Aaaaand…season. See you next year!
And WhoTF could give LSU a first place vote after tonight’s embarrassment?
LSU got a classic ass kicking.
They couldn’t score a single point. They couldn’t make first downs and they couldn’t get across the 50 yard line.
Take 'em out and shoot 'em.
To all of us who made it through April 27th and in memory of those who didn’t, Roll Tide.
Given that SEC teams routinely overpromise scholarships and then cherry pick the best kids and dump the underperformers, I expected this matchup to be better.
Exactly. I’m not an SEC fan, but it’s foolish to act like these weren’t the best teams this year. I now regret that OSU didn’t play Bama’s defense, because I don’t think they’d have done much more, either. Not because I think OSU would have won, but because it’d just give more ire to the anti-SEC crowd. Rather than knock the conference, celebrate that it’s a damn impressive streak. I think the Cowboys would be in a long line with Oregon, Texas, Ohio State and Oklahoma for good/great offenses that failed to produce in the title game.
I don’t remember if I said it here or not, but I think that, in the near future, the champions are going to continue to come from the SEC until Miami, Florida State, or USC get their act together, with OU and Texas being a longer shot. Those are the schools capable of getting the players on defense necessary to win a title. As the saying goes, defense wins championships.
Oklahoma State was ahead of Alabama in the computers.
You are arguing that 2 SEC teams clearly deserved to play a rematch instead of Oklahoma State getting a shot, simply because the SEC coaches voted their own teams into the game.
The fraud isn’t even hidden. Alabama voted themselves 2 spots ahead of Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State did not have a vote. The SEC had more votes in the poll than the Big 12 and the result was the rematch. There is nothing even approaching legitimate about that.
(ignoring for a second that the computers are very nearly as fraudulent as the coaches poll)
Do I THINK LSU and Alabama were the best teams this year? Yes, I do.
The problem is, I don’t KNOW that they’re the best teams. And no one knows that. We can speculate. The problem is, if we had speculated prior to this game, the consensus was that LSU was the best team in the country. Heck, they had beaten Alabama on the road! Yet now, after the teams PLAY on the stage with the title at stake, guess what…Alabama is the best team.
And everyone’s fine with that. The thing is…everyone thought LSU was the best team right before this…and they got plastered. So, how hard of a leap of logic is it to think that perhaps OSU was actually better than both LSU and Alabama. Yes, they lost their one game to a crappy team…but it was immediately after the athletic department had a pretty big tragedy…safe to say they may not have been entirely focused. But the fact is, they very well could be better, but we don’t know, and we can’t know, unless there’s a playoff.
Win your conference, or be one of the few handfuls of teams that didn’t win that appear to be very very good, then bracket 'em up and let them play it out for real. It may happen that #1 and #2 in the polls would end up playing each other for the championship 5 out of 8 times in a tournament, but at least it would be legitimate at that point, and those other 3 times we’d find out who really belonged.
FTR:
The SEC had more votes than the Big 12, because the SEC had 2 more teams than the Big 12. I think each conference has 50% of the coaches vote. If the Big 12 was not essentially going belly up they would have as many votes as the SEC
FWIW, each vote in the coaches poll makes up 0.56% of the BCS formula therefore one vote is not enough to skew the outcome noticeably.
I watched a bit of it because it was on at lunch time here in Australia. I really enjoyed all the LSU get the ball for a few downs then punt, followed by the Alabama get the ball for lots of downs then attempt a field goal.
Exciting though it was, when two homeless guys started arguing out on the street, we all went and watched that instead.
I have to ask more knowledgeable Dopers, how did LSU beat anyone? Did they once have some offense that disappeared because what they showed in this game was terribly pedestrian.
Interesting fact:
If you switch the positions of Alabama and Oklahoma State on the ballots of the SEC coaches for next year, Oklahoma State would have been ranked ahead.
In fact, you wouldn’t even need to change Alabama’s vote. Alabama voted themselves 2 spots ahead, and Oklahoma State had no vote. But if the rest of the SEC had switched their votes, Oklahoma State would have still taken the lead.
