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The LSU Bama game earlier this year was about as exciting as watching grass grow.
Too bad the voters did not put OK ST in the game with LSU. That would add some excitement. In fact, there are several teams that should have been voted in before Bama including West VA and Houston.
Football season is over. We have already seen all of the good bowl games.
The LSU Bama game earlier this year was about as exciting as watching grass grow.
Too bad the voters did not put OK ST in the game with LSU. That would add some excitement. In fact, there are several teams that should have been voted in before Bama including West VA and Houston.
Football season is over. We have already seen all of the good bowl games.
The LSU Bama game earlier this year was about as exciting as watching grass grow.
Too bad the voters did not put OK ST in the game with LSU. That would add some excitement. In fact, there are several teams that should have been voted in before Bama including West VA and Houston.
Football season is over. We have already seen all of the good bowl games.
Nobody's debating that the BCS is imperfect, but the whole point of having the BCS title game is to have the two best teams in the country play each other. LSU and Alabama are the two best teams.
People keep harping about ALabama not winning its conference. That's not a requirement. Who cares? If Alabama played Big 12 teams or PAC 10 teams all season long, they would have won the conference. If they had played in a different division in the SEC, they might have beaten LSU in a rematch. Unfortunately, they lose one time in an overtime game against the undisputed BCS #1 - a game that they probably would have won in regulation if they had acquired a better place kicker.
West Virginia? BWAHAHA! WVU, like Oregon, and like the rest of the five-time reigning champion SEC conference, was crushed by LSU. Alabama was the only team able to stand with those guys for four quarters. All of LSU's other opponents were finished off by the time the 4th quarter started. Before the Fiesta Bowl, I was among those who thought OSU might have been treated unfairly for its loss against Iowa State, but not anymore, not after it needed a major stroke of luck to defeat the number TWO team in the PAC 12. The BCS made the right call.
Nobody's debating that the BCS is imperfect, but the whole point of having the BCS title game is to have the two best teams in the country play each other. LSU and Alabama are the two best teams.
People keep harping about ALabama not winning its conference. That's not a requirement. Who cares? If Alabama played Big 12 teams or PAC 10 teams all season long, they would have won the conference. If they had played in a different division in the SEC, they might have beaten LSU in a rematch. Unfortunately, they lose one time in an overtime game against the undisputed BCS #1 - a game that they probably would have won in regulation if they had acquired a better place kicker.
West Virginia? BWAHAHA! WVU, like Oregon, and like the rest of the five-time reigning champion SEC conference, was crushed by LSU. Alabama was the only team able to stand with those guys for four quarters. All of LSU's other opponents were finished off by the time the 4th quarter started. Before the Fiesta Bowl, I was among those who thought OSU might have been treated unfairly for its loss against Iowa State, but not anymore, not after it needed a major stroke of luck to defeat the number TWO team in the PAC 12. The BCS made the right call.
How do you know they are the 2 best teams? Seriously...what makes one 10-1 team better than the other if they never play each other or common opponents...
Cmon...this is lunacy,the system is BROKEN. Somebody fix it. The system is not imperfect, its an EMBARRASSMENT.
I'm telling you in about 20 years we are gonna look back at this era in time about college football and shake our heads.
Let's see. OSU needed two missed chip shots by a normally reliable place kicker to get past Stanford. Now, let's see...Stanford got beat by Oregon -- 52 to 30!!! And let's see, which team was it that curb stomped Oregon - with four of its starters missing??? Oh yeah, that's right, LSU.
The transitive property doesn't apply to sports because teams play differently in different games. Minnesota beat Iowa, and Iowa beat Michigan. Does that make Minnesota (lol) better than Michigan?
The transitive property doesn't apply to sports because teams play differently in different games. Minnesota beat Iowa, and Iowa beat Michigan. Does that make Minnesota (lol) better than Michigan?
