LSU, Alabama and Oklahoma State

the whole thing is disgusting.

I love the shot at the aggies. Masterful. Well played.

I hope the national championship game gets the lowest ratings of any bowl game since the incpetion of the BCS.

inception

I think LSU wins and wins big. They would against anyone else, as well.

If Alabama wins, I hope Pickens puts about a half bill into killing the BCS.

OSU destroyed an OU team with nothing to play for. Every team in ‘our’ conference has moments of greatness – OSU’s were just the most opportunistic / came at the most fortuitous times. Congratulations to them on their BCS bid – but LSU and Bama are the best 2 teams.

it will be great…. If alabama wins… BCS fails due to the fact that a team that did not even win its own conference will be the MNC. Assinine…

The best scenario would have LSU winning a boring squeaker again and OSU rolling Stanford by 4 touchdowns.

Everyone would be left with a WTF about the BCS.

We need a playoff system, 16 teams is what I prefer, but 8 wouldn’t be bad. Eight could take 3 to 4 weeks, if the teams are given 2 weeks before the championship. Shorten the regular season to 10 games and increase the scholarship limit by 10.

Hook ’em!

L$U will win 3-0. The BCS will be saved.

If we had a playoff, it would probably end up Ala vs. LSU for the marbles.

As long as it’s a beauty contest, the lesson is the same as it’s always been – you’d better go undefeated. And it doesn’t hurt to run up the score.

BCS = $$$ ~ SEC is more accurate.

K state and Baylor got screwed as well. BCS just pulled a hot Carl on our conference. Maybe this will unite us in the future. Everyone needs to be on the same page including Art Briles and the steaming pile that he is.

At least this forever dismantles one of the arguments against a playoff, that being that “every regular season game matters in college football”. Alabama will have one of the easiest paths to a national championship in history.

Nothing happens to the BCS until the final standings are:
1. Big East team
2. AQ team
3. SEC team
4. Big 10 team
5. SEC team
6. Big 10 team
etc…

I believe the two best teams are playing, but I agree they have already played and it might be time to give Okie State a chance as Stan got blown out by Oregon.

What stinks is the same thing that Bama argued for and received, Texas didn’t receive in 2008. The gators lost to Ole Miss at home, but Ole Miss kept on winning and beat Tech in the Cotton Bowl that year. We lost to top 5 Tech on the road on the last play and beat the Sooners by 10 on neutral field but were left out.

It’s the system we have. Personally, I’m still not in favor of playoff. How do you structure it? Is it only conference winners, how do you choose at large, how many teams, etc. etc.? You see a playoff would be flawed as well. Neither Stan or LSU would qualify if it’s only CC. And if you include too many teams you render the regular season meaningless which is still the best regular season in sports.

I propose and I know Kirk Herbstreit has said the same thing is to go back to the traditional New Year’s Day bowl games with conference tie ins. Let’s play these important bowl games on New Year’s day where multiple teams still have a shot to play for the NC. We use the BCS system to incorporate a Plus One a week or two later at a Neutral location between the two best teams according to the rankings. I truly believe we would know who the two best teams are after the games are played. Under this scenario the ROSE Bowl would be the same, the Orange Bowl would be Clemson vs KSU (at large),Fiesta Bama at large playing Okie State (big 12), Boise vs Arky (Both At larges).

I left the Big East out of the discussion as this conference is about to be extinct. But the old bowl system is consistent with what we witness in the regular season and the excitement it produces. Let’s get back to that but add the excitement with a plus one. I would also like to do away with CC games, but that is impossible now with mega conferences.

If you look back at the BCS system, it normally gets it right or almost right all of the time. Yes, we think Texas got screwed in 2008. Mich thought they go screwed in 06, but they didn’t, we split titles in 2003. Auburn got screwed but there were 3 undefeated teams and the SEC got left out.

You could debate this all day, but the bowl games are good for players and programs. The bowls will not go away and I would hate to see the season more watered down than it already is. Let’s get back to the tradition of the bowls and make New Year’s day exciting again. For those that need a refresher course in this excitement please see 1983 season or 1984 New Year’s Day.

They played. In Tuscaloosa. Bama lost. OSU won their conference, after losing to a not-bad ISU team on the road, on a Friday night, in OT, after a FG barely missed, and after another plane crash in their athletics program.

All painfully obvious points, but they evidently aren’t being taken into account by the SEC-fellating media.

No one knows what will happen with dumbass 18-22 year olds after a month off. Better teams than LSU have showed up completely unprepared for their bowl game. No reason to assume that OSU would have no shot.

The LSU-Bama rematch will be great for my holidays – since I will not watch or follow the lead-up to this exhibition, I will have much more time for other entertainment options.

Why would anyone (other than their fans) want to watch a rematch of 9-6?

Sugar Bowl is the Pimp Bowl ($)

Kansas State and BSU screwed

Longhorn Josh – it will be great…. If alabama wins… BCS fails due to the fact that a team that did not even win its own conference will be the MNC. Assinine…

Didn’t even win it’s own division of the conference.

