I don’t think that anybody thought that Nebraska was one of the top two teams the year they played Miami in the championship game.
The problem isn’t so much that Ohio State is ranked number 2, it’s that they moved up in the rankings, leap-frogging teams who played better than they did over the weekend. Was this a matter of Ohio State moving to it’s rightful place that it was unfairly deprived of the previous week, or a haphazard system? The latter, I think.
USCDiver, that was only my opinion of course, but unless we get everyone (except whichever school happens to be the powerhouse o’ the year) going 10-2 or even 9-3, teams like TCU can’t rise to #6 and remain there even if they’re undefeated. I think it would help matters quite a bit if C-USA could get a championship game for the good of the conference and jack up schedule strength for the champ.
I don’t think that they should play for the national title, it’s obvious that they couldn’t be competitive with Oklahoma. But I think that a team that has done as well as TCU should get rewarded with a big-money BCS bowl. Certainly not the national title game, but one of the four games. Maybe against Ohio State (if they fall from #2) or the SEC champ or Texas.
Wouldn’t it be great if Miami (OH) finished higher in the polls than Miami (FL)? They’re only 2 spots back right now…
USC played better than OSU this weekend? I didn’t know you could compare the two, since they didn’t play each other. USC beat a very bad opponent badly, and OSU beat the number ten team in the country by a slim margin. I know USC can help who is in their conference, but neither can Ohio State. If the Big Ten is a very solid conference this year, and a team emerges with only one loss from the conference, that team deserves much respect. I feel that LSU will have a much bigger gripe with OSU if they go undefeated the rest of the way out.
Yes.
In that case, there’s no excuse for their relative positions changing.
I’m not saying that USC is better than OSU, or the other way around. I am saying that this is evidence that the BCS is screwed up.
Jay
The University of Spoiled Children deserves all the bad breaks it can get, after the two Rose Bowls they stole from Michigan.
1979: U$C’s Charles White fumbles on the two yard line, Michigan recovers the fumble, but in U$C Bizarro World, this counts as a touchdown for the Trojan Condoms.
1990: In Bo Schembechler’s last game as Michigan coach, Michigan runs a fake punt and picks up a first down. But wait, in U$C Bizarro World, such a good thing can’t be allowed to happen to the Wolverines. Flag must be thrown for a totally bogus holding call.
Excuse me if I do not have much sympathy for the U$C Trojan Condoms.
Well it doesn’t look like we’ll be debating about TCU anymore…
In fact, let’s wait until the regular season is over before we bitch at all. These things have a way of working out. My prediction, OSU beats Michigan and UCLA upsets SC.
Haj
By Jay Belanger
quote:
“I don’t think that anybody thought that Nebraska was one of the top two teams the year they played Miami in the championship game.”
I did, and so did the BCS system. As I mentioned earlier, the only ones who really griped that year were Oregon State fans. OSU lost to a sub-par Stanford team, and that cost them their chance.
Poor TCU. Man, they’re really gettin’ screwed by the BCS. It’s a collusion! Stupid computers don’t know shit. TCU should be playin’ in one of those big money BCS games. They deserve it! They’re gonna’ win this big law suit and…
[sub]Oh wait.[/sub] What did you say that score was? Three-time loser Southern Miss 40, TCU 28?
[sub]Never mind[/sub]
Ummm… yeah…
You don’t even have the names right. It was Oregon, not Oregon State, that belonged in the Rose Bowl that year.
Nebraska was ranked 4th. Not even 3rd. Colorado was third, Oregon was second.
Nebraska didn’t even win their own conference!
Nebraska had just been outright slaughtered (26 point loss!) by Colorado, the number 3 team.
Oregon then annihilated Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl.
Are you honestly saying that you thought a 4th ranked team that was just utterly dismantled by the 3rd ranked team belonged in the title game, despite not even winning their own conference?
No, nobody in their right mind thought Nebraska should have played Miami. Oregon would have actually had a good chance, and it would have been a great game. The BCS ruined that whole season of NCAA football.
Perhaps even a better example of the absurdity of the BCS system is that Colorado, with 2 losses and a poll ranking of 3, was inexplicably ranked ahead of Oregon, with 1 loss and a poll ranking of 2.
So Oregon crushed Colorado, who crushed Nebraska. Exactly as the poll rankings predicted.
Yet Nebraska was ranked highest, with Colorado next, by the crazy computers.
There is really no rational argument to be made for the computers here.
“You don’t even have the names right. It was Oregon, not Oregon State, that belonged in the Rose Bowl that year.”
I could have sworn that OSU beat Oregon that year. Being too lazy to look it up, I’ll bow to your wisdom.
You seem to base your whole argument on rankings in the polls. Quote: “Nebraska was ranked 4th. Not even 3rd. Colorado was third, Oregon was second.”
Properly programed, computers are more rational than rankings in the polls. Regional favoritism, alma mater, etc. influence those who vote in the polls that make those rankings.
Anyway, at the time I thought Nebraska was a better choice than any other pretender. Strength of schedule does have a major impact on a team’s won/lost record. I didn’t think the Ducks/Beavers/whichever played the competition necessary to get them in the championship game.
