On another message board I speculated that Pitt’s #88 must have been caught in bed with a ref’s daughter. That’s the only explanation that I could come up with.
Why? Other than your bias.
Ohio State lost only 1 game playing in a BCS conference. The only other team that can say that is Kansas. You all can hate on OSU all you want, but the fact is many other teams had their shot and blew it multiple times. Ohio State only blew it once, so they’re still standing.
My bias?
Honestly I have no bias. Their schedule just isn’t that tough and when I watch them, they don’t seem all that impressive.
Unless they get lucky with a meeting with Virginia Tech for the championship, they’re going to get stomped.
If I end up being wrong, I’m fine with that.
Let’s compare Georgia’s season to Ohio States.
[Note: I’m getting these off sports.yahoo.com. The numbers next to their opponents seem to be their rankings when they played.]
Georgia:
Sat, Sep 1 Oklahoma State W 35-14 --
Sat, Sep 8 South Carolina L 12-16 --
Sat, Sep 15 Western Carolina W 45-16 --
Sat, Sep 22 at (16) Alabama W 26-23 --
Sat, Sep 29 Mississippi W 45-17 --
Sat, Oct 6 at Tennessee L 14-35 --
Sat, Oct 13 at Vanderbilt W 20-17 --
Sat, Oct 27 (9) Florida W 42-30 --
Sat, Nov 3 Troy W 44-34 --
Sat, Nov 10 (18) Auburn W 45-20 --
Sat, Nov 17 (22) Kentucky W 24-13
Sat, Nov 24 at Georgia Tech W 31-17 --
Ohio State:
Sat, Sep 1 Youngstown State W 38-6 --
Sat, Sep 8 Akron W 20-2 --
Sat, Sep 15 at Washington W 33-14 --
Sat, Sep 22 Northwestern W 58-7 --
Sat, Sep 29 at Minnesota W 30-7 --
Sat, Oct 6 at (23) Purdue W 23-7 --
Sat, Oct 13 Kent State W 48-3 --
Sat, Oct 20 Michigan State W 24-17 --
Sat, Oct 27 at (24) Penn State W 37-17 --
Sat, Nov 3 Wisconsin W 38-17 --
Sat, Nov 10 Illinois L 21-28 --
Sat, Nov 17 at (23) Michigan W 14-3 --
I’d argue that UGA’s loss to Tennessee was about as equally embarassing/damaging to their credibility as OSU’s loss to Illinois. UGA also has a close loss against USC, but have far more impressive victories against ranked teams. There’s no doubt that UGA’s schedule was tougher than OSU’s.
That being said…
The way things currently work, both of these teams should simply slide up 2 spots into #1 & 2. I’m not saying that that’s the way that things SHOULD work, just that that’s the way that the human voters have done things for as long as I can remember.
I’m looking at last week’s poll wondering how Kansas was ranked 5th. They lost to the first and only ranked team that they played. I think that VTech, LSU and Oklahoma should all be ranked higher than them after this weekend, but the human polls never drop a team that didn’t lose that week, and even if Mizzou and WVa drop below all of them, there are only 2 vacant spots for the 3 of them to move into. I can’t see LSU leapfroging VaTech, and Oklahoma was the most impressive this weekend, IMHO.
I’m waiting for the polls to come out with baited breath.
The AP Top 25 just came out. I realize it has no bearing on the BCS, but they have Ohio State number one and LSU number two. Check it out here .
The USA Today poll just came out and it has the same news. You can find those rankings at the same link I just posted.
Can I just say, BCS aside, I’m really glad that my Panthers played at least one good game this season and screwed things up for WVU. 
Wow, LSU and Oklahoma leapfrogged Georgia; and VaTech, USC and Mizzou bumped Kansas down to 8th. I can’t really argue with these rankings.
Has anyone devised a playoff system that keeps everyone happy who is currently making money? My friends and I always get stuck designing playoff scenarios because some integral party would never go for it.
The schools, conferences and bowls all have to continue to make money. All these interested parties have enough leverage that they can nix any playoff system that loses them money.
Where do you play the games? Playing them at the current bowls would require huge fanbases to travel during multiple weekends in December, which seems unlikely. The current bowls like the huge amounts of out-of-town money which come with a marquee New Years type bowl. It’s part of what lets them get huge amounts of sponsorship money. Playing them as home games will really diminish interest in the lesser bowls, who will be playing at the same time this huge football tournament is happening. The profit-sharing of bowl revenues within the conferences is at stake, and big-conference schools with bad football programs would not be happy.
