Western Kentucky, another hated rival, is joining the Sun Belt in football, Middle Tennessee faces its own Unholy Trinity.

It's almost unfair to hate a team that has beaten itself up. The Blue Raiders struggle each year because of a brutal nonconference schedule and scholarship limitations.

Middle Tennessee will play with 74 scholarship players (85 is normal) because of its failure to meet the NCAA's 925 APR minimum. It will face Maryland, Kentucky, Louisville and Mississippi State in its nonconference slate, which is a cakewalk compared to facing Oklahoma and LSU like it has in the past two seasons.

Then it gets to face a conference that frankly doesn't like it. There's something so wrong with that.

Other candidates for most hated are Troy for its ESPN heroics over Missouri in 2004 that made it an overnight sensation and left the rest of the Sun Belt out in the cold. I was covering Mizzou at the time and called the upset. DeMarcus Ware was a man among boys. The Trojans have been the most consistent Sun Belt team ever since.

And Florida Atlantic for making waves as one of the conference's youngest members. No one likes to be upstaged by a newbie.

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

BYU isn't just the most-hated team in the Mountain West, it might be the most hated non-BCS team in the nation. That's because BYU has the one thing none of the other non-BCS teams have -- a national championship.

Because of the bitterness, jealousy and downright hostility, there have been varying degrees of appreciation for the Cougars' national championship campaign. Some say BYU had the best team in the country, some say it played an easy schedule that year, some are better off saying nothing at all. Regardless of how it was done, the Cougars accomplished a feat that no other non-BCS team may ever accomplish again.

According to BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall's theory, the only way a non-BCS team gets a sniff at the national championship is if it goes undefeated or has one loss for at least three consecutive years. And even then, it would probably take a divine act for the BCS to allow that to happen.

BYU has an air of confidence knowing it's one of the few Mountain West teams with the credentials over the last two seasons to make a case for major conference expansion. BYU is one of two non-BCS teams to win at least 11 games in each of the last two seasons. Hawaii is the other, but it also plays an extra regular-season game every year.

Or perhaps BYU's confidence is really cockiness over being the team with the toy all the other kids want. That will spill over to this season as BYU figures to be the highest ranked non-BCS team in the country and the early favorite for BCS buster.

Posted by ESPN.com's Graham Watson

In every conference, there's one team that seems to be the bane of everyone else's existence. Either it wins too much, talks too much smack, or dances on other team's logos after wins.

Over the next five posts, I'm going to break down my conferences -- Western Athletic, Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference USA and Mid-American -- and identify the most-hated teams.

Basically, when every other team in your conference makes beating you a big deal, you're the team everyone loves to hate.

FRESNO STATE

The play anyone, anywhere, anytime attitude has been great for Fresno State because it's given the school several marquee opportunities for national exposure and earned the Bulldogs some BCS street cred.

It's also made the other teams in the WAC jealous because they either can't, won't or don't want to schedule the BCS' finest to the extent that Fresno State does. To that end, Fresno State gets a call when national powerhouses need to fill games (see USC in 2005 and LSU in 2006), and they often become media darlings when they play tight with these schools (again, see the 50-42 loss to the Trojans).

If Fresno State had been in Hawaii's position last year -- undefeated by bowl season -- there would have been no talk of a soft schedule. The Bulldogs faced two ranked teams in nonconference play and traveled to Hawaii and Nevada. Considering the schedules of the five or so teams in contention for the BCS title game last year, Fresno State could have made a case to be in the conversation.

That kind of talk would give any team a big head and perhaps tie an elitist bow around its neck. So when the Bulldogs leave their maverick nonconference schedule to start their lowly WAC schedule (I say that tongue in cheek, people) there's a little bit of animosity by the teams that scheduled the likes of Kansas circa 2006 on their nonconference slate.

• Oct. 4, 1986 -- San Jose State beats Fresno State, 45-41, in the most penalized game in NCAA Division I-A football history. There were 36 total penalties.
• Oct. 25, 2002 -- Hawaii coach June Jones claims someone in the Fresno State crowd threw a screwdriver at him and it stuck in the ground on the sideline. Fresno State athletics director Scott Johnson issues a public apology.
• Oct. 2, 2004 -- Fresno State and Louisiana Tech engage in a pregame fight after a Fresno State player walks through the Tech warm-up. The game was in Ruston, La., The Bulldogs were ranked No. 17, and Tech beat them, 28-21.
• Nov. 10, 2007 -- Fresno State and Hawaii fans get into an altercation in the stands at Aloha Stadium. Water bottles were hurled, trash was thrown, and spit was spat.

This season will be no different. The league's coaches picked the Bulldogs to finish first in the WAC, the first time since they tied with Boise State in 2005. That's sure to make the bulls-eye that much larger.

Posted by ESPN.com's Heather Dinich

You might remember a game that was staged as Good vs. Evil.

Penn State, the clean-cut athletes in their suits and ties -- a.k.a. the poster boys for what college football players should be -- against Miami, the chest-thumping, trash-talkin' program whose players showed up for the 1987 Fiesta Bowl dressed in fatigues for a war of, well, morality.

If there is a reason for Miami to be deemed as the most hated team in the ACC, it's because of its longstanding tradition of Evil -- and this T shirt.

When the Bullies of the Big East joined the ACC, somebody somewhere deemed it the "All Canes Conference."

So, no, the brash attitude did not disappear with Jimmy Johnson, or the 11- and 12-win seasons.

If wins alone were enough to determine the most hated team, the award would go to Florida State, but the Seminoles were more feared than hated during their prime. Did Bobby Bowden deal with his share of off-field incidents? Certainly.

But none that rivaled this.

The infamous brawl between Miami and FIU in 2006 had to make ACC commissioner John Swofford cringe. You buy the wins, you buy the reputation, too.

Has outsiders' disgust for Miami fizzled with its 7-6 and 5-6 records? You bet. Does that mean opposing fans actually LIKE this program anymore? No. In fact it's become an opportunity to point the finger and say the Hurricanes are the reason the ACC is "down."

There was another T-shirt sold at last year's game between Miami and Florida State, targeted toward Seminoles fans and meant to be an insult to the Hurricanes. It had the word THUGS across the front, with every letter in green but the U, which of course, was the U logo.
Miami fans wanted to know where they could get one.

They embrace everything the U stands for.

Love it or hate it.