No - Texas fans have been arguing that Texas should be ahead of OU in the BCS because we won head-to-head. That means they are upset with the way with the BCS rankings are being calculated. Yes, the B12 tiebreaker system sucks too, but the argument Texas fans were making was separate from that.
Not necessarily, and I don't think the only other option is "Top 8.". There are many ways to remove the subjectivity. For instance, everyone with 9 or 10 wins or maybe 1 or 0 losses gets into the playoff.
If Texas is a solid #2 in computers, and Florida is a weak #3 (say 3.5, with Tech pulling some), Texas doesn't need "a lot of 1st place votes". They probably only need like 20% to have them ahead of Florida. Just look at Bama's computer ranking. They are behind Tech in half (3 of 3) computer polls, even without a loss. Tech is still going to have UTs win, worth more than a Bama win for Florida will. Tech's next best win, OSU, is also better in the computers than Florida's #2 win, Georgia. So at the top Tech's wins are better, their conference overall is much stronger and their loss is better (Ole Miss is not even top 25 in the comps), though UF will be better in the mid range + late season wins + extra game, thus I think a 4-2 split for UF is quite plausible. OU winning over Mizzou will also make Tech's loss better. So assuming Texas is ahead of Florida in 5 of 6 computer polls (which in effect is a sweep because the highest and lowest are removed--and this is likely after next week), and say Tech is ahead of say 2 of 6, that is a huge amount of ground for Florida to make up with the voters (I do think UF gets by Utah in 5 of 6, in effect a sweep). That would be something like a .05-.06 advantage of Texas in the computers. Florida would then probably need a big shift, like being ahead of Texas in the neighborhood of 75% of the human votes, to catch them. Texas right now is ahead of Florida in about 50% of the human votes, so about half of Texas votes would have to defect. And it is clear lots of voters think UT is best 1 loss team period (got about about 30% of the vote) and getting screwed out of the Big 12, so a lot of them would have to defect. This thing is going to get harry if UF and OU win out, particularly if close games (where a sizable chunk of voters may then put UT as #1 given their win over OU and their demolishing of Mizzou).
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/011808/red_237715880.shtml Tech's athletic director calls Tulsa-Tech series dead By Don Williams | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Friday, January 18, 2008 Story last updated at 1/18/2008 - 1:48 am Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers changed his tone Thursday and acknowledged that the Tech-Tulsa football series scheduled for 2008 and 2009 is dead. Myers had tried since last Friday, with his public comments, to put pressure on Tulsa not to drop next season's Aug. 30 opener against the Red Raiders. But Myers said a conversation he had Tuesday with Tulsa athletic director Bubba Cunningham confirmed the Golden Hurricanes won't come to Lubbock. "We never agreed to let them out,'' Myers said. "I still think it's bad faith on their part. They said they're going ahead and playing Arkansas. I don't know any recourse we have. They'll have to pay us.'' Tulsa replaced the Tech game with a Nov. 1 date against Arkansas. Tulsa owes Tech a $150,000 penalty amount in the contract, according to Bobby Gleason, Tech deputy athletic director/chief financial officer for business and personnel. With the Aug. 30 date less than eight months away, Myers remained critical of Cunningham's decision to make the switch. "He seemed to think we wouldn't have any trouble finding a game, but he's wrong,'' Myers said. "There might be some people out there, but they don't correspond with what you've got (for playing dates).'' Tech found out Thursday that Nevada-Las Vegas and Utah State - two schools it had heard might be looking for a 2008 game - aren't. With a Sept. 20 home game against Massachusetts, Tech already has one opponent from the Football Championship Subdivision - formerly I-AA - on the schedule. Tech coach Mike Leach said he'd prefer not to have more than one. "I'd prefer not to,'' Leach said. "It's obviously an option we may have to look at.'' "We would prefer to play a Division I-A school,'' Gleason said. "And of course Mike (Leach) would prefer to play a home game. That's what we're trying to accomplish. We have very limited options, I think, at this stage.'' The Red Raiders' other non-conference games are Sept. 6 at Nevada and Sept. 13 versus SMU. The Raiders have Sept. 27 as an open date. Since it's the week before Big 12 Conference play starts, the Raiders would like to keep it open. "You'd like to,'' Leach said, "but we'll have to look at that, too.''
The awesome thing about Tulsa backing out is karma came back to bite them. They replaced Tech with Arkansas, who they felt was a more beatable opponent from a major conference that would help bolster their BCS bid. Unfortunately for Tulsa, they got beat by a team that is in the bottom rung of the SEC this year...
