Gotta love playoff football

It’s a rare event in sports when the path to achieving a goal is as clear cut as the Southern Miss football team’s is at this point in the season,

With two games remaining on the regular season schedule, it comes down to win, and they are in great position to receive a berth in the the Conference USA championship game. Lose, and,  well, they aren’t.

The team became bowl-eligible with 27-20 road-win over Marshall last Saturday, but you would never be able to tell talking to players.

“The only people talking about that is (the media),” Southern Miss linebacker Korey Williams said Monday. “Our main goal is to win the (C-USA) championship. We kind of expected to be bowl eligible by now.”

That kind of confidence will serve the team well going into these final two games, starting with Saturday’s matchup against Tulsa.

A win would set up the biggest game of the season, a showdown with East Carolina for the Conference USA East crown, assuming an up-and-down Alabama-Birmingham team finds a way to lose one of its final two games.

Of course, the Golden Eagles wouldn’t have had to worry about UAB had they just taken care of business on that fateful Thursday night in September, but that’s the subject for another time.

Despite taking that terrible loss to UAB, the team has taken some strides this season that might have fallen out of the spotlight.

A win in either of the final two games would secure at least a 7-5 record going into the bowl season, meaning they have a chance to improve on last year’s finishing mark of 7-6.

They are ranked seventh nationally in sacks with 30, an area they struggled in mightily in 2008, and they rank 31st in total offense and 17th in scoring offense despite losing starting quarterback Austin Davis.

“I think (quarterbacks coach) Blake Anderson has done a great job with (backup Martevious Young) and (offensive coordinator) Darryl Wyatt has done a great job,” Fedora said. “Those guys are making sure we are doing the things that Martevious can be successful at, and he is doing an exceptional job of taking care of the football.”

Talk about an understatement: Young has thrown eight touchdowns and one interception in five games, despite not having a receiver that averages better than 55 yards a game. All that said, the next two games are arguably the toughest on the schedule.

As Fedora has said, Tulsa is like a wounded animal fighting for respect and a chance to get bowl eligible. East Carolina is hitting on all cylinders coming off wins in three of its last four games.

My guess? The Eagles get it done.

They have the talent and the mentality to do it, and they matchup favorably with ECU – the tougher of the two in my book.