This Week in College Football 11/1 - 11/5

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Drop the persecution complex. Mmmkay?

[Damaramu 0]

I would if it wasn't obvious that this board was anti-Big XII. Even Hogan Made Wrestling has noticed it in the past.

[Slayer 0]

I'm a Big XII guy and I don't think undefeated Texas should go in over undefeated Alabama, if that's how it winds up at the end of the regular season.

 

On top of the preseason polls affecting the placement, Mack Brown is probably getting some sympathy votes to stay at #2 (a la Tom Osborne in 1994)

[lomasmoney 0]

I totally disagree. They have been curbstomping overrated Big 12 teams all season, and have one win over someone worth a damn, Ohio State. Alabama on the other hand, has to deal with reduced scholarships, injuries, and the fact that they play in the SEC, which even in a down year is still a much tougher conference than the Big XII is this season. If the Tide can come through the season unbeaten, is there anyway to decide who the best team is if you have three unbeaten teams. In all the other NCAA sports, they have this funny thing where you use the regular season to seed x amount of teams and let them play it out on the field. Who is to say Penn State, Miami, or Georgia wouldnt just destroy Texas in a neutral site playoff game. Until a playoff is instituted, we have no way of truly knowing who the best team is.

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

The rampant complaining (or maybe pre-complaining is a better term) about Texas is getting old. We spent weeks hearing about how VT should pass them if they win out and then they go and get blown out by Miami. Now we are doomed to hear the same thing about Alabama until they get rolled at some point by a superior SEC team like LSU.

 

And then the final stage will come as people complain that 1-loss teams are better than an undefeated Texas. This will occupy the time period up to the date the BCS games are chosen, at which point it will just be back to arguing about Texas vs. USC again.

 

Personally, all I want to see now is these 1 and 2 loss teams at the top of the pile knocking each other off so that the Ducks can backdoor their way into the top 8 or so and a BCS game.

[Slayer 0]

Even Hogan Made Wrestling has noticed it in the past.

HMW is one of the worst BCS apologists I've ever seen, so I don't know how much stock I'd put in his opinion

[therealworldschampion 0]

New Coaches Poll:

 

Rank Team (first-place votes) Record Points Last week

1. Southern California (56) 9-0 1,544 1

2. Texas (6) 9-0 1,494 2

3. Alabama 9-0 1,398 4

4. Miami (Fla.) 7-1 1,385 5

5. LSU 7-1 1,283 6

6. Penn State 9-1 1,139 11

7. Notre Dame 6-2 1,124 9

8. Virginia Tech 8-1 1,116 3

9. Georgia 7-1 1,093 10

10. Ohio State 7-2 962 12

11. Oregon 8-1 919 13

12. Florida 7-2 754 15

13. Texas Tech 8-1 745 17

14. UCLA 8-1 744 7

15. West Virginia 7-1 710 16

16. Florida State 7-2 667 8

17. Auburn 7-2 619 18

18. TCU 9-1 491 20

19. Wisconsin 8-2 385 14

20. Fresno State 7-1 360 22

21. Colorado 7-2 302 24

22. Michigan 6-3 275 23

23. Louisville 6-2 242 25

24. Georgia Tech 6-2 117 NR

25. Boston College 6-3 56 19

 

 

Dropped out

 

No. 21 California (6-3, lost to then-No. 13 Oregon 27-20 OT).

 

 

 

Others receiving votes

 

California (6-3) 55; Texas-El Paso (7-1) 52; Northwestern (6-3) 43; Boise State (7-2) 31; South Carolina (6-3) 18; Minnesota (6-3) 17; Oklahoma (5-3) 8; Clemson (5-4) 1; Iowa State (6-3) 1.

