…you lose some.
Ah, well, they were both great games — reminders of why I love college football so much — and my team won the more important one. With Ohio State out of the way, USC “just” needs to go undefeated in the Pac-10 and beat Notre Dame, and they’ll be back in the national title game. It’s no easy task, but at least the path is clear.
(Well, unless Texas and the SEC champ both finish undefeated. Then we’ll have a 2004-like situation, and the Trojans could potentially play the role of Auburn. But Oklahoma State’s utterly stunning loss to Houston today is huge, because along with Oklahoma’s loss to BYU last week, it leaves Texas as the only real threat from the Big 12 to go unbeaten and potentially be ahead of USC in the BCS pecking order. Now we just need the Longhorns to lose to Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, or, well, anybody else, really.)
Notre Dame, meanwhile, looked like a genuinely good team even in defeat today, and they can still run the table — aside from the ‘SC game, of course — and make a BCS bowl at 10-2. And then, here’s a thought, maybe they can win it. So, in sum, my hopes and dreams for the season: still alive.
Fight on Trojans! Beat the Huskies!
Go Irish! Beat Sparty!
P.S. Thinking about the polls… with losses by Okie State and Ohio State, we can expect BYU to be #10 in the coaches poll and #7 in the AP poll come Monday. The Okie State loss is huge for them, too, since they have no hope of finishing ahead of an undefeated Big 12 champ, so the fewer unbeatens left standing in the Big 12, the better.
The Ohio State loss is also big, for BYU and for everyone else in the country who wants to avoid the specter of a Big Ten team in the title game again, because now the Buckeyes just need to beat Penn State, and the Big Ten will become an irrelevancy (unless everybody else has two losses, like in 2007, and the Mountain West contenders all have a loss). The Big Ten Cupcake Menace will be defeated.
Bottom line, I’d say the BCS pecking order is now:
1. Undefeated SEC champ
2. Undefeated Texas
3. Undefeated USC
4 (tie). Undefeated Pac-10 champ not named USC / undefeated Big 12 champ not named Texas
5. Undefeated Penn State
6 (tie). Any other undefeated BCS conference champ / undefeated BYU or Utah / one-loss SEC champ / one-loss Big 12 champ / one-loss USC
7 (tie). One-loss Big Ten champ / one-loss Pac-10 champ not named USC / one-loss Notre Dame
After that, we get into the murky world of two-loss SEC or Big 12 champs, one-loss ACC or Big East champs, one-loss Mountain West champs, and undefeated Boise States (and Houstons??). There just get to be too many scenarios to intelligibly consider them.
UPDATE: Upon further consideration, I think maybe I’m being unfair to Ohio State by placing them, if they win out, in category #7 (under “one-loss Big Ten champ”). If the Buckeyes run the table, they probably belong in category #6 — though my perhaps overly optimistic instinct is that, in the end, undefeated BYU would beat out one-loss tOSU, barely, in the BCS.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a Texas/SC rematch personally. Let the SEC sit it out this year as a penalty for playing such cupcake schedules.
I can’t stand the Buckeyes. But they are going to get an unfair wrap by the sports media. Basically, the Big Eleven will be made to suffer, again, because Ohio State played USC close in a game that the sports media expected to be a USC blowout. Could this mean that Ohio State is getting better and can challenge top tier Pac-10 and the SEC’s warriors? No, sports fans, it means that Ohio State stinks and that they lost to USC.
But at least us Big Eleven schools have a bit of a better argument than we did before. And I can thank Ohio State for that. But we’re going to slaughter then in Happy Valley!
I disagree on the pecking order. I think an undefeated USC goes over Texas this year. But we’re really getting ahead of ourselves with this stuff, because USC is going to lose to Washington next week anyway.
I truly believe that an undefeated BYU goes over Texas or Florida due to strength of schedule. Although why the hell is Georgia in the top 25? They damn near ended up 0-2 and they let South Carolina score 38 points on their defense? It’s obvious that Georgia is a bad team, and will end up 6-6 this season, so why do voters prop them up like this going into Week 3? I don’t think South Carolina scored that many points all season last year.
I truly believe that an undefeated BYU goes over Texas or Florida
I assume you mean one-loss Texas or Florida? We shall see. I hope you’re right. (If you mean they go over undefeated Texas or Florida, I wish you were right, but you’re drinking some mighty fine kool-aid.)
It’s crazy that BYU is ranked #7/9 and Boise is #10 this early in the season. Crazy in a good way, of course. I really think BYU, if it stays undefeated long enough, may drag Boise into the national championship discussion, which is fascinating. Boise won’t ultimately make it unless it’s a 2007-like scenario… but if it IS a 2007-like scenario, they just might… whereas a Boise-like team in 2007 would probably not have made it. (I pose this as a hypothetical because Hawaii did not qualify as a “Boise-like team,” given their horrible schedule and obvious defensive weakness when playing teams with a pulse.)
One of the greatest tragedies in football is how overhyped and over sold the SEC is. We can partially thank the Big Ten for that after tOSU’s abysmal performance last year.
Ted Miller points out how the Pac-10 has allready shown itself capable of taking on the SEC this year and alsohow they have been able to beat them in the past.
http://espn.go.com/blog/pac10/post?id=2694
UCLA beats Tennessee at home.
UW (coming off an 0-12 season) nearly beats ranked LSU.
And of course Florida who has played NO ONE this season is ranked over USC.
I am SOOO going to be rooting for whomever Florida’s opponent is each week this season.