I think we just have different definitions of a lot. I think 20% is a whole lot, given that OU and Florida will have won their respective conferences. I don't expect Texas to have anywhere near that many 1st place votes. Florida beating the #1 team will get to all those Alabama first place votes distributed, and I'd expect almost all of them to go to OU or Florida.
But if you don't lose out to begin with, there is no need to "win out". The two are not equal, getting selected over Tech is more of a consolation prize than a reward.
Why not? The number of 0 or 1 loss teams isn't going to be overwhelming. This year, you'd have ten teams... Texas OU Tech USC Alabama Florida Penn State Utah Ball State Boise State Put them in a hat and draw to fill out the brackets.
No, because if you only play patsies, you'll probably get crushed by a good, experienced, tested team.
The flaw in your system is not every year are you going to have the same number of teams. So your criteria to get in the playoffs is to lose no more than 1 game? This year is 10 and next year you could have two? What kind of BS system is that? What's to stop teams from scheduling several Division I-AA schools and beating them down during the season? And drawing out of a hat is ridiculous as well. The No. 1 team should play the No. 8 team (in an 8 team playoff scenario) because they deserve to. They should not have to play the 2nd best team in the playoffs because of some hat drawing. And the BCS is pretty fair in ranking the teams.
other than money, i see no reason why one system is good for every other non-division 1 football team, but not for the bcs conferences. you could even keep the antiquated bowl system. 16 team playoff: #1 v. #16 in the chick fil-a bowl #2 v. #15 in the independence bowl #3 v. #14 in the cotton bowl #4 v. #13 in the alamo bowl #5 v. #12 in the insight.com bowl #6 v. #11 in the sun bowl #7 v. #10 in the champs sports bowl #8 v. #9 in the liberty bowl #1 v. #8 in the gator bowl #2 v. #7 in the texas bowl #3 v. #6 in the captial one bowl #4 v. #5 in the sugar bowl (rotating basis with the other three bowls) #1 v. #4 in the rose bowl (rotate) #2 v. #3 in the orange bowl (rotate) #1 v. #2 in the fiesta bowl (rotate) You could still use the other bowls for the lower conferences like the sun belt. no one watches those games but the fans of those schools anyway (pretty much the case with all non-bcs bowls). if alabama played georgia in the first round of the NCAA tournament, does anyone believe that game wouldn't kill those of who would normally be in chick fil-a bowl? you could cite travel as the only drawback of this. people would argue that whoever was #17 would b**** about being left out, but who cares? would we rather have people arguing about ut or ou getting in or boston college getting in?
http://newsok.com/article/3326682 A Harris Interactive poll head-scratcher By Berry Tramel Published: December 1, 2008 Some have questioned the validity of the Harris Interactive poll, which has had a spotty run in its four years as being part of the BCS. The skepticism could be valid. True story from the Boone Pickens Stadium pressbox Saturday night. I asked Harris poll voter Pat Quinn, the former Oklahoma State University sports information director, how he would vote OU and Texas if the Sooners won Saturday night. “Oh, I don’t know,” Quinn said. “Doesn’t really matter.” Really? “I think Alabama and Penn State will probably play for the national championship,” Quinn said. You do? “They’re the only undefeated teams, aren’t they,” Quinn said. Uh, actually, Penn State has a loss. “Oh well,” Quinn said, “those Big Ten teams have a lot of votes.”
Look, it's something I thought of in response to a post about subjectivity in deciding who gets to a post season. It wasn't intended to be a "system" but rather a hypothetical showing you could have something that didn't depend on people's opinions and agendas. There will be flaws with any system, but let's not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good, which desperately needs to replace the enormous bad of the current system.
Pat Quinn is 80 years old. http://newsok.com/harris-poll-a-mixed-up-mess/article/3323200 That's right, we have blue hairs determining national championship matchups.
