The final AP and coaches polls are out, and Boise State is ranked #4 in both, behind #1 Alabama, #2 Texas and #3 Florida.
It was quite close for the #2-4 spots: 1399 to 1370 to 1366 in the AP poll; 1360 to 1323 to 1312 in the coaches poll. Joe Lieberman circa 2004 might call it “a three-way split decision for second place.” 🙂
(But seriously: if you look at the vote totals for #1 Alabama and #5 Ohio State, you’ll see there’s a big gap both above and below the #2-3-4 trio. In the AP, it’s 1500-1399-1370-1366-1224. In the coaches, it’s 1450-1360-1323-1312-1190.)
I always expected that Boise would finish just barely behind Florida, if Alabama won the title. But I originally thought Texas would fall to a clear #4. And I still think they would have, if they’d lost to Alabama in a more “normal” game. But the McCoy injury changed everything, as I predicted shortly after it happened in the liveblog last night. Clearly, quite a few voters felt they couldn’t demote Texas below the #2 spot on the basis of a close, McCoy-less defeat at the hands of the #1 team. And frankly, as much as I want to stick up for the shafted undefeated mid-major, that’s a perfectly defensible position.
Indeed, in all honesty, it’s hard for me to get too outraged about Boise being #4 — by a very slim margin — behind two one-loss teams whose only loss was to the #1 team in the country. I think you could make a case for the Longhorns, Gators or Broncos at #2. And it’s clear from the closeness of the voting that they all got a good mixture of second-place, third-place and fourth-place votes. (Alabama was a unanimous #1, though.) Personally, I would have ranked Boise second, but I can understand why others didn’t. Now, anyone who ranked them below #4 is an idiot. But only two AP voters did that (although, maddeningly, those two idiot voters made the difference between Boise being ranked #4 and being tied for #3 with Florida).
The big question now is where Boise will be ranked in the preseason polls next season, since their initial ranking will serve as their jumping-off point for a potential run at the BCS title. They return all but one of their starters from a team that’s ranked #4 (almost #3) in the nation, so if they start next year ranked anywhere below where they finished this year, it’ll be pure anti-mid-major bias at work. By rights, this ought to be a team competing seriously for #1 in the preseason polls, not begging for Top 5 scraps. In reality, I expect a ranking in the #3-5 range, probably higher in the AP poll and lower in the coaches’ poll. But I think those who expect Boise to be shafted with a #6-10 or even #11-15 range ranking are living in the past. The voters nowadays are fairer than ever before, and the vast majority of them respect Boise now, if grudgingly in some cases. The Broncos won’t be Top 2, but they will be Top 5. (And TCU will be Top 10, or Top 12 at worst.)
(FWIW, the Idaho Statesman reports that “AP voters we polled this week indicated they would vote the Broncos near the top of their preseason ballots for 2010.” Here are some quotes from voters. And the NYT‘s Pete Thamel, for one, has them #2 in his “Way-Too-Early Top 10 for 2010.”)
Anyway, below the Top 4, you’ve got Ohio State at #5, TCU #6, Iowa #7, then Cincinnati and Penn State (#8 and #9 in the AP, reversed in the coaches), and Virginia Tech rounding out the Top 10 in both polls. The Hokies, of course, are Boise State’s marquee opponent next year — the Broncos play VaTech in Washington, D.C. on either Labor Day or October 2. And Oregon State, Boise’s other BCS-conference opponent next season, is second in both polls’ “others receiving votes” list, making them effectively #27 in the country. With the Rodgers brothers returning, they should be ranked in the Top 25 preseason, methinks. And VaTech should certainly be Top 10.
Oh, and USC? They finished a relatively dismal season ranked #22 in the AP poll and #20 in the coaches’ poll.
Boise State any lower than #2 is just wrong. They are undefeated, played great football, beat good and not so good opponents, basically did everything a top team should have.
Boise State had three games this season that were decide by 10 points or less, alot of them were significantly more than that. One of those two games was against TCU who was another great team. No game did they finish without at least a touchdown lead.
Florida had 5, one of which was a mere 3 points and only on a last second field goal. Did people suddenly forget how many close calls Florida had this season? How mediocre they looked at times? How they padded their record with FIU (in November), Troy, and 1-AA Charleston Southern? How they are afraid to play a non-conf away game outside the state of Florida, and if it weren’t for the traditional series against Florida State they probably wouldn’t even do THAT game away from the Swamp?
No, Florida doesn’t deserve to be ahead of Boise State, and any voter who voted them that high is rewarding them for cupcake scheduling, having the name Florida, and being in the SEC, not because of what they accomplished on the field.
OK, you know I vastly prefer Boise State (and similarly situated mid-majors) to Florida or Texas, but…
Florida played and beat 8 bowl teams in the regular season, including #17 LSU, and then played and beat #8, previously undefeated Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl. Their only loss was to #1 Alabama.
Texas also played and beat 8 bowl teams in the regular season, including #14 Nebraska and #21 Texas Tech and (looking at teams with double digit votes in the “others” category) #26 Oklahoma and #30 Oklahoma State. Their only loss was to #1 Alabama.