 

New AP Poll:

 

AP Top 25

RANK TEAM RECORD PTS LAST

1 Southern Cal (57) 9-0 1617 1

2 Texas (8) 9-0 1568 2

3 Miami 7-1 1452 5

4 Alabama 9-0 1450 4

5 LSU 7-1 1328 6

6 Penn St. 9-1 1271 10

7 Notre Dame 6-2 1201 8

8 Virginia Tech 8-1 1147 3

9 Georgia 7-1 1097 11

10 Ohio St. 7-2 1076 12

11 Oregon 8-1 943 15

12 Florida 7-2 905 13

13 Texas Tech 8-1 753 16

14 UCLA 8-1 693 7

15 Auburn 7-2 680 17

16 West Virginia 7-1 677 18

17 Florida St. 7-2 605 9

18 TCU 9-1 536 20

19 Wisconsin 8-2 438 14

20 Fresno St. 7-1 410 21

21 Michigan 6-3 372 22

22 Colorado 7-2 312 25

23 Louisville 6-2 242 24

24 Georgia Tech 6-2 109 NR

25 Northwestern 6-3 82 NR

 

Others receiving votes: California 38, UTEP 27, Boston College 24, Boise St. 23, Oklahoma 16, South Carolina 14, Minnesota 12, Iowa St. 5, Iowa 1, South Florida 1.

 

Wow Miami gets #3 in the AP poll

[Secret Agent 0]

Well, which two out of the three is more impressive: Going undefeated in the SEC vs. Going undefeated in the Big XII Vs going undefeated in the PAC-10?

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

Even Hogan Made Wrestling has noticed it in the past.

HMW is one of the worst BCS apologists I've ever seen, so I don't know how much stock I'd put in his opinion

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Right because I don't whine PLAYOFFS PLAYOFFS PLAYOFFS! every season and go out looking for new excuses to bash the BCS after the old ones evaporate. For instance this season: first it was "there will be a ton of undefeated teams, the BCS is screwed", then after Georgia, etc. lost it was "VT will get screwed out of the title game if they win out" and now it's "Alabama will get screwed out of the title game if they win out" and when they lose it will be "Miami is the best team in college football but they are getting screwed out of the title game because they already lost".

 

I for one like the fact that college football has a DIFFERENT system than the monotony of most professional team sports. Every game means something and losing is unacceptable. Go to some ridiculous system like a 16 team playoff and the big games cease to mean anything. Teams will simply beat up on jobbers in their non-coferenfce games to ensure they get seeded as high as possible. Goodbye Texas vs. tOSU, hello Texas vs. Temple! Great stuff...

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

I'll go on the record to say that as long as there are two undefeated teams, Miami definitely shouldn't get the nod over them.

[Urban Warfare 0]

Glad to see Miami over Bama. Bama has played no one outside of Tuscaloosa while Miami has played at Florida State and at Virginia Tech where they bitch slapped a good Tech team.

[LooseCannon25 0]

Glad to see Miami over Bama. Bama has played no one outside of Tuscaloosa while Miami has played at Florida State and at Virginia Tech where they bitch slapped a good Tech team.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Not to mention a tough home Clemson team. Bama plays no tough teams on the road. I expect them to lose to LSU anyway. I would also put PSU over LSU as well.

[UseTheSledgehammerUh 0]

Notre Dame Vs. Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl would potentially be the highest television ratings for a college game in quite some time. I really want to see that matchup.

[LooseCannon25 0]

Notre Dame Vs. Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl would potentially be the highest television ratings for a college game in quite some time.  I really want to see that matchup.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

that would be an amazing matchup

 

USC, Texas, Miami, Alabama, Notre Dame, Penn St., LSU, and Georgia mixed and matched into any series of games will be great to watch

[Bored 0]

Incidently enough Notre Dame and Penn State play each other the next two years.

[Guest]

Why is everyone even talking about Alabama going undefeated? Without Prothro there is a 1% percent chance of them even doing so, and even if they did go undefeated without Tyrone, they still aren't better than Texas. The only teams better than Texas are Miami and USC in that order, but if Alabama did have Prothro, they would also be in that category.

[Damaramu 0]

So since you just said Miami is better does that mean you will champion Miami to be in the title game over Texas?

[Guest]

Can't. They don't deserve to be there unless Texas and Alabama both lose.

[Slayer 0]

Right because I don't whine PLAYOFFS PLAYOFFS PLAYOFFS! every season and go out looking for new excuses to bash the BCS after the old ones evaporate.

The BCS holds as much water as a collander and is far more often "successful" by sheer luck than by any design

 

Every game means something and losing is unacceptable. Go to some ridiculous system like a 16 team playoff and the big games cease to mean anything.

Regular season games in turn cease to mean anything if you're a deserving #3 team on the outside looking in because some fucking computers said you weren't 0.00005 points as good as the #2 team.