OSU should have won out and it wouldn’t have been an issue. We can relate.

K State and Baylor got screwed. Guaranteed no one would want to play these two teams, as both are talented and hungry.

1) Seeded 4 team tournament: proposed in 2008 by SEC. B12 lined up behind Delaney for the BCS.

2) If B12 had SEC tie-breaker rules in 2008, Texas would have been the selection over Oklahoma.

Crappy system? Absolutely. But as much as we might argue about B12/SEC on the field, there’s just no comparison in the conference offices.

All my thoughts can be found in “Death to the BCS”.

Ridiculous system aimed at keeping the “haves” in power and severely limiting the ability of the “have nots” from getting an invitation to the party. Don’t be mistaken, a school like Oklahoma State is closer to a “have not” than a “have” because of limited exposure and success over course of the BCS’ life.

Fact that something as stupid as the timing of a loss is the reason we are seeing a rematch is ridiculous. The “better loss” argument is complete horse shit.

Can anyone honestly make sense of a team winning a national championship without winning its division or conference?

This is the system we have because no one has the balls to reform it. That said, OK state had to go undefeated to get into the championship game. They didn’t, and so the SEC-worshiping media elevated Alabama to #2. The rest of the system is the same as the pre-BCS era: putting together the most marketable match-ups that put the most butts in the seats. See: Michigan-VT Sugar Bowl.

Even with Alabama and LSU, across the board, the Big 12 is just as good if not better of a football conference than the SEC in 2011 (I said it)

Since Alabama and LSU are playing for the national title there is no way to know whether Oklahoma State is better than either of them. For all we know, OKLAHOMA could beat either LSU or Alabama, seeing as their 3 losses come to teams that haven’t played an SEC team this year.

In fact, Baylor, TTU, and OSUs combined 11 losses are ALL CONFERENCE LOSSES. Of the Big 12s combined FIFTY NINE LOSSES, only THREE are out of conference. The Big 12s top 6 teams (or 60% of the conference) share only one out of conference loss, which was Missouri’s 37-30 OT defeat at Arizona State.

The SEC? 49 out of 55 losses are in conference. The Big 12 loses 5% of it’s games out of conference, the SEC, 11%.

Teams the SEC has lost to are:
Boise State (respectable)
Florida State (unranked)
Louisville (unranked)
Clemson (somewhat respectable)
BYU (unranked, against Ole Miss)
La Tech (unranked, against Ole Miss)

Teams the Big12 has lost to:
Arizona State (unranked, but in overtime)
Arkansas (a game we should have won)
Georgia Tech (unranked, against Kansas)

2 of those teams the Big 12 has beaten. If you take Clemson and Boise State out of the equation, it’s 4 losses to 3. If you take the Kansas and Ole Miss losses out of the equation, it’s 2 to 2.

This is why, whether or not Alabama is the second best team in football, you can’t have the conference champion of the SEC play another team in the SEC for the title. It doesn’t prove anything. Not to you, not to me, not to the AP voters, (especially) not to T. Boone Pickens.

Sure, Arkansas beat a lousy A&M team. However they struggled to do so and really there is no way A&M should have lost that game. Outside of that, the SEC and BIG12 haven’t played A GAME.

LSU is the best team in the 1st or 2nd best conference in the country, Oklahoma State is the best team in the 1st or 2nd best conference in the country, to determine which conference is better, and in essence which team is better, these two teams should play for the National Title (the football trophy given to the best conference champion in the country, as it has been for the past 12 years)

It’s like if the super bowl committee said, “Hey, let’s do away with this stupid playoff system. What if we just have the two best AFC teams play for the superbowl? I mean, everyone says the AFC is better so obviously the best NFC team doesn’t stand a chance!”

Yeah, except it doesn’t (shouldn’t) work that way.

Here’s to hoping K State throttles the Razorbacks and Andrew is unlucky in Glensdale.

I think Bama and Okie State should play each other to see who plays LSU!

I’m convinced the media wanted this matchup to split the BCS and AP title when Bama wins. They’ll tout the SEC to be so grand that they will have won 7 out of the last 6 MNCs…

On another note, Texas won the last non-SEC MNC and will win the next non-SEC MNC. Bank on it.

Snide – I agree

O7 – That’s funny.

Silver lining – Neinas just switched the B12 from BCS to Plus 1 support

My head says the 3 best teams in the country are LSU, Bama and OSU in that order and I think LSU would whip OSU pretty handily. My heart says the regular season is supposed to mean something and Bama got their shot, let’s give someone else a chance (it also says I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand the media’s fellation of the SEC taken to an even higher level over the next month, but that’s another thing entirely).

Bottom line is the stated purpose of the BCS is to match the 2 best teams in the championship game and I think it has done that. Now if the stated purpose was to match the 2 best teams that are conference champs or create the most exciting game, then it failed miserably.

