Yeah, that’s one of the flaws inherent in the posting system. (A nitpick, though: ESPN is no longer affiliated with the poll.) I know BCS teams schedule lame competition for the easy, impressive victories. Tough schedules do seem to get teams punished, rather than rewarded. But you seemed to be saying the BCS system has made this more common and I was asking if that’s really so.
Of course it is. They have followed the footstep of college basketball. where the magic number is 20. If you get 20 victories you are assured a birth in the NCAA tourney. It matters little who you play.
If you have 1 loss in football, you could possibly have a chance for the big game. But it would require other teams to lose also. Two and you are done. A 2 loss team will never make the big game no matter who they have played .
A two-loss team won the championship last year. If you’ve got a cite for your claim about scheduling I’d still like to see it.
College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS - Wikipedia There have been a couple in the past.
In basketball the Florida Gators won 21 games in the regular season last year. They were also the (two time) defending National Champions. They were NOT invited to the NCAA tournament. They did go deep in the NIT post season tournament, losing in the semi-finals to University of Massachusetts. UMass lost in the finals to Ohio State, who themselves lost the 2007 National Championship game to the Gators (in basketball and football).
That example is just to disprove your assertion. There are plenty of 20+ win teams from mid-major conferences that do not make the NCAA tournament.
Then why did you say a two-loss team will never make the big game? I’m confused. It happened just last year, and I see it also happened in 2003.
In what way did the BCS succeed?
Oklahoma is ranked 4th in both the AP and Harris polls, and is going to the title game over a team ranked ahead of them in both polls which crushed them on a neutral field.
Once again we will not get to see USC settle things with the SEC. For that matter, another USC vs Texas matchup would have been very cool. But no such luck.
Ohio State is going to be chosen over an undefeated Boise State team which is ranked higher and which beat Oklahoma in a BCS game recently. There isn’t even the pretense of fairness there.
Not seeing a lot of “working well” here.
Slight hijack: Oklahoma had only 1 loss going into the title game. The 2nd loss is their bowl loss to LSU.
I don’t disagree with your major thesis, but this point is a bit over the top. Did you watch this game? Oklahoma was in control for a large part of the game, Texas did not get ahead until the end of the third quarter, Oklahoma had a fourth quarter lead. Either team could have won but Texas made the key plays toward the end.
Texas beat Oklahoma. They did not crush them, unless that word means something different in your neck of the woods. Alabama crushed Auburn last week. USC destroyed Notre Dame. Florida humiliated Florida State.
If these same Texas and Oklahoma teams played ten games on a neutral field, the series would end 5-5 or maybe 6-4.
Worst thread premise EVER. How could you not argue, unless you’re an Oklahoma fan?
Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral field, and lost to Texas Tech on a last-second touchdown pass.
I do like the fact that the SEC representative will be selected on the field, although Alabama are going to get killed; the SEC West has been terrible this year.
Not true. The thread was sarcastic. I don’t think it can ever be without controversy. Oklahoma fans are a half step away from insanity. I would love to see them lose to Ball State or Utah.
deleted - my mistake. move on, nothing to see here.
I don’t give a crap what any of you say. USC is the best team out there. They actually can play both sides of the ball. They have more talent and depth than any other squad, and would crush any of the teams ranked ahead of them.
I can’t help but think they are being overly punished for an early season (fluke) loss to a team that wasn’t as bad as people thought, and being in the same conference with a Tyrone Willingham coached team, and thier cross-state rival. Oh well.
Quizz has earned a spot on my “Roster of Hatred” right behind Vince Young. 
And as for Bedlam last weekend: I am not impressed at all with a team that can hang up 60 points if they also allow 40 on them. If it wasn’t for the late game score, Oklahoma basicly won by a couple of touchs. Whoop-de-fuck. Put em in a stadium with SC, and they will be lucky to score 20 and get beat by 20+.
Just the way I see it.
The BCS is lots better than what we had before which was just the polls. It is not as good as a four or more team playoff would be. But consider college basketball where with their 65 teams there is always someone who “deserved” to get in was left out. I like to think of the BCS as a playoff with a field of two.
I get really annoyed with people complain about the “computers”. The computers are only doing calculations based on a rule set. Does anyone think those coaches and writers get together an build a list by hand? No, they vote and a “computer” adds them up and sorts the results. With many defendable ways to evaluate teams, it makes sense to me to have several of these ways used and averaged. Arguements about the rule sets would be fair game but at least you can know at least the general concept of each computer model.
The coaches and writers have the least value because none of those have any sense of objectivity or knowledge (they can’t watch all of the games). I’ve heard coaches quoted saying they always put their own conference highest. How is that a valid test?
Take a conference like the ACC this year where there is parity. Is that because the teams are all good, all bad or all average? The computers can at least attempt to adjust for those different explanations where the humans only see three loses.
The BCS has improved some, primarily due to not confusing ordinal ranking with a numeric score.
Easy schedules should help these teams succeed - ESPN Heres an ESPN story about the benefits of easy schedules.
I understand the benefits of easy scheduling, they’re obvious. While that link doesn’t address the point about overall trends, and I think it’s supposed to be a subjective list, it’s definitely interesting - and it’s especially interesting to see Texas Tech and Texas on there. (On the other hand, I’m not so happy to see my alma mater.)
Here’s a story I remember reading a few months ago that also addresses the issue, singling out Texas Tech and Alabama among teams with the softest schedules. And here’s one about the teams with the toughest schedules, including USC and Penn State.
My own mid-major conference alma mater, UC Irvine, went 25-4 through the end of the Big West tournament several years ago; and, in extremely disappointing fashion, were not invited to the Big Dance. Typically, however, any BCS Conference team that wins 20 games (and yes, I know it’s not the BCS in basketball) will get a tourney invite, but the above cite is an excellent example of the rare exception.
Basketball would be easy to address. Add one game and every team would be invited. Go from 64 to 128. Of course some podunk school somewhere would still bitch .
I’m really against that proposal for basketball - it would add a lot of meaningless games from schools who didn’t do anything during the season and had no chance to win the whole tournament. There are 347 NCAA Division I basketball schools, and I don’t think the tournament would be improved by doubling its size to include more than a third of them. I don’t even like that “don’t call it a play-in game” play-in game they added recently.
It would add spin. That is enough for me. Some undeserving team team will make a deep run in the tourney confounding experts and pleasing me. Thats what it is all about.