This Is Why I Never Watch College Football
How the hell does Texas end up in front of USC in the BCS Rankings?
posted by andy grabia @ 6:48 PM
1 long time listeners, first time callers
Friday, October 28, 2005
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If you look at their quality wins, a win over THE Ohio State University is just as (if not more) impressive than USC's win at Notre Dame. Similarly, the only conference wins for each team that hold any weight at this point are Texas' win last week over an overrated Texas Tech team (and they smoked them, 52-17), while USC had to rally to beat Arizona State. As Brad Edwards of espn.com points out, SC should improve in the computer polls since they have a tougher schedule down the stretch, while Texas is over the worst of it.
This might come down to "strength of schedule", meaning how each team's opponents play the rest of the way could determine who ends up #1. For example, if OU loses to Nebraska today, Texas' strength of schedule takes a hit. And if UCLA stumbles in the next few weeks, USC's win over them (if it happens) won't mean as much.
In any case, if nothing else this points to how ridiculous the idea of leaving the championship game to computers (and a poll where Terry Bradshaw has a vote) is. You'd think people would have learned their lesson in 2001, when Nebraska beat out Colorado and Oregon for a spot in the national title game (despite not even playing in their conference title game) because a Southern Mississippi interception in the final seconds of a game against (I think it was) TCU sealed a win, giving Nebraska's strength of schedule the slight bump it needed to help Nebraska jump to 2nd in the BCS rankings. Suffice to say, I miss the old days where most conference champions had bowl tie-ins, ensuring that the top 2 teams rarely played in a bowl game, and voters in the AP and Coaches Polls decided who the national champ was. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd much rather have the champion decided by human judgement, not by how many touchdowns a team's 3rd string offense can punch in late in the game to run up the score against North Dakota State in a meaningless non-conference game.
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