[cabbageboy 0]

At the end of the day the BCS will always be retarded for this reason: Teams can go undefeated and not have shit to show for it. I defy anyone to counter that simple argument. Last year you had USC, OU, Auburn, and Utah all go undefeated in the reg. season. I mean yeah you had OU out of the way after the 55-19 beatdown but Auburn and Utah finished unbeaten. How can anyone conclusively say USC was the best team when two other teams never lost?

 

People like John Saunders blather on about the reg. season being an elimination itself and the BCS is wonderful, etc. He just ignores that simple fact that some teams don't ever get eliminated and get fucked anyway.

 

Also, why is everyone assuming Notre Dame is going to the BCS? Sure, they played USC tough but they also lost to a Big 10 JTTS in Michigan St. Are they supposed to pass over every team with 1 loss? If they do miss out on the BCS I'd love to see U of L play them, what a crazed 55-52 game that would be.

[therealworldschampion 0]

If ND gets into the top 12 of the BCS they're eligible for a BCS bowl, and you know the Fiesta Bowl is going to take them for the TV ratings.

[Guest]

The way that the system is set up ensures that Notre Dame will be in it.

[iggymcfly 0]

Only letting two teams compete for the championship actually makes the regular season less meaningful, because teams with weak schedules are eliminated before they play a game. (See Auburn, Utah, and Boise State last year, or Alabama this year. Whether or not, Alabama ends up undefeated, the fact is that they have no chance to play for the title regardless.)

 

An 8-team playoff would neither reduce the meaning of the regular season, nor kill the bowl system. Since only the elite teams would make it, (five major conference champs plus three at larges), everyone else would still be focused on their bowl game. The trick would be properly structuring the playoff around the bowl system. What they'd have to do is first make sure the regular season ends in November. Conference championship games, postponed games, it doesn't matter. Get it done by the last Saturday in November or don't play.

 

Then, you'd have to play the first round of the playoffs on campus sites the first week of December before finals start for the students. They can still get plenty of television hype and make millions of dollars for the NCAA and its member institutions without interfering with the bowls. Then, the semifinals come at the end of the bowl season, at traditional bowl sites, and the losers of the quarterfinals play the teams that just got left out. Imagine last year if Texas lost to Utah in the first round of the playoffs, and then played Cal in the Rose Bowl, while Utah, Auburn, Oklahoma, and USC, all got to battle it out to see who would go to the title game in the Orange and Fiesta Bowls. Also, since there's another game to be played, the major bowls should finish by January 2.

 

Then just play the championship game at the major bowl site closest to the campus of the highest ranked remaining team on the first Monday that's at least seven days after the last bowl game. Since it's on a Monday, (the day the BCS Championship game was on anyway), it won't interfere with the NFL Playoffs, and it will also be during Christmas break if the students want to travel.

 

I guarantee that if they adopted this system, the regular season ratings would go up. (Less teams are eliminated the first weekend or before.) I guarantee that the bowl ratings, and money from travel would stay relatively close. (The teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs might send 10,000 less students, but that would be a drop in the bucket overall; especially for a game that's going to sell out anyway.) And finally, I guarantee that the NCAA and its' member insitutions would make a windfall from the eight team playoff that would make the BCS look like chump change. They're basically getting four extra games in early December that will get the same ratings as BCS games, plus making three games as meaningful in the BCS as the "championship" that they have now.

 

When you combine this with the positive press that the NCAA would receive for deciding their champion on the field, plus all the new fans that would give the sport a try who were previously turned off by the BCS, it's a no-brainer.

 

For the people who say a 16-team playoff would be better, well you're dead wrong. First off, this would kill the multi-million dollar bowl system, as every conference champion and attractive at-large team would be taken up by the playoff. Second, it would water down the regular season tremendously. Whereas, under an 8-team playoff, a team like VT might still have a chance to make amends if things go right, under a 16-team playoff, the whole Miami/VT game would be meaningless, because we'd know both teams would likely be in the playoffs anyway.

