[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Rhum Runner *
**I’m on record in other threads as hating the BCS, but at a minimum here is what I see needing changes:[list=1]
[li]Fix the way they calculate strength of schedule – Right now the formulas only look at the record of the teams on your schedule, not who those teams have played.[/li][/quote]
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SOS does take into account both record of teams played (weighted 2/3) and record of teams played by those teams (weighted 1/3).
Well, don’t they drop the lowest ranking of the computer polls in the average? That’s enough of a correction to the computer polls, in my book. You could make them drop the lowest and the highest, but that seems silly.
So did LSU. They had Troy State (6-6) and Marshall (8-4) scheduled, but those two teams bailed. Marshall opted for a game against Toledo on ESPN instead, and had to replace the game with one against Western Illinois after 45 schools declined LSU’s offer. As far as why Troy State bailed, it’s complicated, so I’ll let you just read this link which says
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I don’t have time to counter this, especially when this guy did such a splendid job. Read that, then get back to me.
(When the hell did I become such a big LSU defender???)
Quixotic, the point that you have to remember is that the eventual records of LSU and USC’s opponents are completely out of their control.
USC scheduled what it expected to be very tough teams based on preseason rankings. Their schedule was thought to be tougher than LSU’s. That most of those teams did worse than expected is not USC’s fault, yet USC gets punished for it. When the national title comes down to what Hawaii and Notre Dame do in their last games, despite neither being in contention, you know something is wrong. Humans can compensate for this, but the computers cannot.
But like I said, LSU deserves to be in the title game. Since the system is flawed, and has to be unfair to someone, the team that should get left out is the team that got blown out in their last game and failed to even win their conference. OU is good, but if someone had to be left out, it should have been them.
I really think USC has been done an injustice. Nightime, you’re absolutely right. If Notre Dame and Hawaii win last Saturday, we’re talking right now about an OU vs. USC game. It’s not USC’s fault at all that their opponents shit the bed this year. I remember hearing back in the first few weeks that Auburn vs. USC was going to be the best game of the year! #3 vs. #5 or something like that. Well, USC won their games (except Cal, which was OT).
OU got their ass handed to them by K-State. They weren’t even competitive with K-State. OU has proven that they are not the best team in the Midwest. I heard someone suggest that the Sooners threw the game only because it would knock Texas out of the BCS (well…it’s a heated rivalry…). But in any case, OU has proven that when something is on the line, they really can’t handle the pressure.
LSU went and tossed Georgia out of the Georgia Dome. They’ve proven that they’re the best team in the SEC and their only loss was to a good UF team. They’ve shown that they can seal the deal and win the big games.
I’d really like to see USC beat UM and LSU beat OU. And a split national title.
You can make an argument for any of the three teams in the Sugar Bowl and there is no way apart from playing that anyone can say they are correct. What kils me is all this schedule parsing is such nonsense when the solution is so simple…playoffs. Will someone get excluded if you pick 4 teams or 8 or whatever? Sure I guess, but when it is all said and done I doubt anyone would be unwilling to say that the winner of the playoff is the National Champion.
I just want to respond to the incorrect notion that a team that doesn’t win its conference doesn’t deserve to play for the national championship. This year, Oklahoma had an 8-1 conference record and Kansas State had a 7-2 conference mark, and yet KSU is considered the conference champ. That strikes me as very odd. KSU loses two games in the conference, OU loses one, and yet OU is now shunned for not winnng its conference. Very strange. I’m for reforming the BCS, but one of the reforms I’d like is to do away with conference championship games.
Two points, both of which you already know. “We thought they were going to be a good team” does not help one’s strength of schedule. SOS is based solely on wins and losses. If you don’t like that, contact your BCS representative.
Point 2. The last week of the season counts just as much as the first in determining SOS. Whining about it being the last game of the year makes no sense and carries no weight.
Should a team have to win it’s conference to be eligible for the title game? It’s an interesting concept but isn’t relevant. It’s not in the rules. No other collegiate sports that I know of have such a requirement.
Of course, a playoff would go a long way to clear up this “mess”. Bring it on NCAA.
Well, the Big 12 championship game is a playoff. In playoffs teams with lower seedings can beat higher seeded teams. Should OU lose the Sugar Bowl and still win the national championship? No? Then why should they lose their conference championship game and not have it affect them.
The bottom line is this - if USC wins the Rose Bowl there will be a shared national title. The BCS was touted as a way to avoid a split title and it will fail
But the Big 12 Championship game did effect OU. Their BCS points went from 2 to 5 (approximately). It didn’t effect them enough to eliminate them from the BCS championship. There is no “lose 1 game and you’re out” aspect to the BCS.
As far as USC and their split title, whatever floats your boat. According to this link there are 87 different polls. If USC finishes first in any one of them, I suppose that they can rightfully claim to be national champions.