The only solution we’ve ever arrived at is for the NCAA to take over the whole thing, but the schools, conferences and bowls would never go for it. If we could somehow prove that everyone will make more money with a tournament they’d all do it.
Wow. So could someone answer for me a really simple question – what, exactly, did LSU do this past week to warrant leapfrogging FIVE places? It couldn’t have been their one touchdown victory over Tennessee, could it?
So what was it?
Winning the SEC. Sad, but true.
It’s nice to sere that at least one voter isn’t deterred by the fact that my team has played like crap for about 5 straight games.
It’s easier to explain for the AP, they only jumped Georgia there. In the USA Today they jumped Georgia, Kansas, and Virginia Tech. Obviously I don’t know why each coach ranked the teams the way they did, but I will give you my reasons. They have a much stronger schedule than Kansas, Kansas also didn’t make their conference championship but I would say the schedule factor is the most important there. Virgina Tech has a harder schedule than LSU, but LSU beat the crap out of them earlier this season. LSU and Georgia’s schedules are very similar but Georgia didn’t even make it to the conference championship in the same conference as LSU. Most important to me personally, I just think LSU has a better team than the other three. Georgia is the only one close, but I think (with everyone healthy) LSU beats them solidly.
I don’t fully understand the whole system, but what about a +1 system. The 2 semi-final games would need to be played at least a week before the final, which might cause them to be buried amongst other, lesser bowls. But aren’t there some crappy bowls played around Jan 1 & 2 that don’t diminish the bigger bowls?
Would the 2 semifinal games be played at the higher-ranked teams stadium? (eg. using the AP poll that just came out, #4 UGA would travel to Ohio State and #3 Oklahoma would travel to LSU.) Then the winners would meet at the location of… uh, where does the National Championship Game get held these days, since it’s no longer in a rotation with the big 4?
Yeah, maybe, but had Tennessee won, I wonder if they’d be #2.
(That’s a rhetorical question. Or rhetorical musing.)
Playing the semifinals as a home game loses you all the sponsorship money of the BCS bowls so it’d have to be the current BCS bowl games on consecutive weekends. The +1 sounds the most plausible and is a step in the right direction, but in a year like this where anyone in the top 15 seems to be able to beat anyone else in the top 15, a 4-team playoff is still lacking. Also, 1 current BCS bowl would have to be dropped from the playoff, which is a good bit of lost sponsorship money for the conferences.
The NCG is now rotated as a second game amongst the 4 BCS bowls.
It looks like there was some scrapping of ballots from last week and a vote made on who should go where. In each poll Hawaii received 1 first place vote. Wow.
Congress could do it. Very unlikely though. The non-BCS conferences could get together and hold an 8-team invitational and ignore the bowl set up. Let each team play 3 times to solidify places 1 through 8. Home games for the higher seed. Three more piles of stadium revenue to split. An easy to sell story line to the networks.
I think a lot of higher-ups in those (BCS) schools worry mightily about killing the golden goose though. They did a story about the difference budget and revenue between Hawaii and the other top 12 teams. It was like the Devil Rays playing their way into the post-season. In this case Cyndi Lauper was wrong, money wont change anything.
Sorry about that last sentence. I just woke up.
Well it appears that it will be LSU and OSU in the title game. That leaves:
Rose Bowl: USC (automatic) vs. Illinois (taken with the first pick)
Sugar Bowl: Georgia (taken with the 2nd pick) vs. West Virginia (taken with 3rd pick)
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech (automatic) vs. Missouri/Kansas (4th pick)
Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma (automatic) vs. Hawaii (must choose)
That’d be pretty disappointing to me. USC and Illinois is going to be a blow out, and Oklahoma should take care of Hawaii easily. I know everyone is going to say Boise State to that last one, but Boise looked a lot better last year than Hawaii did this year, and Oklahoma is better this year.
The order of bowl picks this year is Orange, Fiesta, Sugar (http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfb/eligibility). After everyone gets their tie-in bid (Sugar getting Georgia because they lost LSU) the order reverts back to that for any remaining at-large and automatics.
NCG: LSU/OSU
Rose: USC/Illinois
Orange: VT vs Kansas/Mizzou
Fiesta: OU/WVU
Sugar: Georgia/Hawaii
Ah yes you’re right. I got screwed up because the years are for when the bowls are actually played, not the college season.
It would be really interesting to see the Orange Bowl take West Virginia. That, to me, is a much more attractive regional match up than VaTech vs. Kansas/Missou. I know WV lost to Pitt, but they didn’t have their QB for half the game. If the Orange Bowl does go in that direction it would be interesting to see what the Fiesta does. Do they go with Oklahoma-Kansas, or would they avoid the Big 12 matchup?