NCAA Week 9 running thread: Dennis Franklin's Collarbone is fine, thank you

OK, wanted to ask this on the other thread, but I never get to start these... and it's after midnight...
Say Boise goes undefeated ... does the track record -- including a win in Atlanta over what could be the SEC East champ -- mean this is finally the year they get a shot at the title?
I mean, they do everything asked and Climpson and other are poised to jump their spot....

 

How do you perceive Georgia? As the likely SEC East champ or as probably the fourth best team in the SEC?

We can start there.

 

Well, they're the luckiest team in the SEC, as they miss Alabama, Arkansas and LSU on the schedule.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the SEC champ vs. Oklahoma St. for all the Tostitos, and a consolation title game between unbeaten Boise St. and Stanford. Kellen Moore vs. Andrew Luck.

 

Can't happen unless Stanford doesn't win the Pac-12 title. Pac-12 champ goes to the Rose Bowl vs. Big Ten champ.

 

KU-Texas on the Longhorn Network this week, which begs the question: Does anyone here actually actually get -- or know someone, anyone, who gets -- the Longhorn Network?

 

slappy,

Boise State is the best college football program of the past six seasons.*

They deserve it!!

* That's the logical conclusion of putting their unbeaten seasons on a par with the records of unbeaten and one-loss teams with tougher schedules. This would be four unbeaten seasons in six. Since an unbeaten season = deserving a berth in the BCS title game, and no other school could say it deserved to play in four of six BCS title games in that span, then Boise State is the best program in college football these six seasons.

Right?

 

Hell, I'm not sure Georgia is better than Auburn, though they play on Nov. 12, which should help settle that score. And South Carolina beat Georgia, so the Gamecocks still hold the tiebreaker. They play at Arkansas in a few weeks, though.

Georgia could win the rest of its regular season games and still be considered the fifth-best team in the SEC. It's true that Boise State beat Georgia fairly convincingly, but it's also true that Georgia is a young team, and that game was the season-opener.

It also doesn't help Boise State that TCU is down this year (meaning they're probably going to finish with eight or nine wins). The computers like Boise State much more than Stanford and the humans prefer Boise State to Clemson for now, but both of those are temporary. Boise State's remaining "challenges" are TCU and at San Diego State. Stanford has Oregon, at Southern Cal and Notre Dame; Clemson has at Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and at South Carolina.

Boise State's odds to make the title game should be around 2%. It could happen if LSU or Alabama loses twice; Kansas State and Oklahoma State lose twice; and Oklahoma, Arkansas, Stanford and Clemson each lose one (more, in some cases). Even then, the Big Ten champion could easily jump Boise State. If Virginia Tech wins out, including beating Clemson, it could jump Boise State. And, yes, believe it or not, a two-loss team could definitely jump Boise State.

"How do you perceive Georgia?" is a good question. But I think even if the answer to that is "the third-best team in the SEC" (and it shouldn't be), Boise State can go through this season undefeated with only two worth-a-damn wins. That's not what you need to make the national championship. If Houston goes through the season unbeaten, I think it's pretty tough to argue that beating TCU at home is much better than beating SMU (which won at TCU and has the same 5-2 record) at home and Southern Miss (which should finish the regular season 11-1) on a neutral field.

It's a very loaded statement to say, "They do everything asked." If Boise State did everything asked of it, it would schedule those road trips to really tough places to play, willing to accept those big boy schools aren't coming to Boise, Idaho, because, well, it's Boise, Idaho. I'm not saying they should do that. They should join the Big East, where they will be given the chance to make a title game if they go undefeated, and be happy that they're making all these BCS bowls for now.

 

Boise's only hope of getting anyone to see Georgia as anything like a top-caliber win is for both Georgia and South Carolina to win out, so that South Carolina goes to the SEC title game and Georgia finishes 10-2. That way, Georgia doesn't lose the SEC title game by 40, which it would, and which would do in any lingering notion that Boise's win was particularly impressive.

(Neither of those things is going to happen, of course. Georgia will lose to one of Florida or Auburn, at least, and I wouldn't be shocked if Carolina loses two of its last three in the SEC.)

Also not helping Boise's case is that its schedule is weak this year even by its own standards. Its best other nonconference win is ... Toledo? Sorry, but they're gonna have to hope no one else goes undefeated, and even then, I don't see it.

 

OK: Would you put a 1-loss LSU/Alabama team in front of Oklahoma State?

 

I think the quality of the one loss will play a role. But I do think that if you have a major-conference unbeaten, it's gonna have to be a hell of a quality loss. A double-overtime kind of quality loss.

But doesn't it seem like every season we start thinking THIS will be the season that we have more than two unbeatens? And doesn't it seem like every season, the Texas Techs of the world rise up and stop it happening?

 

Put it this way: If there's four or more undefeated teams at the end of the season (Boise State, Houston, at least two AQ schools), could you justify putting Boise or Houston in the title game?

 

Deskslave is exactly right. October unbeatens are common -- December ones rare. It's hard to do, and as we saw last year, that applies to Boise and the other non-BCS conference schools just as much as for anyone else. The addition of conference title games just means schools have an extra chance to lose against a team that has to have been at least decent all year.
We are as likely to have one or no undefeated teams as to have four. Why not wait and see and then have the arguments?