Who Gets the Title?

Whoever wins the Sugar Bowl will split the national championship with USC. It sucks, but that is the only thing that is fair. This is the world we live in until they finally decide to put in a playoff system.

 

I find it funny how many of the ESPN/ABC guys have been saying that it doesn't matter what happens in the Sugar Bowl, USC is clearly the best team in the country. If OU or LSU were to win 70-0, would they still think that? I think it will clearly be a split (and should be), but I'm not going to say USC is better or worse than whoever wins the Sugar Bowl matchup.

 

Well, USC is not going to get voted down by the writers and unless the coaches' poll changed their agreement with the BCS, it is going to be a split national champion.

 

That's ridiculous, though, for the very reason that Major said. What if Oklahoma puts together the most dominant performance in the history of college football and breaks all sorts of Bowl Game records, etc.? It just won't matter because USC dominated Michigan?

It's attitudes like that that were the impetus behind trying to come up with a formula to take human bias out of the equation as much as possible. If no matter how well LSU or Oklahoma plays, they have no shot at the AP title, that's not being very open-minded, and certainly not deciding a champion on the merits.

It may well be that USC is still considered the better team even after the Sugar Bowl, but they should wait until the game is actually played before making up their minds.

 

paige,

USC earned the #1 spot in BOTH polls. Why punish them when they did what they were supposed to? I mean it wasn't like they beat Michigan 3-0. Yes, they only won by 2 TDs, but the game wasn't as close as the score.

And I agree with you that the writers' should not make their minds up until after the Sugar Bowl, but I am just stating what I have heard other announcers and media types are saying - it is very LIKELY that USC will not get voted down, but if OU wins 70-0, that may not be the case.

However, the odds of OU beating a Louisiana team IN Louisiana by that amount is about the same as me winning the Powerball Lottery - it is not going to happen.

And also I don't necessarily disagree with you about the human impetus, but what do you say about the fact that the computer polls have Miami, Ohio ranked #4 or #5 in one poll and #22 in another? That right there signals to me that if they keep on insisting to use this BCS formula, they need to explain crap like that. I can understand being #5 in one poll and maybe #10 in another but #22?? That is too big of a discrepancy.

 

Different factors create different results.

I'm not saying the formulas are perfect. Far from it. I'm just noting that it's this type of "I've made up my mind and no matter what happens, I'm sticking with it" mentality that makes people dislike the human involvment.

The biggest thing that always got me was the late loss vs. early loss thing. The idea that losing in October is less of a loss than a loss in November. To me, that's ridiculous, but it's always been a factor in the human polls.

And that's one reason why Oklahoma is not considered to be "championship worthy" at this point. Because they lost late rather than early. Before the K-State game, many of the same people were talking about this Oklahoma team as the best thing to come out of Norman since Barry Switzer. But have that loss late in the season, and they shouldn't even be playing for a championship against another one-loss team (but if they had lost to Missouri in October, they'd be saying they were worthy).

But Oklahoma must have had a pretty dominant season overall if the loss and being ranked 3rd in both human polls still didn't drag them from 1st place in the BCS.

 

If the BCS would just tell people how the computer polls decide who is ranked where, I think that would help more people be for it, I think.

Right now, the impressions I have got about it, is that some of the polls' methodologies are more complicated than advanced calculus, physical chemistry, and thermodynamics put together (like the Sagarin ratings).

 

System works. Oklahoma.

 

I honestly don't know! If LSU wins, how can say they DON'T deserve it? USC deserves it, since completing their 1 loss season. OU deserves it if they beat LSU!

To quote the imortal Jim Mora.... "PLAYOFFS!?!?!?"

 

Due to the extreme efforts required to stage a single football game , a truly inclusive, legitimate playoff system is impractical. Even with basketball's 64 teams, there are worthy teams left out .

So why have even a mythical National Champion? The BCS is all about money; the rich controlling the game to get richer.

There are thousands of kids playing NCAA football just for fun and maybe a scholarship. Why make losers out of all but 85 of them? Besides it kills a lot more time in bars when we can argue about it.

The Pro game is set up to determine a champion, the college game never will be.

 

I'm actually with you. I think I liked the conferences tied to specific bowls thing we had, to an extent, before. The focus today is so much on the National Championship match-up that other interesting Bowl games are overlooked or thought to not matter.

To me, I think I'd rather have all or nothing. If the focus is going to be on crowning a national champion, then some sort of playoff system is the way to go. If we're going to keep the Bowls, then just have the conference tie-in bowls like we had before.

 

Triple H.