In some ways, this angers me more than 2008.

If quality of loss is more important than quality of win, why doesn’t Boise St. have a national championship? Had Houston won this weekend, I assume that they’d be deserving of a shot, or would they need a quality loss (they lack quality wins, so by the SEC definition, they’re half qualified)?

I thinks the actual logic goes like this: by definition the SEC is the best conference, even if it might not be; what arguments can I make to support this position? Quality losses!

I’ll watch Texas play, that’s it.

Texas should have bookended the SEC titles with the 09 title game. I’m convinced we will win in 2013 and I think USC will win two more in the 2011-2020 decade. Ohio State with Urban could be interesting, Oregon plays some ball, as does Wisconsin. I think the SEC is about to end its title streak…

let’s face it… we were all dying to see “The Game After The Game of The Century”

I’m just sorry Houston crapped in its bed so they didn’t get to crash a BCS bowl. Anything to make the system worse. I will continue my yearly wish that the BCS shames itself so egregiously no one can defend it with a straight face anymore. Only problem is that they passed that bar long ago and people still, with straight faces even, will drone on about the sanctity of the “regular season” and how “every game is a playoff”.

screw Bama LSU rematch, i will be in the shop working on the f100. Something more constructive than boredom.

Hopefully Alabama will win and really confuse the whole BCS system.

English Ag said: [OSU destroyed an OU team with nothing to play for. Every team in ‘our’ conference has moments of greatness – OSU’s were just the most opportunistic / came at the most fortuitous times. Congratulations to them on their BCS bid – but LSU and Bama are the best 2 teams.]
What are you talkng about OU having nothing to play for? If OU had beaten OSU they would’ve tied for the conference title and gone to the Fiesta Bowl by virtue of the conference tiebreaker (since they would’ve beaten both OSU and KSU head to head). Fact is they just got plain whipped.

Bottom line is OSU, and the rest of the conference, got screwed. OSU’s body of work is BETTER than Bama’s, hands down.
They lost on the road in double OT instead of at home like Bama did.
They beat FIVE teams ranked in the BCS top 25, as compared to Bama’s TWO such wins.
And, they won their conference title. Bama didn’t even win their division, much less their conference.
And, as mentioned above, the Big 12 was actually stronger top to bottom than the SEC this year.
Total screw job!

alabama looked like the better team in their loss, so i think they probably have a decent chance at winning the rematch.

still dumb that it’s happening.

not sure the bcs system is really at fault here though. i’d put more blame on the polls and media in general who don’t seem to have realized that oklahoma state played a much stronger schedule and that losing at iowa state isn’t actually as bad as it sounds.

I will not watch the “feature” game — can’t really call it the championship game. Some of the others look pretty interesting. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the B12 won every bowl. The toughest matchup looks like K-state vs. Arky and that is probably a toss-up..

oh and anyone proposing a playoff, how many teams and how are you determining them? with the massive difference in schedule strength and the limited number of games, there really isn’t a good way to do it in college football. basically anything i’ve ever seen proposed just creates more problems.

timmy, how about 6 or 8 or 12 or 16 teams. how about a format like EVERY OTHER PLAYOFF IN ALL OF SPORTS? You talk like the concept is some kind of groundbreaking idea. The argument that there will be controversy regarding the last 1-3 teams in is a bogus one. It matters that all of 3-5 legitimate contenders are included. And pretty much any metric used to select them will work. In fact the BCS ranking that is oh so flawed for picking two teams will work great for picking 6 or more.

I personally like the idea of first round play-in with the top 2 or 4 getting a by. I also see no reason for keeping the bowl tradition sacred. This is an old evolution of a crusty ol’ exhibition game format that has long outlived its viability. Let it keep going post-playoff til interest and $$$ causes it to go away on its own.

I like a 12 team with a first round by as a number because looking back, that will not only include the legitimate contenders but also the upstart undefeated team or two from a mid-major just to give such a team a shot, albeit an incredibly long one.

anything more than 8 teams is probably unrealistic because the amount of games it adds.

let’s say we do the 4 team playoff(or plus one) that people want. alabama still gets in without winning their conference(or division). same with stanford(while number 5 oregon who beat stanford and won their conference sits at home). for that matter any method that requires you to win your conference leaves only 2 deserving teams.

stretch that to 6 and arkansas joins the mix as the 3rd place team in their division. lol. i’m sure people would take to that well. really any way you look at it, the more teams you expand to, the more problems there are(and these aren’t ncaa tourney type problems where it really doesn’t matter because the last bubble teams really have no shot). that’s going to always be a problem in college football with only 12 to 13 games played per team and the wildly different schedules they play.

Saban voted OSU #4. Iowa Sate coach voted Alabama ahead of OSU. Well done jerkoff! Way to protect your own conference, glad to see nothing has changed here our conference still stabs each other in the back. What a joke.

