BCS Standings

The problem is that the SEC is so much better than any of the other conferences. I think the outrage will come if a team like Alabama stumbles once and we have a national title game between two non-SEC schools. If Alabama loses a game, there will still be a way for them to make the title game, but if Oregon stumbles once, I can't imagine them being able to stay in the mix unless something crazy happens.

When the SEC has dominated the way it has for the better part of the last decade, I think to an extent, that's understandable.

 

If by "outrage" you mean "ticker-tape parades in the streets and champagne in the bars," that's correct.

People would LOVE the SEC getting left out. OK, not the people of the Confederacy maybe, but everyone else would eat that up.

 

Oh, I can't even tell you how much I would celebrate a Oregon-FSU title game. But if that happens, we'll be hearing all week, "Oh Alabama would beat either of them by three touchdowns..."

 

Florida will hurt FSU's strength of schedule.

 

Florida State and Miami will both lose to somebody unexpectedly. I think this Oregon team is the best its had, but the schedule is still pretty tough...

 

To some degree, though, this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The SEC has dominated the national-championship picture, in part, because it's had so many more chances. And it's had so many more chances, in part, because it's come to dominate the national-championship conversation. No other conference really can pencil in a title game representative the way the SEC can. Which is fine ... except that penciling in results, in part, from the fact that in the past the SEC has been able to pencil in one-loss teams. You have A being used to justify B when, at least in part, B has led to A.

 

Florida, Alabama and LSU are three schools that have been given the benefit of the doubt and been sent to the national title game despite having losses and they've rewarded those who gave them a chance by winning... If Oklahoma and Ohio State would win a little more often maybe it wouldn't be seen as being so one-sided in favor of the SEC.

 

Yes, they've vindicated those who've given them the benefit of the doubt, but that doesn't mean other teams wouldn't have done the same thing. There are no/comparatively few instances in which other teams have been given similar consideration, so the SEC teams' exploiting that consideration really shouldn't be used to justify its continuance.

It'd be like saying to someone, "When I've given someone from X the benefit of the doubt, I haven't regretted it. You, on the other hand, are not from X, and I've never given anyone who's not from X the benefit of the doubt. That's why I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt, because history suggests I'm better off if I only do that for someone from X."

It's not a major thing with me ... I totally get that the SEC is the strongest conference, and usually a one-loss SEC team really is one of the top two or three teams in the country ... but that heuristic is, to me, like zero-tolerance policies ... a method for the avoidance of (rather than the exercise of) judgement.

 

If Alabama loses to Auburn, it might not get to play in its conference title game -- again. And this time, I don't think that'd earn an invite. Nobody thinks Auburn is number one. Maybe they should (no, but maybe), but they don't.

 

Not sure the SEC warrants that superiority mantle this year anyway.

When you look at the number of losses by the teams considered to be the cream of the crop--Georgia, Florida, LSU, T A&M--you could argue the Pac-12 and even the ACC are stronger in the elite teams.

And work your way down to the bottom feeders where Arkansas and Kentucky are just gawdawful, the notion of the SEC being the almighty this year deserves serious questioning.

 

Oregon DC Nick Aliotti thinks the BCS standings are bullshit. [/crossthread]

 

The over-consideration for the SEC doesn't bother me nearly as much as the over-consideration for the Big Ten.

Ohio State going undefeated would be roughly akin to what Boise did in the WAC and TCU did in the Mountain West.