 

And do you really want to give teams like La. Lafayette a chance to compete for the national championship? How about Toledo? Mid-major teams deserve a chance to compete for the national championship if they play a decent schedule and go undefeated. Utah and Boise State last year? Go for it, sneak them in. But under the suggested system a team like Mississippi State could just join the Sun Belt, and boom, they have an automatic playoff berth every year. This doesn't happen in basketball because it's so easy to make the tournament anyway that no one would risk the prestige of being in an upper-tier conference, but giving the Sun Belt, MAC, MWC, and WAC champions automatic berths would make college football into an absolute joke.

 

An 8-team playoff is the only reasonable solution for I-A football to thrive.

[Bored 0]

On that subject because Notre Dame is now almost a lock for the Fiesta Bowl, the Gator Bowl now gets left with possibly South Florida. Rutgers isn't a draw and Louisville lost to USF. They should probably look elsewhere for a conference to take it's 2nd place team from with the current state of the Big East after this year. I'd like them to grab the Pac-10 but geographically wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. It just annoys me that the Pac-10 doesn't have it's 2nd place team go to a major bowl, unless it gets a BCS at-large bid.

[Slayer 0]

Do the other divisions have 8 or 16 in their playoffs?

[Guest]

I'd like to see them grab a team from the Big 10, but their slots are already pretty much locked up in the Citrus and Outback bowls.

[Bored 0]

This article is a couple of weeks old but apparantly the ACC is now souring on the Gator Bowl:

 

http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/102605/3388985.shtml

Prime pick is for Peach, not Gator Bowl

 

BOB THOMAS

Morris News Service

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The official announcement has yet to come from the Atlantic Coast Conference office, but from all indications, the Gator Bowl will lose its pick of the top team from the league beginning with the 2006 football season.

 

Since 1998, the first year of the Bowl Championship Series, the Gator Bowl has had the first choice of ACC and Big East teams - or Notre Dame - after the league championships were decided. The preferential selection spot has enabled Gator Bowl president Rick Catlett and his committee to bring together some memorable matchups, including Georgia Tech-Notre Dame (1999), Virginia Tech-Clemson (2001), N.C. State-Notre Dame (2003) and the most recent games pitting West Virginia against Maryland (2004) and Florida State (2005).

 

But beginning next season, the Peach Bowl will step into that position, selecting the ACC's top team three out of every four years to pair against the fifth-place Southeastern Conference team. The Gator would retain that option once out of every four.

This probably has to do with the ACC playing it's title game in Jacksonville and not wanting to have a school play back-to-back games in the same location, which is a likley scenerio with Florida State this year.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I think that's great. Everyone at an ACC school roots to get the Peach Bowl if their team doesn't make the BCS, because the Gator is easily the lamest of the post-New Year's games. The location of the championship game is of course a big factor. The Peach Bowl has a history of really great games, and come on, it's in Atlanta.

 

With the current bowl alliances--and even with the changes taking place next year--it's a no-brainer. Which do you think is a more appropriate game--FSU/Miami/Virginia Tech vs. South Florida/Rutgers, or vs. Auburn/Florida/LSU/Alabama?

[Guest Ether]

On that subject because Notre Dame is now almost a lock for the Fiesta Bowl, the Gator Bowl now gets left with possibly South Florida. Rutgers isn't a draw and Louisville lost to USF. They should probably look elsewhere for a conference to take it's 2nd place team from with the current state of the Big East after this year. I'd like them to grab the Pac-10 but geographically wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. It just annoys me that the Pac-10 doesn't have it's 2nd place team go to a major bowl, unless it gets a BCS at-large bid.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Won't happen. If Notre Dame goes to A BCS bowl, and Louisville and USF finish as predicted (louisville winning out and USF only loses to WVU), both teams will finish in 2nd place with 5-2 confernce records. Technically, USF would be in 2nd because they beat Louisville. However, Louisville would be 9-2 overall - and ranked, while USF would be 7-4. The Big East adheres to the 1-win rule, meaning bowls can pick another team as long as that team is within one win of the other team. Since Louisville would have 2 more wins than USF, the Gator could pick them, even though Louisville, in this scenario, is technically the third place team.

 

Also, cabbageboy, USF getting the BCS bid wouldn't kill the Big East yet, although it certainly would not help. It would put a lot of pressure on the other Big East teams to perform well in 2006 and 2007 when the auto-bid evaluation process takes place after the 2007 season.

[Guest]

It would kill the Big East dead without question.