Edwin MacPhisto

Then, of course, there's the conference doomsday scenario: ASU beats USC, and Oregon loses another game. At least one three-loss at-large will make the BCS this year, but that second Pac-10 team would probably be clinging desperately to the #13 or 14 spot, competing with ACC teams, Illinois, Hawaii/Boise, and one or more SEC teams (Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, depending on the results of upcoming games). There are so many great ways the BCS can get fucked up this year. cabbageboy: Basically, if whoever wins UVA/VT wins the ACC, the champ will not be below Boise or Hawaii. However, BC and Clemson could each win the conference despite losing a third game--Clemson has South Carolina, and BC has Miami--which would be good times for the mid-majors.

I like the new Band of Horses album more than the first Band of Horses album, but I still don't like them very much. Oddly uncompelling band.

Well, they did fire the defensive coordinator immediately after the Oklahoma State loss this year, which is fairly understandable; it's pretty inexcusable to pass for 650 yards and lose a game. After looking at a few more box scores, the speed and scoring ability of the offense seems to work as a negative, not leaving the defense much time to recover. Their longest scoring drive of the Texas game was 3:34, and Texas held the ball for 40 minutes. Time of possession averages about -7 minutes for Texas Tech in the half-dozen box scores against conference opponents I looked at, which is pretty low.

Leach already got the yardage total in '03 with BJ Symons, who actually threw for 5,833 and 52 TDs. I've never watched enough Texas Tech football to figure out why they're so mediocre year-in, year-out, despite those consistently massive numbers. Inflated by cupcakes through a scheme not good enough for the big boys, I guess. It's pretty fascinating, really. He had Kliff Kingsbury from 00-02, Symons in '03, Sonny Cumbie in '04, Cody Hodges in '05, and now Harrell the past two seasons. The success of three guys in a row who started just one season apiece suggests that it's not that impressive to succeed in the system, and the strong work from the first two QBs implies that it hasn't been dependent on Leach recruiting a particular type of player, either. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Washington State or UCLA, both likely to have vacancies after this year, bring Leach out west to try his hand against some Pac-10 defenses.

Well, one of the teams ahead of them is Hawaii, and 4 of them are ACC teams, at least three of which are guaranteed to pick up at least one more loss (BC vs. Clemson this weekend, UVA/VT next weekend, then the championship game). If they win out they'll probably hit #14 by default. USC, Georgia, or Oregon losing again--none of which are too unlikely--would push them up even more and get them extremely close to magic #12.

Because it was a crappy Wednesday night game no one cared about, I completely missed that Miami of Ohio beat Akron 7-0, with the only score coming on a fumble return. Awesome.

I remain unconvinced about everything except for the track list. The microphone is lame and whacking fake drums isn't as satisfying as playing a fake guitar. I think you're going to end up with a lot of people buying just the software and playing it with their GH3 guitars.

In any scenario where Cincinnati doesn't upset WVU or Michigan doesn't upset OSU, I'd expect the Fiesta to be all over Arizona State, if they're available. Oregon may have a really tough lot here. Even if they can win one of their last two, I'm still not sure the Holiday Bowl would take them without Dixon as the main attraction.

Whoops. I think I had one of those "West Virginia will beat Cincinnati!" followed by me deleting West Virginia moments.

Oh god, it was a fumble after all. Oregon's getting pwned by the high lords of futbol.

Nicely timed Dixon for Heisman ad there.

Wow. I just turned the game on. That's absolutely terrible, and 100% not the way you want to see a team drop out of the title hunt. I guess every team needs to have its backup prepared for situations like this, but man. Poor bastards.

THURSDAY Oregon FRIDAY Hawaii SATURDAY Ohio State Florida State Georgia Arkansas Notre Dame Penn State Purdue Wake Forest Utah Clemson Cincinnati Oklahoma Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the Ohio State/Michigan game? 45 Tiebreak #2: How many passing yards will Boston College's Matt Ryan have against Clemson? 222

Probably very unlikely. Dude is going down some not particularly crowded stairs.