I don't disagree with what you write, but it works in reverse, too. My point is this:
The current BCS system, as flawed as we all know it is, is designed to put the number one team in the country versus the number two team in the country. It is not designed to put the champion of one conference against the champion of another conference.
In the NFL, for instance, the Super Bowl teams have to win their conferences. That's the rule. There's no way out of that, because that's what the rules say. Additionally, it's possible for a 7-9 team to win a conference while an 11-5 team misses the playoffs altogether. Again, that's what the rules say.
In Division 1 college football, though, it's number 1 versus number 2. It's subjective, and I don't really like the system anymore than you do, but that's the way it is. And what that means is, teams have to make their case by winning and by competing impressively in as many games as possible. That means that teams have to go either undefeated or they have to go nearly undefeated and lose as respectably as possible. All teams know that going into the season. There's no mystery there.
Is there bias? Of course there is. Is a bias favoring a team that has one loss against the undisputed number one, and does that bias favor them over a team that lost to a 6-6 team? I'm sure there is. Is there bias that benefits a 1-loss team from the same conference that has won the last five BCS title games, and has been at the top of the polls in 8 out of the last 9 years? Most definitely so. But again, that's the system that we have. All teams know that every single week, they need to bring their best. There's little or no room for error.
OSU had every chance to go out and prove itself, and they almost did it. They had some extremely impressive wins. Unfortunately, they had one extremely unimpressive loss, and they really failed to demonstrate any dominance in their game against Stanford. They won - yes. But they needed Stanford to melt down completely. That's winning, but not winning with style. And unfortunately, that's what the system dictates now.
Alabama, by contrast, won repeatedly, and they won impressively. Their least impressive victory was their 45-21 win over a weak non-conference school. They followed that by drubbing their next set of opponents, closing it out with a complete domination of a bowl-winning team in Auburn. And more importantly here, they lost but lost by gaining the respect of most observers. In fact, Marcus Allen of Fox went out and said immediately following the game that Alabama was still, in his mind, the best team in the country, and would have proven that with a better kicking game. And that's the feeling of most people who saw the game.
Nobody's debating that there's a better way to resolve the dispute here. But OSU is no more deserving of a shot with LSU than Alabama is. It doesn't matter that they won their conference. It's bad luck for Alabama that they don't play in the SEC East. If they did, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Maybe the conferences can reconsider having divisions and just open it up to a 1-2 in each conference for a title game in the future.
How do you know they are the 2 best teams? Seriously...what makes one 10-1 team better than the other if they never play each other or common opponents...
Cmon...this is lunacy,the system is BROKEN. Somebody fix it. The system is not imperfect, its an EMBARRASSMENT.
I'm telling you in about 20 years we are gonna look back at this era in time about college football and shake our heads.
Nobody can be 100 percent certain which team would beat which team. Nobody saw OSU melting down and losing to a 6-6 team in Iowa State, for instance. And that didn't prevent OSU from coming back and clobbering OU in the weeks that followed. I get that sports prognostication isn't a science; it's, at best, an art.
But what we're really talking about here, besides the obvious fact of the system being broken, is who are the two best teams in the country. Because right now, that's what the BCS supposedly aims to do. It is supposed to have a combination of voters and computers select the two teams that appear to have had the most impressive system. That doesn't guarantee that the two teams are the best; that doesn't even guarantee that a team like Kansas State couldn't on any given Saturday go out and beat LSU. Anything can happen in any game -- that ain't the point. The point is, when you look at the seasons, which two teams appeared to have the most impressive seasons from one game to the next, and in some cases, literally from one half or one quarter to the next.
