9 thoughts on “Twitter: 2010 BCS title …”

  1. Brendan Loy

    I’m no bettor, I’d take those odds on Boise for sure.

    All they need to do, after all, is win one really tough quasi-road game (Virginia Tech), win one pretty tough home game (Oregon State), and go undefeated against the WAC and Toledo and Wyoming … all of which I’d say has, at worst, a 1-in-3 chance of happening … and then hope there’s no more than one undefeated team from the Big Five conferences (I think they finish ahead of an unbeaten Big East team), which I’d say has at least a 50/50 chance of happening. That puts them in the title game (let’s call it 40/60 instead of 50/50 because of the chance they get bumped by a 1-loss SEC champ or whatever). And then they need to win the title game. Even if we give them only a 25% of doing that, we’d end up with…

    0.33 x 0.4 x 0.25 = 0.033 … which is, shoot, 30-1 odds. Dammit. Okay so maybe 15-1 isn’t as much of an obvious bargain as I thought. 🙂 But I’m lowballing the percentages above. Instinctively, I’d take 15-1 odds on Boise winning it all. I’d be curious what Bodog thinks the odds are of them reaching the title game — i.e., are they all the way down at 15-1 because of the belief there’s no way they’ll win the game, or because of doubt they can make it?

    USC having 12-1 odds, on the other hand, seems kind of crazy to me, instinctively. Though not as crazy as Bama having 3-1 odds. I hate to sound like an SEC partisan, but between PSU and a tougher-than-this-year SEC schedule, the Crimson Tide have an awful lot of potential stumbling blocks on their road to a title. I suppose the oddsmakers are figuring they’ve got a good chance even with an early loss, but still. I’d say more like 5-1 or 6-1 for Bama… with Boise probably at like 12-1. But I’m probably completely wrong.

  2. Sandy Underpants

    Actually I’m surprised Boise St. and TCU have such a high payout, there’s no way that either one of them go to the BCS title game without every potential #2 ranked BCS conference school having 2 or more losses, and that doesn’t seem very likely, although it has happened before. I suppose the USC odds are based on the (un)likelyhood of NCAA sanctions next month to cancel the postseason. If USC remains eligible for postseason play after the Infractions Committee’s ruling, I’d take 12-1 odds for USC next season. They play nobody, and their most difficult opponents are all at home.

  3. David K.

    50-1 odds on Washington winning it all? Shoot, thats pretty good odds considering we were 0-12 two years ago!

  4. Jazz

    Lines are obviously set – and move – in order to get action on both sides of the bet. Alabama at 3-1 is a patently ridiculous line; you’d pretty much have to be the most dominant team in history to have such a line be “fair” eight months before the season; if, ceteris paribus, Alabama is 2-1 once they arrive at the title game, well there’s way too many things that can go wrong to make the adjustment “only” go from 2-1 at the title game to 3-1 at current odds.

    Which the oddsmakers surely know. But this is a strange offseason in that it seems like Bama will be good and just about every other AQ school will suck. So there’s probably way too much action on Alabama, which is why the line is so skewed.

  5. Brendan Loy

    Sandy, you’re living in the past. Boise State definitely DOES NOT need “every potential #2 ranked BCS conference school [to have] 2 or more losses” in order to reach the title game. In 2006, they would’ve needed that. Not in 2010. This isn’t even debatable. You think a one-loss Big East team gets in ahead of them? A one-loss oddball ACC or Big Ten or Pac-10 champ (say, Boston College or Northwestern or Oregon State)? You’re nuts.

    I may be wrong that Boise will get in ahead of all potential 1-loss teams — a 1-loss SEC champ with an early loss is certainly a big threat, and a 1-loss Texas or Oklahoma or USC or Ohio State or Penn State (i.e., a high-profile, big-name team that starts the reason ranked pretty high) with an early loss & a conference title could plausibly leapfrog Boise — but it’s not a sure thing. And certainly, a lower-tier 1-loss team has no shot of passing Boise. Nor does virtually any 1-loss team with a late loss. (The only possible exception would be the SEC champ, IMHO.) Merely being from a “BCS conference” will not do it.

    We’re living in a Brave New World wherein the Broncos can finish the regular season quite close to #2 Texas and virtually tied with #3 Florida in the polls, and will, by all indications, start next season ranked in the Top 5 (which has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE for any mid-major — not even close — thus rendering all precedents regarding final ranking largely irrelevant). I’m usually pretty skeptical/cynical about this stuff: I know the odds are stacked against teams like Boise in a lot of ways. But I also see the huge shifts in opinion and respect, re: mid-majors, that have occurred quite rapidly since 2006. You don’t seem to have noticed that anything has changed at all. You think you’re being realistic, but you’re actually being waaaaaay too cynical.

  7. Sandy Underpants

    I’m with wolf-face crazy on this one. Boise St. can start the season at #1, but they will sink like a rock while they down the stars of the WAC division. Granted a win over Virginia Tech and Oregon St. is nice, but is that equally (or more) impressive than EVERY conference champion who will have 8 or 9 (or 11) wins over BCS conference schools?

    I like Boise St., I think they could take Alabama on any given Thursday night ESPN broadcast, but in the unfair world of college football it’s not about who ‘could’ win, it’s about who deserves to be where based on a subjective strength of opponents and so on and so forth and there’s no fair way to justify a schedule with 10 cupcakes and 2 BCS conference schools to go over a team with 9-12 wins over BCS schools, even if there is one loss in that bunch of wins.

  8. Brendan Loy

    LOL @ “wolf-face crazy.” It’s a great phrase.

    When you characterize Boise’s schedule as “10 cupcakes and 2 BCS conference schools,” versus “9-12 wins over BCS schools,” you’re creating a false dichotomy that assumes all “BCS schools” are superior to all (or nearly all) non-BCS-schools, all of whom (except perhaps Boise, TCU, Utah and BYU) are by definition “cupcakes.” This is simply not true.

    Obviously every season is different, but just for comparison’s sake, let’s look at the final Sagarin rankings for 2009. Boise’s top two opponents next year are, of course, Virginia Tech (#7 in the rankings) and Oregon State (#34). Next come Fresno State (#59), Nevada (#70), Wyoming (#82), Idaho (#85), and Louisiana Tech (#89), of New Tennessee Head Coach Derek Dooley fame. The remaining five teams on Boise’s schedule are ranked in the triple digits. Those are the TRUE cupcakes.

    Off the top of my head, I’d say most BCS teams play 1-3 such teams; Boise plays 5. Meanwhile, I’d bet most BCS teams play 4-6 Top 50 teams and 3-5 #50-100 teams, or something like that. Boise plays 2 Top 50s and 5 #50-100s. Does that make their schedule significantly inferior to most BCS conference teams? Yes. But does it make it inferior on the order of 2 real games vs. 9-12 real games, as you say? No. Fresno State is better than more than half of the Big Ten, five Big XII teams, etc. etc. Nevada, similarly. Just because these teams play in the WAC and aren’t named Boise State, doesn’t mean they’re worse than EVERY SINGLE BCS CONFERENCE TEAM. That’s just a fallacy of lazy thinking.

  9. David K.

    Is wolf-face-crazy the political correct version of bat-shit-insane? Or is like darn and damn/ heck and hell, just a milder version?

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