So it is entirely accurate to say that the SEC voted themselves the title.
And it’s official, what may have been guessed: Lowest ratings in the history of the BCS NCG. Shocker. Earned a 13.8. Previous low was a 14.3 in 2002.
Sorry, I calculated this wrong.
Alabama was ahead by .0086. 39 spots in the coaches poll are worth .0088.
SEC coaches only gave Alabama a 9 spot advantage, so even if you switch them for an 18 spot swing it isn’t enough.
You can see that it was within the power of 2 coaches to change the result though.
Just possibly this was a form of protest. That such an absurd vote is now part of the record emphasizes that the current system is seriously flawed.
How about Oklahoma State lost in regulation to a bad Iowa State team?
And Alabama’s single loss was in OT 9-6 against the #1 team?
The computers only take win-loss and strength of schedule into account. They don’t count quality of wins into account at all.
Pollsters actually look at the results. Granted, there is a problem of ‘recency’ where recent wins or losses have a greater impact than earlier ones.
It’s also why Houston was ranked higher than they merited, at least until their conference championship loss to Southern Miss. The computers had them ranked low for strength of schedule, and the polls had them ranked high for being undefeated.
It evened out in the end, but they wouldn’t have been in the top 12 in the computer polls, even if they went undefeated. But I don’t think you’d claim there was a conspiracy to get them into a BCS game had they pulled it off.
The margin of votes was greater than just the difference in number of coaches between the two conferences. People who voted Alabama over Ok St included sportswriters and coaches from other conferences. It’s legitimate. Or at least as legitimate as any other year.
Here’s the coaches’ poll results for Ok St from before Bowl Season. That’s a bunch of 3’s from coaches OUTSIDE the SEC. Unless it’s a conspiracy involving all the other major conferences, this argument’s got no legs.
There’s also the AP voters. They didn’t vote Oklahoma State #2, either.
Though I notice Craig James voted them #3, too. That SOB really needs to get out of sports.
He’s trying. He’s running for US Senate in Texas. I hope he gets crushed.
Mixed bag. If he loses, we have to deal with him on ESPN. If he wins, we’ve got to deal with him as a replacement for Kay Bailey Hutchison in the US Senate. That’s lose-lose, in my book.
Not true!!!
Final Coaches Pollof the regular season. Week 15
Bama…1599
OkSt…1567
there is no way the 6 SEC coaches (7 if you include Pinkel) accounted for the 32 point differential.
Lets examine more closely.
Bama was voted 2nd at best in all polls. OkSt was voted 5th at worst (and only by the Air Force coach).
And Pinkel (Missouri), Saban (Bama), Marrone (Syracuse), Cutcliffe (Duke), Shaw (Stanford) are the coaches that voted Bama #2 and Ok St #4
the other SEC coaches voted OKSt #3.
2 SEC Coaches (Saban & Pinkel) voted Bama #2 and OkSt #4 = 4 points differential
5 SEC Coaches (Chizik, Franklin, Mles, Richt, Spurrier) voted Bama @ #2 and OkSt #3 = 5 points differential
so the 6+1 SEC coaches accounted for a 9 point differential. Much less than the 32 point final differential.
Yes, I calculated it wrong at first. It would not be accurate to say that the SEC alone voted themselves into the game.
However, that doesn’t make the system any less fraudulent. You still have coaches with obvious self interest determining the title with their votes. And, even more generally, you still have coaches determining the title with their votes at all, which is ridiculous regardless of obvious self interest.
You are absolutely correct, I caught that mistake as well.
The SEC did not vote themselves into the game. Note that even 2 coaches could have changed the outcome though. Each has 25 points to give, and 39 points would have changed it.
It would have taken 13 coaches switching their votes to put Oklahoma State ahead. The 6+1 from the SEC, and 6 more.
And FWIW, the perceived SEC Bias SEC coach of 9 points was offset by the 4 point bias of Big 12 coaches.