Running bowl thread

Not condemning Alabama. They're No. 1 without a doubt. Beat 5 (at-the-time) ranked teams and just dismanted undefeated Florida by 19 points, the same Florida team that returned all 11 starters on defense and had arguably the best college QB ever.

It goes without saying Alabama should be playing for the title.

It's everything after that that bugs me. I not a Texas hater; I really like McCoy.

But this holding-down of programs that have arrived -- i.e. Boise, TCU, Cincy -- really is getting old. The old guard, it seems, is fucking terrified of sharing the limelight.

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Big Circus, true, Virginia struggled this season. But TCU still scheduled an ACC team on the road. Twice. And won twice. That counts as much as some of Texas' achievements. First we tell the TCUs of the world, "OK, prove yourself: Schedule better schools. Hell, schedule 'em on the road." So TCU does that and still gets shit upon. It's just never good enough.

 

Texas > TCU
TCU > Texas

Neither one is so far ahead of the other that this should be a heated debate.

 

I don't hold it against them at all. It's ambitious scheduling and it's what they're supposed to do. Again, I really just wanted to shit on Al Groh one more time.

 

A yawner? Bullshit my ass it's going to be a yawner. I'm no fan of repeat bowl matchups, but unless TCU flattens Boise, it's not going to be boring at all.

The BCS title game can't arbitrarily choose someone outside the top two for its matchup. That's the reason the BCS exists, to avoid a 1 vs. 3/4 game. The only way you were getting TCU-Alabama is if a) Texas and Cincinnati lost or b) Florida beat Alabama, and that became the Sugar Bowl matchup somehow (assuming the Fiesta wasn't going to take TCU anyway).

I think some people are working off of misperceptions about how BCS bowl bids get distributed. It's not a committee that seeds teams and sends them on their merry little way, like the NCAA tournaments. Bowls choose the teams they want in the order they're told to pick them. The Fiesta took TCU. The Sugar took Florida, both as substitutions for the teams they lost to the title game. So TCU-Florida is out the window right away. Orange took Iowa over Boise and Cincinnati, as well as any other teams that might have gotten an at-large bid, such as Penn State or ... someone else). Fiesta took Boise over Cincinnati and the other at-large contenders. Sugar got stuck with Cincinnati, because they couldn't not take the Big East champion.

So what is the path to these dream "big boy" matchups everyone keeps thinking are their birthright? Do we scrap the bowl selection system and let mid-majors choose their opponents and bowls, because apparently the purpose of the bowls (and the NCAA tournament) is to give mid-majors a chance to shine against bigger schools?

 

We had TCU-Boise last year.

How ... cute that so many coaches think Texas is No. 2.

 

They also scheduled Texas State. When you have as slim a margin of error as those schools have, I just don't think you can afford games like that. I understand they need home games and all that, but you can't have the benefit of a guaranteed win/home game and the benefits of playing a strong schedule. You can't have it both ways.

And if they're going to be playing SMU every year because it's a rivalry game, then cool. That's fine. I like rivalries. But they have to recognize that SMU's not especially good and use those other three games as creatively as they can. And they can get difficult games, because they've already done it. They've got another one against Oklahoma coming up, they've got LSU coming up, etc.

And those games are great. We should have more of them. But Texas plays Oklahoma every year -- and Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech, and the North champion if it's in national-title contention. Alabama plays LSU every year, and Tennessee, and the other semi-decent teams in the West, and the East champion if it's in title contention.

TCU also has the clear advantage of being in one of the nation's biggest recruiting hotbeds, and being within spitting distance of a 100,000-seat stadium. EVERYONE wants to recruit Texas, and a whole bunch of teams would probably take the chance to play in that stadium.

TCU can't get out of playing New Mexico and Wyoming and UNLV. They can get out of playing Texas State.

 

We also had Alabama-Florida last year. Didn't seem to stop people from watching.

 

And they more than balanced that by playing at Virginia and Clemson. They could've scheduled Charleston and Citadel.

Wyoming, incidentally, won at Tennessee a few years ago (Vols were down that year, but that was a monumental win for shitty ol' Wyoming, for the shitty ol' WAC in SEC territory).

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desk, at some point you break the mold. Texas v. Alabama isn't all that exciting a prospect. Ho hum, another grand ol' party showdown. Like every other year. Zero intrigue.

 

In 2008. Tennessee might have been down, but Wyoming wasn't exactly challenging for the MWC title, either, since Joe Glenn got the axe after the season.

 

Funny, I swear I watched Florida & Oklahoma play in last year's title game. Guess it was really Texas & Alabama.

 

(Screwed up the conference name.)

 

This thing is a no win situation - If Bama plays Texas - maybe TCU gets jobbed. If TCU gets the game, maybe Texas is jobbed. Same with Cincy, same with Boise.
Teams have "solved" the BCS. Maybe teams played cupcakes before, but if 1 v. 2 wasn't all that mattered and all the top teams had some kind of shot on Jan. 1 - you'd see better non-conference match-ups.