Boise State played and beat 5 bowl teams in the regular season, including #11 Oregon. Then they played and beat #6 TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. They didn’t lose a game. Of course, unlike Florida and Texas, they didn’t have the opportunity to play #1 Alabama.
Florida and Boise each played one Division 1-AA team (Charleston Southern, UC-Davis). All three teams played several I-A “cupcakes,” both in and out of conference. According to Jeff Sagarin, their respective strength of schedules, including bowl games, were #15 (FL), #38 (TX), and #96 (Boise). Of course, that #96 is largely because the WAC is weak, which is not Boise’s fault. It’s also not their fault that big-name teams often refuse to play them, so it’s tough to schedule more than 1 or 2 marquee non-conference opponents per season. Nevertheless, their schedule strength is also a “fact on the ground,” if you will. It should not be used to justify ignoring their accomplishments altogether. But to contextualize those accomplishments when comparing them to a pair of teams that had, really, very similar seasons, with the except that they each played — and lost to — the #1 team in the country? It absolutely has to be taken into account. It isn’t the beginning and end of the discussion, as Boise’s detractors would like. But it’s certainly part of the discussion.
In the normal course of events, I think you would agree that losing to the #1 team in the country, and winning all the rest of your games, doesn’t prove you aren’t the #2 team in the country. Logically, it’s very possible that you’re #2 if that’s your resumé. Florida and Texas can both make this case. Boise, meanwhile, can say: Hey! We didn’t lose any games! And we beat two really good teams! (TCU and Oregon.) And that’s a good argument. But, to quote myself from the previous paragraph, it’s not the beginning and end of the discussion.
You’re supposed to compare the teams’ entire bodies of work. That’s an inherently subjective process, but in some cases there is a clear-cut answer. IMHO, this is not one of those cases. There is no clear answer. Now, maybe you say, “if it’s a close call, the tie goes to the undefeated team,” and I’m actually quite sympathetic to that argument. It’s why I would vote Boise #2, personally. But again, my argument isn’t that Boise shouldn’t be #2 (I think they should, by a hair), my argument is that it isn’t some great moral outrage that they aren’t #2. It isn’t “just wrong.” It’s a reasonable difference of opinion.
(Now, ranking them #7, like Craig James did, THAT is “just wrong.” But #4, behind two teams with impressive resumes who only lost to the #1 team? That’s defensible, even if you’d reach a different conclusion, as I would.)
Can I make a case that Boise should be #2? Absolutely. Is it an open-and-shut case that only an idiot or a biased jackass could possibly disagree with? No.
If we are comparing bodies of work Brendan, we also need to compare HOW they played, and as I said, Florida won some games very close and looked pretty mediocre at times. They also didn’t just lose to Alabama, they got soundly beaten by Alabama, losing by a greater margin than Texas did, despite having Tim “Superman” Tebow at QB. Heck they got shut out in the second half! And they beat a Cincinatti team who had no head coach! Those wins and losses have context. I’m not saying they don’t deserve a top 5 ranking, but they don’t deserve to be ahead of Boise State, not based on how they played, unless how they played is defined in terms of only looking at wins and losses except for the last two games which we should really pay attention to.
Boise State also struggled at times against vastly inferior opponents, and in some cases the final score didn’t properly reflect it. Fewer people watched those games than Florida’s games, and they weren’t as prominently featured on SportsCenter, but that doesn’t mean we can just pretend they didn’t happen. Don’t get me wrong, they’re no Hawaii 2007 (whose 12-0 regular-season record was pretty clearly fraudulent if you looked at the details of, oh, like half of their games), they’re totally legit, but to say Florida struggled at times while ignoring that Boise struggled at times is disingenuous. You’re holding Florida to a higher standard than Boise because you think Boise is itself often held to an unfair standard, and while I agree with the latter point, simply flipping the bias is not the correct solution. Looked at objectively, and setting aside our general distaste for all things SEC, there just isn’t an enormous amount of difference between the two teams’ resumes. Florida has the edge in terms of how many okay-to-good teams they played and beat; Boise has the edge in terms of how many elite teams they beat (IMHO, Oregon, Cincinnati and TCU count; LSU does not); Florida has the edge in terms of the quality of the bottom half of their schedule; Boise has a sort of “moral edge” in that they made more of an effort to play quality non-conference foes than Florida did; but of course, Florida’s conference schedule is better, as is the overall statistical quality of their schedule as a whole; Boise has the edge in terms of their number of losses (zero versus one), but Florida can plausibly say that’s only because Boise didn’t play Alabama, and losing to the #1 team doesn’t prove you aren’t #2 or #3, particularly when comparing yourself to a team who didn’t play the #1 team. You’re right that Florida was beaten fairly handily by Alabama, which is a good argument for putting Texas ahead of Florida, but doesn’t prove much about Florida vs. Boise because we simply do not and cannot know how Boise would have fared against Bama. Again, that’s not Boise’s fault, but it’s not Florida’s fault, either. We can only judge the teams based on the information we have. And, going by that information, each team has reasonable arguments it can make. I like Boise’s better, but Florida’s aren’t somehow ridiculous.