KRM - for EVER there have been 2 important polls in college football, the coaches and the AP - that has been the case since long before the BCS system - so in terms of tradition and history there are only 2 polls that matter to college football (and basketball to some extent) - and if USC wins against Michagan (big if imo) then the 2 MAJOR polls will be split - the classic case of (even before the BCS) a shared national championship.
In every case where they say “shared national football champs” they are talking about those 2 polls.
If the BCS had been able to get the Ap in on the same agreement as the Coaches poll then this would not happen (but people would still think of USC as being screwed).
I wish there were at least a 4 team playoff - the winner of LSU/OK could play the winner of the Rose Bowl and you can bet that both polls would vote the winner of that mactchup as #1.
The fact that the last week’s coaches poll has USC as #1 shows that (if USC wins over Mich) the only reason the Coaches poll will “vote” the Sugar Bowl champ and #1 is that nice little contract with the BCS that requires them to do so (not really a poll anymore is it? - I mean every Coach in the coaches poll could vote 1st for USC and they would just have to change them to 2 anyway due to the contract).
This is a good joke. I mean, you are joking aren’t you? Of course you do realize that the national championship is awarded based on the final results of not the BCS, but of the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls. The BCS was designed to allow the 2 top teams to play so that the winner would be at the top of both polls (consensus national champion). With me so far? The ESPN/USA Today coaches poll is contract bound to place the winner of the “National Championship” game at the top of their poll. OTOH, AP has never lowered the ranking of a #1 ranked team who wins their bowl game. Thus, the situation that the BCS was designed to avoid is a very real possibility.
Well, it is, and it isn’t. It is a playoff for the conference championship, obviously, but who cares about that? It isn’t a playoff in the sense that winner of the game gets to advance in the bracket to play the winner of another bracket. Kansas State doesn’t have any more chance at the national title today than it did Saturday morning before it beat OU.
As a mechanism in the context of a national championship playoff a conference championship game is completely unfair. A Big East champ, or the ACC champ, or the Big 10 or PAC 10 or Notre Dame, doesn’t have to wade through another playoff level to advance to the BCS title game, but a Big 12 and SEC team does. It doesn’t make sense to me that a team can with an undefeated regular season, and an undefeated conference season, can have its chance at a national title ruined by a conference title game that other schools don’t have to play. It is the very definition of an unequal playing field.
The situation is no better and no worse that what existed six years ago, I’m glad so see the pretense of BCS legitimacy dashed so dramatically. With so few common opponents among the top ten teams, the SOS argument falls flat.
Computer rankings always fail to account for situations for which human pollsters can adjust. Consider a hypothetical scenario where a top team has a crucial injury. Say Miami has a Heisman candidate QB and in the 3rd week they are ranked #2. Your team defeats them, gaining significant quality win fractions. In week four, the QB goes down for the season. Miami ends up with a four-loss season, well down in the polls. You lose the QW, though the team you beat is not the same team which dropped off in the middle of the season. Maybe the team was over-ranked in the first place, maybe they were a top team when you beat them, no one can say for certain. Raw numbers don’t reflect the real game, no matter how many decimal places they use.
Because the question we are trying to answer is “which team is the best in the country”. That is, if the two teams played each other today, who would win. Clearly, an early season overtime loss by USC, on a day when a new quarterback was learning the system and had a bad day, does less to weaken a team (at least in my eyes) than an ass-whuppin put on OU three days ago! When the loss happened is directly relevant in determining how good the team is today. In the basketball world, the NCAA Tourney seeding committee agrees – late season losses can have a dramatic effect on the seeds.
Put it another way – how can OU claim to be the best team in the country? We know that K State, at least, is a much better team.
It’s easy for the BCS to fix their system – just add an appendix that says “if both polls agree on #1 and #2, then we throw out the rest of the ranking algorithm, and go with the polls”.
BTW: Cal may be “NOT a good team”, at least not in the league of Florida and K-State. But on 9/27 they dominated USC in every aspect of the game–it was only turnovers and blocked kicks that let SC get to OT. The better team (that day) won.
Full disclosure: Cal grad. Go Bears…beat the Hokies!
It’s interesting that the Nokia Sugar Bowl bills itself as The BCS National Championship Game. Your statement that the BCS was designed to allow the top 2 teams to play is self-affirming. It is does not follow that these top teams must be at the top of the AP or ESPN/USA today polls. If this were the desired outcome, why even have a BCS formula? It would be far easier to do as jsc1953 says and just pick the top 2 teams in the AP or Coach’s poll, at the end of the regular season, they are almost always the same.
As for Pete Carroll’s whining about a split national championship, he can claim whatever he wants but you know as well as I do that he would trade places with Bob Stoops in a heartbeat if he had the chance.