When you look at it that way, it's just hard to argue for OSU over Alabama. Before their game against Stanford, I admit it: I was hemming and hawing over this one, and a part of me thought, 'Yeah, maybe OSU does deserve it.' Had OSU gone out and controlled the game against Stanford or at least slowed Andrew Luck down, I'd probably still be down with OSU. But after watching that game, it raises serious doubts in my mind. I walked away from that bar tab with the feeling that OSU's defense is occasionally good, especially against familiar opponents that it prepares for, but that it's not particularly dominant against the run. And Stanford actually did a pretty good job of containing OSU's offense until the second half, and this is the part that really makes me think more and more that Alabama is more deserving. OSU's collapse against Iowa St. now doesn't seem like just a fluke anymore. It seems as though OSU could let any team run wild on them. If ISU put up nearly 200 yards rushing on OSU, and if Stanford ran for 243 yards, how many yards would Trent Richardson get -- 300? I seriously doubt OSU could stop Alabama. And believe me, they're not going to put up 41 points against that defense.
I don't disagree with what you write, but it works in reverse, too. My point is this:
The current BCS system, as flawed as we all know it is, is designed to put the number one team in the country versus the number two team in the country. It is not designed to put the champion of one conference against the champion of another conference.
In the NFL, for instance, the Super Bowl teams have to win their conferences. That's the rule. There's no way out of that, because that's what the rules say. Additionally, it's possible for a 7-9 team to win a conference while an 11-5 team misses the playoffs altogether. Again, that's what the rules say.
In Division 1 college football, though, it's number 1 versus number 2. It's subjective, and I don't really like the system anymore than you do, but that's the way it is. And what that means is, teams have to make their case by winning and by competing impressively in as many games as possible. That means that teams have to go either undefeated or they have to go nearly undefeated and lose as respectably as possible. All teams know that going into the season. There's no mystery there.
Is there bias? Of course there is. Is a bias favoring a team that has one loss against the undisputed number one, and does that bias favor them over a team that lost to a 6-6 team? I'm sure there is. Is there bias that benefits a 1-loss team from the same conference that has won the last five BCS title games, and has been at the top of the polls in 8 out of the last 9 years? Most definitely so. But again, that's the system that we have. All teams know that every single week, they need to bring their best. There's little or no room for error.
OSU had every chance to go out and prove itself, and they almost did it. They had some extremely impressive wins. Unfortunately, they had one extremely unimpressive loss, and they really failed to demonstrate any dominance in their game against Stanford. They won - yes. But they needed Stanford to melt down completely. That's winning, but not winning with style. And unfortunately, that's what the system dictates now.
Alabama, by contrast, won repeatedly, and they won impressively. Their least impressive victory was their 45-21 win over a weak non-conference school. They followed that by drubbing their next set of opponents, closing it out with a complete domination of a bowl-winning team in Auburn. And more importantly here, they lost but lost by gaining the respect of most observers. In fact, Marcus Allen of Fox went out and said immediately following the game that Alabama was still, in his mind, the best team in the country, and would have proven that with a better kicking game. And that's the feeling of most people who saw the game.
Nobody's debating that there's a better way to resolve the dispute here. But OSU is no more deserving of a shot with LSU than Alabama is. It doesn't matter that they won their conference. It's bad luck for Alabama that they don't play in the SEC East. If they did, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Maybe the conferences can reconsider having divisions and just open it up to a 1-2 in each conference for a title game in the future.
Good post. I wish the NFL would do away with the division winner system and just put the teams with the best record in each conference in the playoffs. Perhaps division games could serve as the tiebreaker between two teams with an equal number of wins. I'm sick of seeing 7-9 and 8-8 teams in the playoffs while 10-6 teams get to watch the games from the couch.
It's funny that people are still talking this OSU stuff. Let it go. Maybe they'll go to the title game next year. You have to be the most biased fan ever to say that they deserve to be in the title game when even the most disinterested college football fans (myself included) think otherwise.
Nobody's debating that the BCS is imperfect, but the whole point of having the BCS title game is to have the two best teams in the country play each other. LSU and Alabama are the two best teams. .
But we don't know that, do we, since they haven't played many of the other top ranked teams that are not in their conf. Alabama's non conf schedule was pathetic.
It would be quite interesting to see LSU play a high powered offense. There are several that would make the Jan 9 game much more interesting.
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