I’m not BrickHorn and I wouldn’t call this a manifesto, but it’s the best sales pitch I’ve got for a playoff and my preference of its format. I figure most all parties should find things to like about this plan, minus the title.

Please note that conference championships are irrelevant to this plan as a team could be third place in one conference and champion in another. Anyone who thinks the Sunbelt champs are better than the third highest rated SEC team in the BCS speak up. I’m sure Red Wolves fans would, but they’re very biased in this case.

The Saul Plan?

An eight team playoff series that co-exists with the bowl system is possible and should be adopted for the next BCS contract. 2014?

The majority of bowls are pointless outside of television contracts, tourism, and ticket sales. Cha-ching! I guess you could still include rewarding a team and its fanbase for an above average season except it has been revamped as an average and above season.

All bowl supporters out there can continue their love affair with the system in conjunction with a playoff. People still need countless hours of football to make it through the holiday season evidently, and teams like extra weeks to practice in preparation for their next season.

Take the top 8 teams in the BCS poll at the end of the regular season as your seeds. This number yields the cream of the crop as to which teams played well in a regular season where "every game is meaningful," allows for the slightest of hiccups, and sets up a gauntlet to crown the eventual champions.

You wanted that regular season to mean something, right? The top ranked team in each match-up gets home field for first round excepting the 4 v. 5 game played at the site of the previous season’s national championship. The remaining rounds are played in place of the other BCS bowl games and they rotate just as the current championship game does.

Changes I’d want the BCS to enact in conjunction with this plan:

No limit on eligible teams from a single conference–Your conference will likely get zero to three in on meritocracy.

No more automatic qualifier or "BCS" conferences–See previous. If you don’t have a team that qualifies, your universities attempt to improve their teams and/or schedules going forward.

If school presidents come with the old "the season would be too long and our players need time to study" complaints, offer to remove that extra game the NCAA approved in the last decade and banish all conference championship games. That would maintain the maximum games per season, but fat chance they’ll agree to that.

So I guess we’re keeping those extra games and making things tougher on the poor student-athletes, but in the end you get a definitive national champion each year and more dollars out of the three Ts than the BCS has ever made before. It’s like they own a money tree!

If the NCAA finds major infractions later, your BCS payout must be returned and the title goes to the university that made it the next furthest in the series. Tiebreakers would go to the highest seed in a nod to that meaningful regular season.

This season’s lineup, assuming lengthening of season version, would be as follows:

 (8) Kansas State at (1) Louisiana State winner plays (4) Stanford v. (5) Oregon winner

Advances to championship game

(7) Boise State at (2) Alabama winner plays (6) Arkansas at (3) Oklahoma State winner

Advances to championship game

Certainly LSU and Alabama could still meet in the final, but you get seven BCS level games in an actual series, and determine the winner on the field. In addition, strong conferences of the moment and teams that have risen from smaller conferences alike are rewarded rather than being dependent on a bowl committee’s selection of at-large teams. All bowls unaffiliated with the BCS would simply continue along their usual path. I think that would be much more satisfying to college football fans, line the pockets of all business and government entities involved, and could reduce the musical chairs game of conference re-alignment.

Given that the national powers that be seem so invested in the bowl system, I think the best we can hope for is a +1. I like having BCS #‘s 1 and 4 play in one BCS game and #’s 2 and 3 play in another with these national semifinal games to rotate among the existing BCS bowls. Then a week later the two winners play for the MNC.

I get that there will still be complaints from #‘s 5, 6 and others left out of the top 4 and still a beauty contest to name them. However, going back through the years, it is hard to find one in which the top team isn’t in that pre-bowl top 4.

I suspect LSU and Bama are the two best teams this year but think LSU-OSU would be much more entertaining. No way to know for sure.

Eh, Ok State lost to Iowa State. Alabama lost to LSU, the agreed #1 team in the country, barely. I have no problem with agreeing to LSU and Alabama as #1 and #2. I feel no sympathey for Ok State on this. Sorry.

Troy Calhoun had OSU 5th behind Arkansas.
Pinkle had OSU 4th, A team that beat his by 21 pts.

“I feel no sympathey for Ok State on this.”

Agreed.

Still would like to see OSU’s offense vs. LSU’s defense. Not saying they’d win (may not even be close), Tigers are at another level vs. everybody else. But would be a nice diversion. Really wanna see OSU vs. Bama.

No trees in Stillwater for Al from Dadeville, tho.

BCS fails due to the fact that a team that did not even win its own conference will be the MNC. Assinine…

Nebraska could have done this a decade ago.

One of the major issues I saw coming out of the BCS sham was how little respect the nation gives the Big 12, which is a huge issue going forward.

Beyond the brand name cache of Texas and Oklahoma, there’s little importance in the rest of the conference.

Voters purposely kept Alabama ahead of Oklahoma St, though if the name on the jersey was Oklahoma or Texas, they’re almost definitely playing LSU for the championship. Oklahoma State—that’s our third best team in the conference right now.

