Running Final Week college football thread

No offense, Ty and Shot, but I have never understood the idea that having "a lot of debate" rather than determining a champion by the same means as every other sport on earth is good for college football. I've always seen it as a frank admission the sport is a racket run to enrich a small group of people who make their living fleecing bumpkins.
The BCS is to sports as televangelism is to religion.

 

Because there is no playoff system, and there is too much money in the bowl system for it to happen any time soon. But it would make for one hell of a national championship tournament. You'd certainly see teams that finished second or third in their conferences win a national title. The FCS (or Division I-AA) does it right.

Youngstown State went 9-2 and finished third in the Gateway Conference in 1997, got an at-large playoff bid, got hot at the right time and wound up winning the I-AA national championship.

 

Brennan went 42 of 50 last night? That's pretty sweet.

 

Yes, Xan, except like 20 of his completions were shovel passes, or glorified hand-offs.

 

Even if that were true, he'd have been 22-30, which is pretty fucking good.

And none of his passes on the final drive to score a touchdown and win the game were shovel passes, and some of them were damn nice throws.

 

Reminds me of a 6-man team I covered 5 years ago. The QB was a fantastic kid, completely down to Earth. This team was head and shoulders above everyone else on the way to a perfect season and No. 3 national ranking. I did a feature on him, talking about all of his yardage, and he says, "Well, a lot of my passes were short." Indeed, and those short passes were turned into long TDs. But just for him to say that was cool, I thought. Great kid.

 

My point is, why is it so hard to imagine that a second-place team from one division or league might be more deserving than a first-place team from another? In other sports the division winners aren't always the best teams. You could make the case that this is a year in which the top three teams from the Big 12 are better than the Big 10 champ, for instance. So why should Kansas be eliminated from the discussion before Ohio State?

 

Hawaii won, so good for them, but I did not see a national title-caliber team. If beating a bad Pac-10 team by 7 at home is supposed to be some sort of sign, then half of I-A and a handful of I-AAs should be in the discussion.

 

Beating a last-placed Pac-10 team on top of that.

 

Washington had just won the Rose Bowl in 2000 (11-1) and was ranked in the top 15 for most of 2001. So one could make a reasonable expectation that UW would be every bit as good as Nebraska or Miami seven years down the road.

Because they don't pick only the two BEST teams after the regular season in the NHL to play for the Stanley Cup, or the two BEST teams after the NFL regular season for the Super Bowl, etc.

Apples to oranges.

Then they are simply playoff games, and the bowls, and the committees that run them, etc., all disappear. No way does the Rose Bowl, Peach Bowl, Sun Bowl, etc., committee help the NCAA run a playoff game. You won't have a Sugar Bowl, an Orange Bowl, or a Cotton Bowl. They'll be the football equivalent of the NCAA East regional in basketball.

Many of those teams are bowl-eligbile, or bowl teams, because they only played eight league games. Add a ninth league game instead of the Sun Belt/MAC. I-AA cupcake, and six SEC teams have one more loss, as do five Big Ten teams, and many of the borderline bowl-eligible teams aren't bowl-eligible any more.

It's a clusterfxxx. Oklahoma, USC, LSU and Georgia might be the best teams right now. But Georgia got blown out by Tennessee, which couldn't beat LSU, so that eliminates them. Oklahoma lost to Texas Tech and Colorado, two very medoicre teams.

So that leaves USC and LSU for the title.

(Kansas couldn't beat Missouri, which got clobbered twice by Oklahoma. And Ohio State lost at home. Thanks for playing.)