But then you picked tOSU? Who did they beat?
Uh. Bob, I think this comes up every year. You can’t knock the SEC non-conference schedules without at least acknowledging the other teams’ schedules as well.
FSU: Nevada, Bethune-Cookman, Idaho
MSU: W. Michigan, South Florida, Youngstown State
OSU: Buffalo, San Diego State, FAMU
Stanford at least scheduled Notre Dame, but they played San Jose State and Army (and lost to Utah!)
They went out west and beat California. In my opinion, every team should play at least one decent team from a power conference or independent out of conference every year and not play every stinking OOC at home.
I disagree. With 2 teams many deserving teams have been left out. With 4 teams that number drops by a very large percentage.
My choices (for other two spots, FSU/Auburn are obviously the first two):
Alabama (barely lost 1, SOS not great, but they are clearly good)
Mich St
I rank Mich St/Stanford/Baylor in this order based on their accomplishments:
1 - Mich St lost 1 and it was close
2 - Stanford lost 2 and they were close (and had a way stronger schedule than the other two)
3 - Baylor lost 1 and got blown out
Rose Bowl Prediction:
Stanford beats Mich St
I think Stanford is a better team than Mich St but they lost 2 and I don’t think SOS amounts to a full game in this particular comparison.
So beating a 1-11 team counts higher than an Alabama Team that beat Va Tech (8-4).
California’s only win was against Div I-AA Portland State (by 7 points). They allowed at least 30 points in every game that they play. They might have been the worst team in the 5 power conferences.
I know that there is anti-SEC bias, but jeeez, Ohio State over both Auburn and Bama?
How is their SOS not great when they beat A&M on the road, when A&M was #5 or so, beat LSU who was ranked in the top 10, and beat Ole Miss when they were ranked in the top 25?
That’s cute. Using a strength of schedule argument for Ohio State, who has only beaten one team in the top 25 all year (#19 Wisconsin).
Because their SOS is in the 40’s in all of the SOS calcs I’ve seen, not bad but not great. Mich St and Baylor are in the 60’s, which is worse, Stanford is top 10 in most SOS calcs.
On a slightly unrelated point:
It doesn’t matter what A&M or LSU or Ole Miss were when they got beat (you should know that), ranking at end of season contains far more information than rankings during the season.
You may be right but it is tough to evaluate MSU. They are the party crasher. No one predicted they would or could hold the #4 ranking they currently have. At the beginning of the season the feeble offense struggled against some cupcakes. Yesterday they put up 34 against OSU and it wasn’t the defense that did it. They are not the same team now that they were early in the season. It is a team that has consistently shown improvement. The defense is very solid. For a team like that, SOS is almost irrelevant. It should be a good game but I don’t think there is any metric based on season stats that predict how strong or weak they are.
This is not necessarily true. Certainly an end-of-season rank considers the whole body of work. A team might start out over-ranked (coughOREGONcough) or under-ranked (FSU!), but it might also be an issue of a team before massive injury or after gaining experience with a young quarterback.
Anti-SEC bias??? There may be a bit of a backlash against the perpetual SEC butt-kissing, but bias…I don’t think so.
The best indicator of bias is the pre-season rankings, where there is nothing but bias to go on. Cast your memory back to August…
#1 Alabama
#5 Georgia
#6 South Carolina
#7 Texas A&M
#10 Florida !!!
#12 LSU
I think only conference winners should be in the final 4. You couldn’t win your conference? Sorry, that was your playoff, you’re out. That said:
FSU
Auburn
MSU
Baylor
Stanford vs Baylor is a tough call, but that Utah loss hurts… even though it was a long time ago, a national champion should not have a loss to this year’s Utah team on their resume.
Gee, maybe the SEC gets preseason respect because the SEC has won the last 7 championships on the field, with four different SEC teams winning the title.
Also, it’s funny how the Big 10 stopped looking so tough when championships began to be awarded on the field instead of in a sportswriter’s head.
Respect, bias…potato, potahto. The fact that Florida won an NCG under Urban Meyer means about as much this year as Cal’s national championship under Andy Smith.
A lot of that is due to the fact that the SEC is virtually guaranteed a spot in the final game due to the writers’ perconceived notion of conference strengths. The SEC schools by and large play only creampuff OOC schools and only play them at home. So the big guns of the SEC only have to play a few tough games a year and they play them early, the writers only move them down a notch or two, which they promptly regain by playing Whackahatchee State the next week.
Cal is not normally a 1-win team. They’re normally pretty decent. And to play them on the road is a plus for OSU. Just like MSU played ND on the road this year and will play at Oregon next year. Put Auburn in Maryland’s spot in the Big Ten East next year- I guarantee they don’t run the gauntlet of Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State unbeaten.
The anti-SEC bias was a comment to BobLibDem’s omission of both 'Bama and Auburn in his final 4 and the inclusion of Ohio State.
All that was needed this year for a non SEC game was tOSU winning against Mich State.
They didn’t get it done.
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On a slight tangent, I have heard for years that a team cannot climb the rankings to the BCS game if they were not highly to begin the season.
Auburn did NOT receive ONE VOTE in either the USA Today or AP Football preseason polls.
NOT ONE VOTE
A team can work itself up the rankings. Just Win Baby. Just win
Absolutely; it’s gratifying to see when a team comes out of nowhere.
The last time a pre-season unranked team finished #1 was 1984 (BYU).
Exactly. Sorry tOSU and Bama.
I’m not sure you can separate this so easily from the SEC thing. Auburn’s climb was unusual in that they had a strong SoS at least in part due to perception about the strength of the SEC.
And Notre Dame was unranked in the AP last year, and just #24 in the coaches’ poll. And had Missouri won the SEC game, they likely would be playing in the NCG, having also started the season out of the rankings.