Bowl-eligible, yet should stay home

The winner of the LSU-Arkansas game will probably play in the Orange Bowl...unless the Gators destroy the Hogs in the SEC championship game. Course if Arkansas beats LSU and Florida, they should play in the BCS Championship Game. You go undefeated in the SEC, you deserve a shot at the national title, early season blowout loss be damned.

 

Yeah. Never mind that the team they lost to still only has one loss. Brilliant.

 

i'm with oz -- no way a one-loss arkansas team should go to the title game over a one-loss usc team that just trashed the hogs

 

Yeah, forget that Arkansas is the better team now...let's go back to how they matched up at the beginning of the season.

 

usc has improved too... and it's not like it was a three-point win for the trojans

 

Last I checked, USC just thumped top 25 opponents the last two weeks by 35-10 and 23-9 margins. And Arkansas just beat three-win, nobody Mississippi State by 14, struggling until late in that one.

Head-to-head scores have to account for something. But I also believe that Arkansas, while much better than they were back when they got run at home, isn't necessarily a better team than USC at this moment.

 

This would be a much shorter thread if we just rattled off the teams that deserved their bowl bid.

 

If it was a closer game I might be inclined to take Arkanasas because McFadden wasn't healthy, but I don't know that he's worth 36 points.

 

Funny thing is, damn near all the teams we've mentioned (which is a lot) you could make an air-tight case for staying home, too.

 

That's to be expected. Basically any 7-5, 6-5, 6-6 team isn't going to be considered deserving of their bowl bid by most of us, with rare exceptions. You can't lose half or nearly half your games, squeeze out a couple of wins against Temples and I-AAs and expect the world to accept you as a postseason-worthy team.

 

Ok, Oz, with that logic, what if it comes down to Notre Dame or Michigan? Michigan won soundly the first time, so shouldn't the head-to-head decide there, too?

I agree that USC is the best choice if they win out. As long as the SEC champion has only one loss, I would think that would be the next in line. But if USC, Florida and Arkansas all have two losses, Michigan deserves to go.

 

Michigan > Notre Dame. They decided that on the field, where it should be.

And I believe that should the Trojans run the table, they would deserve to go. They would have the best resume among the one-loss teams, and they would have beaten three top 25 opponents this month alone.