he also serves as director of studies at tcu and curator of history at the ft. worth museum of science and history. his talk this morning is thomas jefferson manifest destiny and the texas revolution. please help me welcome dr. smith. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. it's a pleasure to be here today. i need something a little taller. my mom always told me i should be the first one to speak in the room. that way, if i said something that was out of place, there would be a chance for others to follow up and correct me. so hopefully i can get started today and i'll say a few things that you might think, well, that seems out of place. but fortunately the land commissioner's already told you many of the fireworks of my presentation because it's really about texas before it became anglo. and how certain people wanted it to become anglo. one of the things i can tell you is that i'm an early american historian and i work on the era of thomas jefferson. and you may say that thomas jefferson really has no association whatsoever with texas. well, that's not exactly corre

i can remember two years ago when auburn won, there was tcu just undefeated off a rose bowl win.ondered if they played one more game. who would have been the national champion? when alabama won the year before, boise state was undefeated. so i think for the last 14 years, maybe 97% sure at the end of the season who was the national champion. this new format, i think it will bring us that much closer to being 100% sure who the national champion is year in and year out. >> what about current bowl games? >> i think one of the big topics of discussion right now is trying to determine where and when to play these games. this is going to be a playoff. should there be homefield advantage given to the first round of these final four games, the teams that finished number one and number two or do you somehow find a way to tie in the current bcs bowl games with these games? one of the reasons i like this format and this playoff format that everyone is talking about is i think you can still find a way to keep bowl traditions alive. depending on how the final four teams play out in the rankin