Possible, although not probable. If the game is tightly fought ~and~ USC lost to UCLA ~and~ Oklahoma gets clobbered by Missouri (lending slightly less credence to Texas and Texas Tech’s claim) and everyone ignores Penn State.
There is a precedent, though. When Florida won it’s first national championship it came as a repeat of the Florida vs Florida State game that year (which FSU won in the first match up). This was, iirc, pre-BCS though.
Ah thanks.
I kinda hope Florida wins just to make things infinitely more confusing.
Alabama had a brutal schedule if Pre-Season polls were any judge. #1 Georgia. #7 Defending national champs LSU. #9 Clemson. #10 Auburn. #18 Tennessee. You’re high if you think Saban is going to push the limits with non-conference games in his second year with a barely ranked team. And SoS doesn’t mean anything going into the SEC championship, which will settle all questions about Alabama either way.
And Oklahoma absolutely doesn’t deserve to play for the NC. They lost to Texas and survived on a Big 12 rule quirk. Head to head is what matters and Stoops & Co. have already lost the big game twice when a more deserving team won out. The BCS has been a disaster, and this year is no different.
Looking back on the season, though, it’s hard to tell what the pollsters were smoking. Did anybody outside the South seriously think Clemson and Auburn were top 10 teams?
And if Oklahoma loses the Big 12 championship game as well, then we can talk really confusing.
This year LSU is a pretender.
Auburn would have been a solid team if they hadn’t experimented with the spread offense. It was a disaster and after the offensive coordinator was fired, Auburn has been pitiful. Clemson was overrated at 9, but they looked to be strong considering their narrow loss in the Peach Bowl. The ACC has been a real crapshoot lately. Alabama looked to have a tough schedule for a team that was #23 in one poll and unranked in another. Didn’t shake out that way, but it’s not their fault that the SEC was disappointing this year.
a couple of thoughts…
First of all I’m in agreement that a playoff system is needed.
However, a playoff system also rewards teams for playing better at the end of the season; just like the BCS appears to.
Also I believe that the way Oklahoma is playing right now, they’d kick Texas’ ass in a rematch (not to mention they lost an awesome linebacker during that game)
from http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2008/10/13/Texas-capitalizes-on-Oklahoma-linebackers-injury/
AdmiralCrunch, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense as by your logic Texas couldn’t play for the NC either as they lost to Texas Tech.
I just wanted to elaborate on this. AdmiralCrunch, if Texas’ only win of the season was against Oklahoma should they still be in the Championship game since Oklahoma lost to them? Of course not, because winning or losing a football game is not irrefutable proof that you are better or worse than the opposing team. Just as win-loss records are either. Otherwise the weak schools that are undefeated would have a bigger reason to complain about not being in a bcs game. You can’t use head to head as a determining factor on only two teams in a three team tie. Sadly Alabama is #1 only because they are the only undefeated BCS team. If they lose to Florida, they’ll drop to #5 or more, I’d bet. The bottom line is the National Championship should be (is supposed to be) the two best teams at the end of the season; and if Oklahoma beats Missou, then they deserve to be there as much or more than Texas does.
And the writers who had Georgia sitting at #1 in all the early polls look pretty silly too, don’t they?
Alabama’s wins over Georgia and LSU don’t look so impressive either, after their losses to Georgia Tech and Arkansas this past weekend.
Look, I know damn well there’s not going to be a playoff any time soon, and probably not in my lifetime. But I HATE polls and I HATE the BCS, because championships should be determined on the field, NOT by guesswork or anybody’s freaking OPINION.
And that’s all the Harris, USA Today, NY Times and the BCS rankings are: guesswork and opinions.
I should note that, while I live in Austin, I didn’t go to the University of Texas (I’m from New York and went to Columbia, where we won zero games during my undergrad years). So, my objection is NOT based on the “unfairness” of the Longhorns being kept out of the title game.
It’s based on the fact that nobody really knows who the two best teams are, which means it’s idiotic to use guesswork and opinions to pick two teams and pretend THEY’VE somehow earned the right to play for the championship.