I really don’t know (or believe) the way the BCS puts teams in the bowl games. I hear it’s by strength of schedule and the Harris and Coaches poll figures in somehow, but I really don’t know what percent what counts for.
Truth be told, BYU plays a harder schedule than Florida and Texas. Maybe the Harris voters and Coaches won’t drop UF or UT, but I think there will be a call to arms in November if BYU isn’t pushed up to the top 2.
I’m not a voter, but I’m not really impressed with a team that beats Charleston Southern, Troy, Tennessee and the rest of that ridiculous schedule, it’s a complete joke. Florida plays 9 teams from BCS conferences, and only ONE ranked team, LSU (which struggled mightily to beat Washington last week). That’s the whole season. BYU has already beaten more ranked teams than Florida will play all season long. That’s pathetically amazing.
In the #2 slot, we’ve got Texas who plays only 8 teams from BCS conferences, and the best team on their schedule was already beaten by BYU. And the Big-12 sucks. Maybe Texas and Florida do belong in a bowl game together, but it sure isn’t for the national championship of college football, they would make a good Sugar Bowl or Orange Bowl and when they want to get serious about their schedule move them up.
The BCS system is currently made up of three parts. 33 percent is the Coaches poll. 33 percent is the Harris poll, 33 percent is the aggregate of the computer polls, which is calculated for each team by throwing out the high, the low, and averaging the rest.
Strength of schedule is not accounted for explicitly anymore and it is forbidden as an explicit calculation of the computer polls, although some may end up accounting for it in their algorithm of who played who and beat who. Humans can use whatever criteria they want for their vote, although any one voter is only a fraction of the overall decision. There are 59 coaches voting in this years coaches poll, just under half of all Div 1-A coaches. As far as I can tell the only two Pac-10 coaches are WSU’s Paul Wulff and UCLA’s Rick Neuheisal. Yeah, I hate how that worked out.
Its interesting to see so many folks, here and elsewhere, get so frustrated with Florida’s cupcake schedule, when the true target of angry folks’ ire should be the lack of a playoff in DI football. In the current weird process for crowning a champion in DI, Florida’s scheduling approach is perfectly rational.
First. While Florida has 2 1-loss national championships in the past 3 years, in the BCS era teams must plan to go undefeated to get a shot at the crown. A 1-loss Florida always risks an undefeated USC + undefeated Texas getting ahead of them in the pecking order, or an undefeated Penn, Ohio,…or even Boise State. So Florida must plan for an undefeated season.
Second. Suppose that the three non-Florida State non-conference games were changed from cupcakes to Top 10 tilts. Sports fans, being poorly versed in statistical theory, talk about games in terms of expected outcomes, or “Florida would probably beat Penn State 24-21, while Florida will likely beat Florida International 62-3”. Its not the likely outcome that matters, its the variance. In the Penn State case, there are several ways Florida loses that game; there are no ways Florida loses to Florida International.
Third. The voters, unlike the commenters on this blog, believe Florida is the best. Therefore, if the Florida International game skews negative vs. the expected outcome, and Florida only wins 42-7, voters won’t care. If the Penn State game skews negative, and Florida loses, Florida might be doomed if the pecking order is against them.
Therefore, in an era of the BCS, with voter perception that Florida is who folks think they are, it makes no sense for Florida to make their discretionary games any more difficult than absolutely necessary.
If you want no more cupcake games, push for an 8-team playoff. Should solve this problem pretty effectively, since a 1 or 2 loss SEC champion (even perhaps runner up) is in that playoff, no matter what.
Actually, if we assume that conference games are out of a “prestige” team’s control, so that Florida was basically lucky to avoid Ole Miss and Alabama this year, then the only comparison is their controllable (non-conference) games.
USC has 3, Florida has 4. Each has (at least) one marquee non-conference game: USC vs. OSU, Florida vs. Florida State. Each plays at least one cupcake opponent, USC vs. San Jose State, Florida’s other three non-conference games.
In declaring USC’s discretionary scheduling more brave than Florida’s, it comes down to how likely it is that USC will lose to Notre Dame.
Probably a smaller gap between Florida’s scheduling strategy and USC’s than folks here would admit.
A playoff isn’t really going to fix much, I don’t know why people are so enamored of it.
Actually, David, assuming the playoff is similar to the current BCS (automatic berth to the SEC champion), then the playoff likely solves everything where Florida is concerned.
In the playoff case, a non-conference loss is no longer automatically prejudicial to Florida’s national championship hopes. In that case, the following represents the decision between playing Charleston Southern and Southern Cal:
(Note: these mostly assume the game is prior to conference action)
Reasons to prefer Southern Cal
1. Higher caliber competition is better opportunity to test new offensive, defensive and special teams schemes.
2. Better national visibility on crowded college football Saturdays.
3. Can gin up regional rivalries to lock up more blue chip recruits in your backyard.
4. Opportunity to discover which of your marginal players are not who you thought they were (i.e. better than you thought)
5. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Reasons to prefer Charleston Southern
1. Might lose to USC by three touchdowns, thereby hurting the recruiting benefits listed above.
2. Might lose the opportunity to gain one or two at-large playoff bids, assuming they lose the SEC championship.
3. They’re sissies.
I somehow doubt that Urb even recognizes the possibility of losing to USC by three touchdowns. I also suspect that schools like Florida plan to win their conference championship, they should be less motivated to keep open the at-large berth in the playoff world than the importance of staying undefeated in the BCS world.
As such, to me its a no-brainer that Florida’s non-conference schedule gets significantly tougher in the world of the 8-team playoff. What am I missing?
San Jose St. would beat Florida St. by 3 touchdowns.