LIKE WHAT Oh, gee, there's not like a thousand DVDs out there to view. Nope, always gotta rely on the newest and shiniest. Great series of posts.

The guy in the glasses looks like beloved character actor Gary Cole.

Czech, I can't believe you actually listened to 9 Steely Dan albums. Yuck.

Mole, why are you working at Radio Shack? I thought you graduated.

I think that was one of the best four-post series in the history of this thread. Together they sound like one big Deep Thought.

Thought one: I don't punish teams for close wins at all when ranking teams, which I guess is a difference between how we each qualify teams. I don't care if it's by 4 TDs or 4 points; at a certain point, a win is a win. Conversely, I will slightly reward a team for throttling someone if they're playing at an overall higher level. Kind of like an A vs. an A+, if you will; margin of victory is pretty meaningless to me. Thought two: I think your methodologies rely a little too heavily on 1) strength of schedule, and 2) the Sagarin rankings and similar statistical predictors. On the latter: I don't think anyone who's actually watched both Cincy and Virginia games these season would favor Cincy by 13 points. In fact, I think you'd probably be looking at something around the standard "even teams" 3-point spread in favor of the home team, with a slight edge to Cincy on account of their great turnover ratio. Similarly, your strength of schedule evaluation looks only at the top and the bottom, ignoring most of the middling wins (which I tend to see as a mark of consistency in teams), and you weigh losses a lot lower than I do. By virtue of their wins over Oregon and Tennessee, Cal has to be one of the best 4-loss teams in the country, but to place them above any 2-loss BCS team at this stage of the season significantly devalues the merits of actually winning games. It seems like you're using an odd hybrid of both ranking on resumes and how "good" a team plays/has played at its high points. This works in some cases, but I think it's also partly why you really, really overestimated both Georgia Tech and UCLA at earlier points in this season. CFN does something very similar.

4th. Ray Wise too. You had three in one year during season 5.

#4? Really? I thought I was picking like ass this season. OMG parity

Mizzou and WVU couldn't play each other since no conference is allowed more then 2 BCS slots. If Ohio State wins next week, I'd expect the Rose to grab whichever Pac-10 team is eligible, be it Oregon, ASU, or USC. Iggy, on your rankings: did you move Auburn since last night? I thought I glanced at the post and saw them at 15, which seemed absurd. I still think they're slightly overvalued at 22, though--they have the Florida win and they've generally lost to competition that ranges from good (USF, Mississippi State) to very good (Georgia, LSU), but they're still 7-4 and have only one really strong win. They also look ass-terrible against UGA. Cal also seems to be a significant outlier at 19. They've dropped four of five, have one great win, and one good win. I couldn't justify them any higher than an honorary #25 for still being the only team to beat Oregon. Finally--and this may be the Virginia homer in me speaking--I can't understand how you can stick Cincinnati at #13 and have Virginia at #25. I'd probably have both sitting around the 15-17 area. Both have: -lost to inconsistent and average 5-5 teams (Louisville, NC State) -a loss they'd much rather forget (Pitt--a team UVA beat--and Wyoming, though UVA getting hammered @WYO is still one of the year's worst losses) -beaten Connecticut -won 28-23 against an average and inconsistent conference opponent (Rutgers, Georgia Tech) -a face-stomping blowout over an inconsistent, mid-level BCS opponent (Oregon State, Miami) I give a little more value to the Oregon State beatdown than the Miami beatdown, and obviously Cincy also gets credit for winning @ South Florida. Conversely, Virginia gets more credit for having a longer list of mid-level triumphs (Wake, Maryland), not playing a I-AA team, and only playing 2 non-BCS teams vs. Cincy's total of 4. I'm not sure there's 12 spots of separation in there, particularly with so many 3 and 4-loss teams sitting between them. You can tell it's a special season at UVA when I'm devoting this much brainpower to one dude's CFB rankings of overachieving 2-loss squads. Huzzah.

I've had an erection for the last hour watching this game.

ESPN2 is showing post-race Nascar bullshit instead of the UVA/Miami game. I hate everything.