If I had a vote… I’d probably guess that Florida is the strongest team in the country right now. But screw MY opinion. Screw the coaches and the writers’ opinions. Screw Jeff Sagarin’s opinions. Let the top teams PLAY each other for the title, as they do in every other sport.
Aw, and I was just starting to like you…
Bet the Florabama is going to be rocking on Saturday.
I hate the BCS, so I am the world’s biggest Florida and Missouri fan now.
To expand on this: earlier this week Sports Illustrated’s Stuart Mandel was discussing his “Power Rankings” and admitted that he’d only seen Texas play (on TV, of course) twice and Oklahoma once. And he thought that most voters hadn’t even seen them play that often.
The human polls are very, very shaky. Yet, the BCS decided that they were going to emphasize them and de-emphasize the theoretically less-subjective computer polls. So USC is #5 in the human polls, #8 in the computers, and they are #5 in the BCS; meanwhile Texas Tech is #7 in the human polls, #4 in the computers, and they are #7 in the BCS. Says a lot about the BCS, I think.
Yes, by my logic, Texas couldn’t play for the NC because Bob Stoops and Oklahoma already lost two NC games this decade on questionable BCS calls, leaving more deserving teams with a good argument as to why they should have had a shot. Thanks for explaining that one back to me sprinkled with conjecture about how good Oklahoma and Alabama really are.
My Saturday schedule has only these three items:
Go to my daughter’s soccer game.
Drink beer.
Watch the SEC game.
All other items, such as food, sleep, bathing are optional. If there’s another game on earlier I might watch it. Oh, and I plan to holler at the flat screen TV at World of Beer quite a bit.
I like Stewart Mandel, who’s a smart, honest guy and who knows a lot more about college football than I do.
But his admission shows why voting for championships is so silly. Even a guy like Mandel doesn’t see nearly enough football to judge intelligently which teams are the best. Most writers are in the same boat.
And coaches are even worse. Look, Mack Brown has studied every team in the Big 12 extensively. He could tell you all about the strengths and weaknesses of Oklahoma or Missouri or Kansas or Baylor. But he hasn’t got the time or inclination to watch SEC or PAC 10 or Big East games. So, he has absolutely no idea how good USC is, or how good Utah is. If he bothers to vote at all, he’s guessing. But more likely, he DOESN’T vote, and just has an assistant coach or secretary fill out his ballot each week!
Seriously, it’s a badly kept secret that most coaches DON’T fill out their own ballots. Think about that before you pretend that the coaches poll has any legitimacy.
As far as a playoff is concerned, it’s never going to happen as long as the Bowls have a say. But the current system has already destroyed the value that the major bowl games once had. It used to be that you had to watch at least two, and sometimes as many as three or four of the big games to know who would win the national championship. With USC in the Rose, and Alabama in the Sugar and Oklahoma in the Fiesta and Nebraska in the Orange, we didn’t get to match up the top two teams, but each of those games was enormously important. Now, with the so-called National Championship Game, those other games mean nothing.
I think what we’re going to see sooner rather than later is the Plus 1 system. They’ll go back to the old bowl tie-ins, then after those games they’ll vote for the top 2 BCS teams and play the National Championship Game a week or two later. It’s still not a playoff, but it makes the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Orange (and another, maybe the Cotton or the Holiday) more important than ever, because even the 6th place team might have a real shot at the NCG if the top 4 are in different Bowls and they all lose. It’s not perfect, but it’s waaaaaaay better than what we have now - and, most importantly, it actually has a real chance of happening some time in our lifetimes.
Who can argue? just about everyone. Once people start arguing over who beat who by more or who hypothetically has a better chance of beating whoever because hypothetically if they were going to play it would come out like this, it becomes ridiculous. Sports champions should be based on who scored more points than the other guy during actual real games in which the winner advances and the loser gets knocked out.
So you want to take all the fun away from arm chair QBs and weekend fans. Shame on you. I find experts everywhere.
There’s an even better doozy in Mandel’s column today. He has a link to an article about one of the Harris Poll voters who picked Penn State #2 in last week’s poll. Why? Apparently, he thought they were still undefeated! Unreal!