If we assume Fla/Bama vs. OU is the correct championship matchup, this still isn’t reall the first time the BCS got it right, is it? I thought there were a couple of recent years where there was pretty much no argument who should be in the title game. Maybe this would be the first time the BCS functioned correctly in a disputed year, but we don’t know that right now.
If Bama loses then I propose a Boise State-Utah Championship game. Who’s with me!?
If/when BCS gets it right it’s simply a matter of random chance. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
Pretty much no one outside of Idaho and Utah.
I don’t live in either state, and I’m with you.
Did you watch Georgia slaughter Hawaii last year?
Generally I’d agree with you, but to me it’s weird how it’s “common sense” that the results of how a team will do in a bowl game are predicted, not by that team’s performances during that year, but by those of an entirely different team in an entirely different year.
And it’s not just Hawaii’s failures last year that get extrapolated. Earlier this year I was reading an extremely ernest column that theorized that maybe it was better that Penn State lost against Iowa and so didn’t make the BCS Championship game. After all, we all saw what happened with Ohio State and…NO, GODDAMMIT! Penn State and Ohio State are DIFFERENT TEAMS, for cryin’ out loud! How well the SweaterCoach did in a bowl game last year has ZERO to do with how well PSU would have done this year! AAAAAAAAUGH! Stupid, stupid, stupid!
As a rule you can get some level of predictability by good programs. They have good coaching,good recruiting and are strong year after year. Which does not explain U, of Mich. this year. But as a rule you can trust some degree of expertise from good well run programs.
These teams that run the table in lower level leagues are often unable to move up in a bowl game. But the followers require a whipping to get the message.
Yep. I also saw Boise State beat Oklahoma in one of the best bowl games in years one year before that.
Even if it isn’t for the championship, you have to admit Boise State against Utah would be a hell of a matchup.
Oh yes. I’d much rather see that than Cincinnati-Boston College, by far. One of my big problems with the BCS is that relatively undeserving conference champions (and Notre Dame!) get a free pass into the top games.
And I don’t mean to extrapolate everything based on that Hawaii blowout. (The OSU-Penn State comparison is silly for example.) But I don’t think any kind of serious case can be made that Boise or Utah are the two best teams, or that either of them is one of the two best. I don’t think they are playing the same kind of competition at all, and I don’t think they’d beat Alabama, Florida, or the top one-loss teams head-to-head. Since the best teams in college football generally don’t play each other, you have to take things like that into account.
I’d watch that game and it would be fun. Somewhere upstream I even suggested it would make a good prelude, mini-playoff prior to the bowl games. I just don’t think it would decide a National Champion. Not that the BCS game really does, anyway, IMO.
This is why the Plus 1 model makes so much more sense than what we currently have. No matter how great they are (or aren’t), neither Utah nor Bosie St. has any chance of playing for the championship under the current system, probably even if every BCS team had two losses. But under the Plus 1 system, if Utah goes to the Orange and beats Florida, for example, they would almost certainly jump into the top 2 and the National Championship Game even without a real playoff.
I’d love to see a D1A playoff, myself; but since it’s not happening any time soon, I’m crossing my fingers that the Plus 1 gets agreed to the next time they “fine tune” the system.
By the way, as to the OP, though I hate the BCS, this is certainly not the first time they will have gotten it right (assuming that they do).
Just off the top of my head, the 2006 Rose Bowl featured USC and Texas, who were #1 and #2 respectively in all the polls and were the only undefeated teams in D1A. Under the old Bowl System, they couldn’t have played - so that year, the BCS clearly did its job exactly as intended.
I’m no fan of the BCS, but it worked all right in 2002 when unbeaten Ohio State played unbeaten Miami and OSU won in 2 OTs, and again in 2005 when unbeaten Texas beat Southern Cal 41-38. So it has worked well at least twice before.
The big game does not define the success of the system. There are always teams undefeated in weaker conferences or with 1 loss that think they deserved to go.
What does - the four BCS bowls as a whole? I don’t think it would ever be possible to arrange four games like that with zero arguing. Even with an eight-team playoff, you’d have some teams arguing they should’ve been number eight.
But here’s the rub.
What is the prupose of the BCS? To select teams for the Championship game. Well sure it gets it “right” when everybody knows what’s right. A BCS formula was hardly necessary to select USC and Texas. The BCS will always be controversial because there is not obvious “right” answer all the time. So the BCS isn’t there to get it right, the BCS is there to get something that has some logic behind it.
There are teams like Utah, Boise and Ball State this year that have won every game. Their fans will think they belong in the top. Most football fans think they are a lesser babka. But as long as they win every game they will think they are no. 1. There is some merit to their claims. What more can they do. Nowadays teams are scheduling weaker opponents to get easy victories and run up the score. Both count highly in the system. The system is flawed. Thats why it gives us so much fun debating every year.
I thought margin of victory was no longer a factor in the computer rankings for exactly that reason. I’d like a cite for the claim that more teams are scheduling weaker opponents. They certainly do it, but there was always a benefit to pumping up your record by putting in soft opponents. I don’t know if the BCS system has made that better, worse or had no effect, but I’d like to know if there’s an answer.
Since 98 it is supposed to not matter. But weaker opponents give a W. That is all important. To go undefeated whatever the schedule is a powerful argument.
Actually margin is not supposed to be a factor. But 2/3rds of the BCS is a human element. The Harris poll is a human interactive poll of 114 experts. The ESPN coaches poll is a human poll. Six computers are the other third. They can eliminate the margin of victory easily. I doubt the other 2 can overlook it.