I think the voting split among 1-loss teams is far more informative than Bama's rankings. Folks put Bama #1 because they are the only undefeated team from a BCS conference--not because they think they are the real #1 team. Penn State would have been there too in that circumstance (only undefeated). A Bama loss leaves them somewhere in the 2nd five in PSU/Tech/Utah group. Thus Florida would have the most recent big victory, but not the strongest victory. When you get to 1 loss teams, there is an equal of split of voters between OU, UF and UT as you can get--and that is telling. Assuming UF beats Bama, that just means Texas has the only win over any of the top 3 teams being considered. Will those people who voted Texas ahead of OU and UF change if UF and OU win close games when they felt Texas was the best of the bunch this week? I wouldn't assume so. Again Texas needs half the people that supported them to defect, many of them who think Texas got jobbed--the counter to them "not winning their conference despite beating both conference championship opponents because of a technicality". I don't think that is a small portion who must defect UT or OU for UF, and their are factors and counter factors, and who knows how it will play out. So style points will matter this week, just as last week. Victories by Bama or OU will assure them of a spot for sure, but style could well be the difference between UT and UF. Close win by Florida helps Texas. Hard to say what kind of OU win over Mizzou would effect the Texas vote. If OU is a solid #1 in voters (boming Mizzou) that would help in some ways (making Texas & Florida closer in polls)--but then again if OU squeaks it out maybe some voters will still have Texas ahead of OU int he polls as they did this week (though Texas would lose more ground to OU and probably swept in computers--Texas can't possible catch OU in the BCS with any kind of OU win). FYI other common opponents at play: Cincy (OU) at Hawaii (UF) Wash (OU) at Cal Ark state (Bama) at Troy Western Kentucky (Bama) at Florida International I suppose the Bama/UF opponents losing helps UT. On the other hand OU's common opponents (Cincy, Wash) losing might keep UT ahead of OU in the two polls they are now. Though I kind of doubt the latter scenario, think that would be swamped by OU beating Mizzou, but I'd have to look at the margin in those two computer polls that currently favor Texas.
One other thing to consider - this week, the coaches and Harris polls will be public for the first time. So that may affect some of the voting. If there was anything sketchy going on in the previous votes, those will be eliminated. No idea who would benefit, but it may cause some shifts. People may also not want to be responsible for creating more controversy, and may put Texas at #3 even if they feel they should be higher just to avoid having Florida or OU fans yelling at them, etc.
Well I don't know what Texas fans you've been talking to, but my main problem is the use of the BCS rankings to determine a conference championship when it's not designed to do this. The BCS is the BCS- it can't be changed midstream, and plenty of people could see what was going to happen beforehand. The fact that everyone felt the need to do some politicking in one way or another before the rankings were finalized says something to me- I was resigned to this exact outcome weeks ago. I might argue that Texas should go to the Big XII championship game over OU because they beat them head to head, but I recognize that the BCS rankings are complex and are not designed to determine conference championships when so much non conference-specific data are in there. And by the way, I also recognize that Tech would have the same argument (head to head) against Texas if Texas had gone to the B12 championship. Obviously if Texas had managed to hold on to its spot in the BCS rankings over OU, we wouldn't be having this discussion- but again, in my opinion, the tiebreak rules are the larger problem. And I know that as Texas fans, our recourse in this specific case was to try and argue for Texas staying ahead of OU in the BCS rankings. But why take a conference specific issue and put it in the hands of a nationwide system that doesn't take Big XII specific events and data into account? The system is broken- trying to get your outcome using the broken system for this year is ok, but now we need to tackle the larger problem by fixing the system. I think that there's not a nice, neat solution for it this year. It happens. We can all point to specific things that conspired to screw Texas: 1. The fact the UT-OU (and thus OU's loss) is early (and the fact that this matters) 2. The Nebraska FG 3. Mizzou sucking it up against KU 4. The fact that UT-Ttech was in Lubbock, while Tech-OU was in norman 5. The fact that OU had a showcase game to close out the regular season at the end of the last night before voting 6. The fact that Texas played 2 days earlier, leaving OU with the 'last word' 7. The fact that A&M sucked so bad that no magnitude of whipping would have made a difference 8. The fact that Texas' tough games were all in a row, while OU's were nicely spread out. etc., etc. etc. (admittedly sometimes it just feels good to b**** about it) But the bottom line is that Texas actually had control of its own destiny in the form of a dropped gimme INT and not tackling Crabtree inbounds with :01 left (or even defending the pass better). And I guess fans of both OU and Tech could complain about stuff too. In fact, you could argue that Texas screwed itself more than the other 2 teams, just because they were about the sneak out with the Tech game and blew it, while Tech got waxed by OU and OU lost to Texas by a 2 score margin (i.e. no single play lost it for them in the way that the single dropped INT lost it for Texas). I suppose I'm not really arguing with you- This reply seems to have morphed into me just talking in circles to myself and laying out the reasons I'm frustrated. Oh well, go Mizzou I guess. Although those losers could have done us a favor by not crapping the bed against Kansas last weekend- instead they dropped a steaming pile and laid right in it, so I'm not expecting much from them against OU. And there are worse things than an 11-1 season ending in a trip to a BCS bowl, especially given the expectations I had in August.
