Running bowl thread

By all means, continue to recite made-up things as though they're fact. Please, continue to ignore reality, in which one SEC team played no non-conference games against BCS-conference opposition, and in which one (different) SEC team played the stereotypical eight home games.

 

Would TCU winning a football title be any different than say, Villanova winning a basketball title in '85? If they got a good seed there's no reason they couldn't win.

I was looking at some playoff brackets... No. 8 GT vs. No. 9 OSU.... boring bowl game... but as exciting as hell for a playoff game because it has so many implications. Can either team beat Bama in round 2? Can the Big Ten even make it to the second round....

 

And if you're Boise State, it IS that way!

Well, at least as far as getting a BCS bid is concerned.

 

You mean like Florida, this year, who beat exactly one ranked team, or Alabama, who beat two?

Good point, I agree.

 

That's also three more teams that had a chance than in this current system the top division of college football is trying to tell us is fair. Try telling this to Texas Christian, Boise State or Cincinnati this year.

There's painfully little that can be done about the strength of conferences now, but if the SEC, Big XII and Big Ten are so ungodly good, then they should be able to blast a BCS Buster away like a tank through a pile of whipped cream.

Georgia did two years ago against Hawaii. But Alabama got pummeled by Utah last year, and Boise State made a remarkable comeback to beat Oklahoma in Tempe.

If it ends up being the football factories in the end, fine. At least the Davids of college football get the chance to see how they stack up against the football factories. As it stands, that won't happen and, if the men in the funny-colored blazers have their way, it never will.

 

"Ranked" is an arbitrary and stupid cutoff.

Playing the 26th, 29th, 31st and 34th best teams is much more of a grind than playing Nos. 97, 112, 115 and 119.

But it won't get you anywhere in the "ranked teams" debate.

Alabama played the fourth most difficult schedule in the country. Period. Boise played the 96th most difficult (aka the 24th easiest).

Few people will say the current system is fair. It's just "more fair" than giving 12-0 teams with the 96th-ranked schedule a free pass into a playoff system that other teams fought much harder to earn a place in.

 

Other than stacking the deck towards mid-majors, what would have been a better fate for Boise and TCU that had a reasonable chance of happening? Oz's TCU/Cincy Fiesta and Florida/Boise Sugar would have required the Fiesta to take Cincinnati instead of Boise, and nobody really wanted Cincinnati and their non-traveling base, small TV footprint and distant location.

It was a funny-colored blazer that chose TCU first, as in ahead of every non-BCS title game team. And it was a funny-colored blazer that chose Boise over Cincinnati.

Instead, we're told to believe that the Fiesta officials intentionally undercut their own bowl just to fuck with the mid-majors.

 

No chance in hell.

 

Exactly. What would be the point of scheduling hard and risking a loss if you're then told that any and all unbeaten teams are better than your 11-1 squad, regardless who they beat to get there?

 

As opposed to ...?

TCU? 2
Boise State? 1
Ohio State? 2
Iowa? 1
Cincy? 2

The best I can find is Oregon, which has beaten 4 teams that were ranked at the time, 2 of which have now fallen out of the rankings and one of which was freaking Cal. Of course, they also lost to Boise State and Stanford.

The next-best I can find -- and there may be others, so don't shoot me -- is Georgia Tech, but two of its ranked victories were No. 22 North Carolina and No. 25 Clemson in the ACC title game. In the last set of rankings, it's one, Virginia Tech.

If you look at the current rankings, a few teams do better. Oregon has 3, so does Iowa, both because Arizona's now ranked. Iowa also gets the benefit, as does Ohio State (3), of Wisconsin now being ranked, but Wisconsin's ranked pretty much because they haven't lost to anyone they really shouldn't have, and because there's pretty much no one worth ranking No. 24.

The conclusion? There really aren't very many very good teams out there this year. There's a whole bunch of mediocrity to go around. Alabama's and Florida's resumes aren't great, but neither are anyone else's. TCU's marquee victory is either an 8-5 Clemson team or BYU. Boise State's is obvious -- though it's also the only one. Cincinnati's? Umm ... at Oregon State? Pitt?

 

I see - so because some ridiculous power ranking system - which is slanted toward power conferences and always is going to rank those teams schedule stronger than it usually is.

 

Um, that's the point genius - that this whole "pretenders need to run the same tough gauntlet mighty SEC teams do" line of BS from SEC fanboy is exactly that - a line of BS.

Nobody plays anybody any more and the "strength of schedule" stuff is very, very overrated.