Kansas St. had just as good, if not a better, profile than Virginia Tech. Yet the Sugar took the Hokies.

Baylor had just as good, if not a better, profile than Michigan. Yet the Sugar took the Wolverines.

Future Big 12 mate TCU managed to finish outside the top 16 thanks to the computers, but where would they have ranked on the BCS scale? Not very high, one imagines. Same with future Big 12 mate West Virginia.

The awful truth is that with Nebraska and Texas A&M excommunicated, the every major conference except the Big East can now put up 3 to 4 to 5 brand name programs that’ll draw more cache than the Big 12’s second tier starting with Oklahoma St. That’s deeply troubling.

Bama had their chance, at home. The pokes may not be the 2nd best team in the country but they deserve their shot. I keep thinking one of these doomsday scenarios will kill the BCS, but like a Timex watch – it keeps on ticking. Maybe Cuban and T Boone get together on this one…..

LSU and Alabama are in all likelihood the two best teams, but they haven’t come close to demonstrating it on the field. The biggest reason that the college football regular season is unsatisfactory and that a playoff is needed is that there is so little overlap between the schedules of teams in different conferences. You just can’t really compare OSU and Alabama’s overall body of work with any degree of confidence.

And boiling the comparison down to who has the worst loss, as Alabama supporters are doing, is so overly simplistic as to make a complete mockery of resume ranking.

The awful truth is that with Nebraska and Texas A&M excommunicated, the every major conference except the Big East can now put up 3 to 4 to 5 brand name programs that’ll draw more cache than the Big 12′s second tier starting with Oklahoma St.

A little heavy on the doom and gloom. The Big 12 has a solid case for being the third best conference in the country in terms of name-brand. The ACC has jack; I challenge you to name those 3 or 4 or 5 ACC programs with national cache. And the Pac-12 has USC, nouveau riche Oregon and that’s it. Remember that USC was arguably screwed out of a spot in the BCS title game as recently as 2008 when they had a compelling case for being the best team in the country (adjusted YPP statistics did indeed have them number one). But they lost to a non-name team and Oklahoma lost to Texas and Florida is in the SEC so they didn’t get a title slot.

Oklahoma State’s uniforms are holding them back.

(T. Boone can’t afford some fancy designer from UOregon?)

Herbstreit told us all exactly how it works. It is called the “eyeball test”. So we select the two best teams using said “eyeball test” and one of them gets the MNC. In case anyone is not old enough to remember, this “eyeball test” is how we used to choose #1 in the old days. The BCS was supposed to end that. Ok State’s loss to Iowa State caused them to fail the “eyeball test” so we get Apollo Creed II. AWESOME!

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

BCS = SEC

BCS = Me not bothering to watch.

I’ve already seen it. It was boring and I know the ending…..a dirty program with a bunch of kids that don’t legitimately qualify beats a dirty program with a bunch of kids that don’t legitimately qualify. If I want to watch a rerun there are better ones on TV to watch than that.

Imagine a team with an 12-1 record, a conference title, and a #7 SOS getting passed over by a different team with an 11-1 record, finishing 2nd in its division and a #42nd ranked SOS. Now imagine the team getting passed over is Alabama!

The root of the problem is that they never fixed the original structural flaws of the system, that is the overeliance on human opinion, i.e. polls. Algorithms try to do it, and while they may take the myth out of the equation, they’re still an approximation at best. The reason why a playoff is so apealling is that it eliminates all of the biases and heurteristic flaws inherent with human error. You may not get the perfect system with a playoff, but you get the fairest system. And at the end of the day fairness is the best compromise when perfection is nothing more than a fairy tale.

Honestly, I think these are the two best teams, but that’s not really the point.

This year is the perfect example of the BCS failing it purpose. I know Slive, Kramer, Hancock, and others will/have all argue(d) that the point of the BCS is to match the two best teams in the country. That is bullshit. The purpose of the BCS was/is to lend legitimacy to the naming of a “NATIONAL CHAMPION.” Where, as now, we have a replay of two teams from the same conference, there is no legitimacy.

That is not to say that the end result is illegitimate – as I said, these are probably the two best teams – but the process we use to get there is, tarnishing the whole thing. That, in short, is why I support a playoff.

Personally, I’d like to see Stanford play Bama to see how Luck does against a solid defense. Ideally, I’d then like to see the winners play between LSU/Okie St and Bama/Stanford or flip it. If it’s the same matchup—fine, at least it was then earned and there’s no doubt.

By BSC logic, if Alabama wins, they should play a third game and make it a best 2 of 3. Okie Light won the best conference, and for the first time, and get screwed.

I wont bother to watch this sham. Hope that Okie State bludgeons Stanford and Alabama wins 3-0 in triple overtime at 3 am in the morning.

Saban voted OSU #4.

I just read he put Stanford ahead of OSU. There’s some integrity for you. What a dick.

