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12/6 2010

College Football: Where Every Week Is The Playoffs, Unless You Are (Or Play) A Mid-Major

Posted by Dan Levy.

There is one Big East team ranked in the BCS Top 25 (that is, unless you count TCU) and that’s West Virginia at 22. There are two ACC Schools in the BCS Top 25 with Virginia Tech sitting at 13 and Florida State at 23.

There are six SEC schools in the BCS Top 25, with three of those six placing in the top ten (Auburn 1, Arkansas 8, LSU 10).

There are two Pac-10 schools, both in the top five. There are three Big Ten schools and five Big 12 schools (or four and four depending on who gets to count Nebraska now that the season is over).

By my math, that’s 19 of the 25 BCS-ranked teams coming from “power conferences” with the other six teams being (in order): TCU (3), Boise State (11), Nevada (15), Utah (19), Hawaii (24), UCF (25).

Of the ten schools invited to participate in the BCS this season, just one — TCU — is from a non-power conference, despite the fact that six ended the season ranked higher than Connecticut, who despite winning the Big East, didn’t even make the list of 25 ranked schools.

With Michigan State and LSU ineligible for the BCS because of a ridiculous rule put in place to give all the conferences a better chance to line their pockets whereby no conference can have more than two BCS participants in any given year, Boise State would be ninth-highest ranked team of those who can go to the BCS. But because the BCS has to take UConn and Virginia Tech — the same Hokie team that Boise State BEAT to start the season and the same Hokie team who then lost to an FCS school a week later — there is only space for four at-large schools to join the BCS.

TCU, Stanford, Ohio State and Arkansas are all top-eight BCS teams, beating out Boise State for the at-large spots, meaning that Boise — one loss away from back-to-back undefeated seasons — gets to play Utah in the Thanks-For-Showing-Up-But-You’ll-Never-Be-Considered-Equals-MAACO Las Vegas Bowl on December 23rd.

Boise State’s only loss in two years was on the road in overtime to a team that finished the season in the BCS top-15 and they’re playing in a bowl game two days before Christmas.

That’s wrong.

It’s especially wrong when a two-loss Virginia Tech team that Boise beat gets to play Stanford in the Orange Bowl and UCONN gets to play in the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma.

Let’s review: Boise State lost to Nevada, ranked 15th in the BCS. The game was on the road and the loss came in overtime. Michigan State lost to Iowa, a loss that looks a lot worse after Iowa’s terrible end to the season. That said, MSU beat Wisconsin, who was the Big Ten’s anointed champion (after being ranked the highest in the BCS rankings of the three teams with one loss). LSU lost just two games, to Auburn and Arkansas, both BCS participants. Heck, even two-loss Missouri was ranked higher than Virginia Tech in the final rankings.

Oh, and UConn? The Big East mandatory representative to the BCS? They finished the season 8-4, defeating no ranked teams (the only team UConn beat in the final BCS rankings is WVU). UConn was 3-4 on the season before beating up on the rest of the Big East en route to the conference title. Yes, a team that lost in week nine and a team that lost in week 11 both missed out on the BCS. But a team that lost to MICHIGAN in week one, TEMPLE in week three, RUTGERS in week six and LOUISVILLE in week seven is going to a BCS game.

When does every game count as a playoff game, again? If you play in the SEC, Pac-10 or Big Ten?

What might be the worst thing about this whole bowl mess is that TEMPLE, who finished the season 8-4, wasn’t invited to ANY bowl game, despite beating a team playing in the BCS. Imagine if Temple had beaten any of the legitimate BCS teams and think if they would have been one of the schools on the outside of the 70 that make a bowl. What if Temple beat Arkansas or Oklahoma? What if Temple had beaten Boise State? Wait…scratch that last one.

The point is: we’ve been led to believe from BCS supporters for years and years that the regular season is the playoffs and every game matters. Tell that to TCU, who won every game and doesn’t get a shot at the title because the rest of the teams in its conference aren’t good enough (note: TCU is leaving the MWC for the Big East, but the MWC actually has more teams ranked in the BCS (8) than the Big East (6) over the last three seasons.)

Remember that, just last season, there were five teams that ended the regular season undefeated, with obviously just two playing for the national championship. So in a way, every week isn’t a playoff game, unless you lose. And even then, if you’re a major conference school and you only care about going to the BCS and raking in millions upon millions of dollars for the January bowl bid, losing isn’t really that big a deal as long as it’s out of conference, and preferably to a team that’s on the outside, constantly looking in.

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Posted on December 6, 2010 at 12:40PM

 

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