“The BCS ruined that whole season of NCAA football.”
Matter of opinion. You seem to think that without the BCS, Oregon would have played Miami. Without the BCS, the Oregon team would have played in the Rose Bowl, Miami would have whipped whoever in the Orange Bowl, and Miami would still have been the National Champion, since everybody else had at least one loss.
Colorado also had a gripe, as at the end of the season they massacred Nebraska by 26 points.
Nebraska played an easy schedule, with only two ranked teams, and only managed to beat one ranked team all year!
Try to spin it however you want, but a team that loses its last game by 26 points, and loses its own conference, does not deserve a shot at the title over two teams ranked ahead of them in the polls. No way.
No, I gave lots of reasons. I bring up the polls, because they proved to be accurate when the games were played, while the absurd BCS rankings proved to be exactly that - absurd.
Think about it:
Colorado obliterates Nebraska.
Oregon obliterates Colorado.
The polls have Oregon at 2, Colorado at 3, Nebraska at 4.
And yet, the BCS computers place the teams in the opposite order. Actually, I think the computers inexplicably put even more teams ahead of Oregon.
Nebraska’s strength of schedule?
Didn’t exist. They played 8 out of 12 games at home against weak teams.
They played a total of TWO (2) ranked teams that season, and lost to one of them. Badly.
Actually, if you count Miami, they lost very badly to two of three ranked teams they played that year. And yet they were in the national title game?
And why? Because a pushover team they scheduled for an easy win at the beginning of the year won their last game, making them slightly less of a pushover team, and catapulting Nebraska over superior teams into the national title game.
Only with an inane system like the BCS will you see a team lose their last game by 26 points, saving themselves from having to play in their conference title game, which was one of the only tough games on their schedule, and still getting to the national title game.
Honestly, does it matter if you beat a slightly better pushover than the other guy? Especially since it is only at the end of the season that you find out how much they counted?
That is the kind of thing that the BCS can’t take into account, and that is why it is a horrible system.
And I haven’t even mentioned the year before the Nebraska fiasco, when Miami was denied a shot at the national title in favor of a Florida State team that Miami had already beaten! Miami’s only loss that whole year was against the Rose Bowl champion Washington Huskies.
Come on. Even Florida State themselves admitted they didn’t belong in the national title game, and that’s pretty amazing.
BCS sucks.
That’s Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, admitting that the BCS screwed up by putting his team in the title game over his hated rivals the Miami Hurricanes, who had already beaten his team that year and had the same record.
If Bowden can admit it when it helped his team, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the BCS is mind-numbingly bad.
Problem is, they ain’t. As I mentioned above, the NYT computer has three-loss Florida ranked ahead of one-loss USC this week. Really, if the computers were “properly programmed,” they’d all place the top teams in fairly the same order. Instead, there are usually significant differences.
Why, exactly, are the idiosyncracies of a handful of computer programmers more “rational” than the human favoritism shown by poll voters?
Tale of Cinderella Unravelled?
They Called Uncle?
Turd Cutter Ugly?
I had some better ones last night, but forgot not to become drunken and dis-remember them. 
Boy, I can’t wait till tommorrow. There sure will be some football being played!
Go Trojans! Hey Jerrybear! Make tea with my shorts! 
“Being drunk is the best feeling in my poor world”-- Uncle Gabby
The BCS got very lucky when TCU lost last night. They would have been hard pressed to explain why an undefeated team couldn’t play in a BCS game.
Also, given all that is going on in the world today, why did congress take the time to hold hearings on the BCS setup?
Most analysts that I have heard say that Ohio doesn’t belong on the same field as OU and that USC vs. OU would be the best possible game. I happen to agree.
I’m not a Michigan fan, but this week it is all “GO BLUE”. Of course 'SC still needs to put it to UCLA, and they will.
Jerrybear, let me get you some cheese.
So, can we shut up about Ohio State now?
Losers!
[Monty Burns]Excellent![/Monty Burns]
Damn! USC scored before I could finish this post! All is right with the world!
Damn, I’m good! See you in the Big Easy!
Its hard to be humble when your are so damn good.
I’ll be hoisting one to give thanks to Michigan for doing what they love to do, beating Ohio State.
Go Blue and F’TCU!
They are going to smack us (SMU) around like a coked up pimp, but at least I didn’t go to school next to a meat packing plant.
I would have loved to see an OU/TCU game! I would have been orgasmically happy if that were on TV. The score would have made the OU/Baylor score look like nothing.
Short answer: because Orrin Hatch went to BYU and they are one of the schools getting screwed.
Long answer: because there are a lot of pending lawsuits that affect state governments and taxpayers. Example: UConn is suing a whole mess of people because they just built a brand-new football stadium with a lot of tax money, and they are claiming that they wouldn’t have bothered if the knew the Big East was about to go kablammo.
Also, college football does not have an anti-trust exemption like baseball does. And, the NFL did lose the USFL lawsuit and was declared a monopoly (but the USFL failed to prove the NFL’s monopoly was the cause of their woes and thus won $1 in damages).