Seems to me here that it’s not so much the system that failed here, but the voters. And I say that as someone who HATES the BCS, and is strongly in favor of a playoff. But if we’re stuck with this crappy system, the least the voters could do is pay attention. And what’s clear is that they don’t. There we were sitting yesterday, PRAYING the computers would save OSU, because we can’t trust the voters.

I had a real problem with Alabama not really dropping after a loss at home. I have a real problem with a rematch of a game played in November. I have a problem with a team from any conference that fails to win its division or conference playing in the MNC. All of this has been said, and more.

And to those that say if there were a playoff, it’d still probably be Bama and LSU, I say… So? If it’s settled on the field, and other teams get a shot, then I have NO problem with a rematch for the title.

Of late, there is just SOO much not like about college football. It’s dirty, corrupt, incestuous, and deliberately misleading. Would I feel different if Texas weren’t going through it’s worst stretch in 15 years? I don’t know. But thank God for the NFL.

This year is the perfect example of the BCS failing it purpose.

The purpose of the BCS is to avoid having a playoff as long as possible — and it continues to meet its goal.

Pinkle, Troy Callhoon of Air Force, Saban, and Iowa Sate coach especially, have some explaining to do about their voting yesterday. Unbelievable.

If I’m T Boone I start right there with those coaches.

Ironically, I got called out by a Bama guy on the other thread for suggesting that some voters could be influenced by something other than integrity. Little did I know, I should have directed my accusations at their dirty bastard of a coach.

Nick, I think the fact that we rely so heavily on voters is the failure. It’s just obvious how much of a feature, rather than a bug, that voting is this year.

srr, that may be what it is used for now, but when it was created, the alternative was the old system, not a playoff.

The one thing I am annoyed by with the anti-playoff crowd is the canard that taking conference champs means taking the Sunbelt champ. The most likely scenario has nothing to do with the non-AQ conference champs. The BCS cartel of 6 conferences will continue and any playoff structure that includes conference champs will only include champs from those conferences. It isn’t the best scenario but it also isn’t as silly as suggesting the MAC conference champ will always have a seat at the table if we have a playoff.

I am fine with taking a weak Big East and/or ACC champ if the playoffs have at least 8 teams. Two at-large teams would supply enough additional, credible competition to allow the winner of the playoff to have passed a significant series of hurdles and claim they are deserving champions. Twelve teams would be better, especially since the top teams getting byes helps preserve some of the benefits for being the best during the regular season and having more at-large teams would ensure a quality field.

If Bama and LSU end up facing each other in a rematch under the above circumstances I would have no trouble with the match up nor would I get too upset over a Bama victory. I supposed the rules could be set up to ensure that no conference can get two teams into the finals by keeping the two-team per conference limit and by making sure those teams end up on the same side of the bracket just like in the pro leagues.

Setting up an engaging, quality competition for college football isn’t difficult. It isn’t going to be perfect either, but it will damn sure make more fans happy than the previous bowl system or the idiotic BCS.

I’m looking at Sagarin’s numbers and it’s just making me more angry. Bama is #2 though they are 1-1 against Top 10 teams; Okie State is 2-0. Bama is 2-1 against the Top 30; Okie State is 6-1. The Big 12 Conference is the second ranked overall conference behind the Big 10; the SEC is 4th behind the Mountain West.

Bama’s SOS is 23rd; Okie St. is 6th.

BTW, Iowa St. comes in at 29th which isn’t the worst loss in the world especially given that Iowa St. was at home. Bama’s loss, despite the opponent, was at home.

WH, I agree with you. The fact that interested parties can vote and that those votes have power is disgusting. Saban and others deliberately dropping OSU? That’s just fucked up. I hope he gets his ass kicked. Maybe T-Boone can hire some good refs for that game.

T Boone will go after these dirty bastards thats for sure. Their names are right there for all to see.

problem with my argument for Standford is that they didn’t win the Pac 12 and Oregon already got drubbed by LSU. So much for my idea.

The Harris poll votes provide even more comedy than the Coaches votes.

srr, that may be what it is used for now, but when it was created, the alternative was the old system, not a playoff.

The BCS was created to put some lipstick on the pig of an old system, so as to avoid a playoff.

Harris poll:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/HICFP_Individual_Rankings_Dec_4_2011.pdf

Coaches poll:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/story/2011-final-coaches-ballots/51647436/1

Well, the lipstick is now smeared and there’s an abundance of cold sores sprouting up.

To echo many previous posters, this is just another argument for a plus one system. I’d rather be arguing about who is the better candidate between the 4th and 5th best teams than between 2nd and 3rd. Sure people will still bitch, as evidenced by the arguing by bubble teams for the ever expanding basketball tourney, but it would be better and more equitable than what we have now.

As an aside, if we had gotten the exact same treatment as OSU, would our conference mates be as up in arms as we are? I’m betting there would be giggles and horns down from Waco to Ames.

LSU has already won the NC imo by going undefeated and defeating Bama @ Bama.

