Texas is the best state for football

So today during lunch I was reading the newspaper (really just the sports section, I never even look at any of the other sections) and I was intrigued by the top 25 BCS rankings and which states had the most teams.

Here is what I found: Texas had the most teams with 3 (Texas Tech at #2, UT at #3, and TCU at #16) then five states each had 2 teams Florida (Florida at #4 and Miami at #23), Ohio (Ohio State at #10 and Cincinnati at #19), Oklahoma (Oklahoma at #5 and Oklahoma State at #11), Oregon (Oregon State at #21 and Oregon at #24), Pennsylvania (Penn State at #8 and Pitt at #20), and Utah (Utah at #7 and BYU at #14)

I found these results pretty interesting. With 3 things that stand out to me.

First: 4 of the top 5 "football" states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) are represented with at least 2 teams. While the 5th football state, California, only has one team, USC at #6, in the top 25 of the BCS rankings. This makes me wonder, What has happened to all the California schools? UCLA, Cal, and Stanford are nowhere to be found.

Second:
How did Oregon and Utah make the list of states with multiple teams? Seriously when did these states become football hot beds? In the case of the Oregon schools we see that the Pac-10 isn't as weak as we once thought. And although these teams are not anywhere close to the National Championship Hunt each has played respectable football all season (Just don't mention the atrocious uniforms Oregon decided to sport recently, someone please tell Nike that not all Uniforms fly, pun intended) with Oregon State in the drivers seat for the Pac-10 championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Utah and BYU have both played well throughout the season and sport a combined record of 21-1 with the only loss by BYU coming against TCU which sports the top ranked defense in the nation and a future matchup between the 2 to decide the Mountain West conference championship and possible an at-large bid to a BCS Bowl. Which leads me to my last point.

Third:
Is the Mountain West conference the 3rd best conference in the nation behind the Big 12 and the SEC? Sure the bottom half of the conference lacks the strength of the upper half but with 3 teams in the top 25 of the BCS (BYU, TCU, and Utah), the top ranked defense in the nation (TCU), and a combined record of 38-6 for the top 4 MWC teams I think they have a compelling argument that at least for one year the MWC is the 3rd best conference in the nation.