The outcome of a neutral site game played over a month after the end of the season should not matter more than the game at Tuscaloosa in the middle of the season.

just a few nuggets:

Les Miles, the former Michigan OL, had Wolverines #8 & MichSt #16;
 
Art Briles had WISC #16
 
Jon Embree left Baylor off his ballot.
 
LarryFedora voted VaTech #9 & Clemson #22… The Tigers blasted VT by a combined score of 61-13 this yr.
 
Former Notre Dame WR Derrick Mayes voted OK St #6 in his Harris ballot and had L’ville & Rutgers #22 and #23.
 
ExIowa SID George Wine voted Ok St #6 BEHIND #5 Houston, which had 0 wins over Top25 teams & just lost by 21 to SoMiss.
 
Former SEC Commish Roy Kramer voted 5 SEC teams in his top 11 on his Harris ballot.

Stuckinmn makes a good point. I guess I just want the additional revenue for two big 12 teams in the BCS in general. We as a school and conference got screwed not having either Baylor or K-State. Our conference is still back stabbing itself with the Iowa State jerkoff voting OSU after Alabama. What a moron he cost his school an the conference millions. Not sure what’s worse, the sad fact that someone with that kind of a bias can’t figure it out or the fact that someone with potential to influence the title game with an agenda is in a position to make a difference. What a dumbass and a joke of a system.

I think who got screwed in this deal as well was LSU. They have been there and done that – what is the incentive to play the bammys again?

This is the part of the season I hate most with college football. I know its been repeated a milliion times, but we need a freakin playoffs system. I will turn off my tv off in protest and disgust. The only game I am going to watch is the UT game, but other than that, I would rather watch a show on fishing

One of the strangest things about this whole BCS process is how flippant and unprofessional the whole thing is, especially given the amount of money involved.

For starters, somebody needs to take an Ethics 101 class and learn what “conflict of interest” is.

A nice follow-up would be for the media to embarrass certain coaches by publicly calling out their absurd voting for reasons of self-interest.

My bad. Paul Rhodes of ISU voted OSU 2nd. Thought he voted them 3rd.

1) The voters just don’t think OSU’s better than Alabama. Alabama got something like 95% of the 2 votes in both polls. What does this say about voters? They think the B12’s a collection of good-not-great teams. Not an indefensible evaluation at all.

2) The SEC’s proposed Plus 1 in 2008 would have taken care of this. Their tie-breaker rules in 2008 would have taken care of Texas over Oklahoma.

3) Oklahoma State lost this when Texas and Oklahoma stumbled into 8 losses. When a conference has marquee programs on the ropes for a season, it sucks the wind out of the sails for a program on a run like OSU. Not fair? I agree. See #2.

4) Realignment cost the B12 a championship game. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed a thing. And maybe another win over K-State would have pushed enough computers and voters over the edge for OSU.

I’m not happy about it, but blaming the SEC is just nonsense. They didn’t twist anyone’s arms. They tried to make this a 4 team pool instead of a 2 team pool. Every year that face some “offensive juggernaut” and shut them down. People keep throwing the same arguments against the wall pre-BCS and post-BCS every year. It’s getting old. Write Neinas or Dodds and demand a Plus 1 if you feel that bad about this.

Some of the commentariat have thrown Paul Rhoads under the bus for not voting OSU #2.

This is incorrect. Rhoads had OSU #2 on his ballot, with Bama #3, and Stanford #4. He also had K-State at #7.

For the love of God, people, Paul Rhoads (HC of Iowa State) did not vote "Bama ahead of OSU. Please stop saying he did.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/story/2011-final-coaches-ballots/51647436/1

And yes, Pinckle is a douchebag.

People keep throwing the same arguments against the wall pre-BCS and post-BCS every year.

This is the first time that a non-conference winning one-loss team was selected for a rematch with the conference winner over the one-loss conference champ of another BCS conference. On both prior occasions, in 2006 and 2008, the latter team was chosen and the “better loss” argument was laughed out of the room. Shockingly, the SEC was the beneficiary in both of those years too.

In any event, I agree it isn’t the SEC’s fault. It’s primarily the fault of the sports media, with the BCS supporters running a close second.

Pinkel is just voting SEC party line. Why is that confusing?

Damnit Chloe, just take the champs from the 6 AQ conferences and 2 wildcards in the 4 BCS bowls (Rose returns to P12-B1G every year.) Top 2 winners then host on-campus playoff games, then the first legitimate national championship game rotated among the BCS bowl sites. How it would look this year:

Rose: Oregon – Wisconsin

Fiesta: OK St – Stanford

Sugar: LSU – Clemson

Orange: Bama – WV (or Bama – Boise St if considering how expansion will shake out if this system is adopted.)

99% chance that the actual best team of the season is in this playoff, 99% of fans are happy, far more legitimacy, easy to implement. If the power conferences want more teams in and more control of the money, add another bowl or two to the BCS that isn’t part of the playoffs but offers the same payout as the playoff games from the same BCS pool of money. The Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, and new BCS bowls can rotate the playoff and non-playoff games between themselves.

Zero good arguments against this system. Keeps the regular season extremely meaningful, maintains the importance of winning your conference but provides a minimal number of wildcards to cover for anomalies. And yes, BCS apologist dumbasses, arguments over who gets in would still continue, but who gives a shit? At least then we’d have a 99% confidence that the best team made the playoffs, vs a less than 50% confidence in the current abysmal joke of a 2-team beauty contest playoff.

I think the two best teams are playing. I don’t think OSU has the horses to beat either.

That being said, this is a triumph for the masters of oversigning, Saban and Miles. Until recently the SEC had no limits on the number of LOI’s a team could accept, and it was perfectly acceptable as long as they got their rosters down to 85 by the NCAA’s August deadline. Between LOI day in Feb and the NCAA roster cutoff day in Aug, LSU and Bama can have over 100 new and returning players to choose from. In the meantime they “encourage” players they don’t think will contribute to transfer to the FCS, take a medical redshirt, or just flat-out run them off, as scholarships are renewed on a year-to-year basis. Hence, LSU and UA can stockpile an incredible amount of blue-chip talent on their rosters, while jettisoning the deadweight on the back end.

Teams from other BCS conferences, most notably the B1G, have strict limits on the number of LOI’s they can accept, and the number has to closely match the number players whose eligiblity is expiring or are turning pro. The conference allows 2-3 additional signings over the 85 limit for normal attrition, but I believe the schools have to petition the conference for permission to do so. To say this puts the B1G at an enormous competitive disadvantage vis a vis the SEC is an understatement.

They say the SEC’s motto is “if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’”. I wonder how the Aggies are going to adjust to this new reality?

I thought the BCS system was like a “regular season” playoff?

Since when in a playoff situation in football do you get to play a team that beat you again?

The Harris poll is a joke… BCS should be determined by 25% coaches, 25% AP and 50% computer polls.

K State is going to whip Arkansas sorry ass, Okie Lite is going to beat Stanford, Baylor Northwestern is a joke, Texas will simply out athelete Cal (our eleven defensive starters againt a sorry Pac 12 team? Ouch) whoever Iowa State has is in for a nasty surprise, and when all is said and done the idiot media will still put the SEC up front.

I don’t really get the frustration with the BCS. For most of my life, the best teams were contracted to certain games and all went their own way with very little chance of a 1-2 matchup. Pre-BCS, OK St would have headed to Miami and LSU to New Orleans.

The BCS is a playoff, but only for two teams. That leaves us arguing about who got left on the doorstep. Expanding the field doesn’t eliminate the bickering over the next team(s) left out of the process. Look at the men’s basketball tournament, I think we are up to 68 teams now and we still will here boring arguments about “bubble” teams that didn’t get into the draw.

There will always be a debate about the next team, but at least we are ensuring some version of the top two meet for the championship rather than being scattered around the country in different bowl games.

two521:

You are a moron. A college playoff would generate more $$$ for schools than the NFL. Saying that picking two teams out of a group to play for all the marbles is better than picking 16 who decide a champion on the field is pure stupidity.

two521,

I’ll agree that the ever expanding bracket in basketball is ridiculous and done solely for money instead of determining the best team. I believe a 16 team field would capture all but two NCAA champions in the history of the tournament, for example. While the BCS does a fair job of narrowing down to the best group of teams, I don’t believe the system can precisely choose the best two of that group.

I’m for an eight team playoff that allows the teams that had a good enough regular season to really argue their case a chance to prove it on the gridiron. Once in place, I’d be against ever expanding the field to the non-deserving.

Getting beyond eight teams opens it up to teams that have lost several times and shown themselves to be below championship level already. Crowning a true champion is the point for me, anything other than that makes the regular season a pointless exercise or turns the whole playoff concept into nothing more than a money grab. The mutant of the NCAA basketball tournament should never be allowed to occur in football.

Bubble teams that complain should be congratulated on their season and told they have future seasons to earn a shot at the playoff.

And Will

Not happening until the alignment settles down and the BCS conferences can exercise total control over the process, which requires some NCAA restructuring (separate division within FBS). Then we’ll have playoffs.

The first ‘Bama-LSU game was stupefyingly boring and the next one is going to be worse. I hope there’s something good on the other channels that night.

Willow,

That moron might be your reflection. Did I mention 16 teams or money? You probably can’t recall because you obviously don’t excel at reading comp.

You probably are less than 30 years old and don’t recall the previous system and are too lazy to read about it. The BCS is an improvement over that system, it is a simple fact. We rarely had the top two teams or some version thereof anywhere near each other in the post season.

Is the BCS the best ultimate solution in its current form? I doubt it, but you can’t walk a mile without taking a step and this is better than what we had. Is it time to take the next step? Could be.

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