Kicking Off Week 14 With Alabama Facing Texas and the Bowl Eligibility Puzzle

by cocknfire on Dec 7, 2009 10:30 AM EST in Sprints Comment 39 comments

Kickingoff_medium

GATOR HYPE-O-METER
On a scale of 1 to 100

I think we can retire this particular feature for a while.

UPS AND DOWNS
A look at who's going which way in college football

ALABAMA
Doesn't just win the SEC Championship Game, it does so resoundingly. Just hope that the tears of Tim Tebow are nontransferrable.

SEC CG OFFICIALS
It wasn't perfect, but at least there no last-minute, game-deciding penalties in the Georgia Dome.

CHARLIE WEIS
There are several gracious ways to exit the stage. Accusing your rival's head coach of a live-in extramarital affair with a grad student is not one of those ways.

BCS
TCU can't make the championship game because it wasn't ranked high enough to begin with. But a note to playoff supporters and the like: You can't say it's not a "real" championship just because you don't like the way it's determined.

BIG XII OFFICIALS
That choppy sound you hear are the black helicopters circling. Rogers Redding welcomes you to his world.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
A few things to think about this week

Texas vs. Alabama
I'm still fairly confident that the Tide will defeat Texas when all is said and done; we'll have plenty in the next few weeks about the latest SEC team to aim for the crystal football. But that confidence isn't based on past history.

Alabama has gone 0-7-1 against the Longhorns over the years, including the 14-12 loss in 1981. Texas has outscored the Tide 131-62. It is also one of only two teams to have played Alabama more than once and have an undefeated record against the Elephants; Rice (0-3) is the other. Then again, the Owls last played the Tide in 1956.

Teams who have won their only game against Alabama: Camp Gordon (1917), Carlisle (1914), UCF (2000), Cumberland (1903), Georgia Pre-Flight (1942), Minnesota (2004), New Orleans Athletic Club (1899), Northern Illinois (2003), Oklahoma State (2006), Villanova (1951) and Wisconsin (1928).

What? You're saying I forgot one of those teams?

Oh, right. That'd be Utah.

Bowl Subdivision -- emphasis on bowl
If you're looking for another reason why the NCAA isn't going to change the rule allowing FBS teams to count at least once FCS team toward bowl eligibility, just look at the number of teams that needed that extra win to get into the postseason. South Florida is 7-5 after winning two such games, though just one can count toward the Bulls' bowl chances. Also needing an FCS win to get to eligibility: Florida State, Iowa State, Marshall, Michigan State, Minnesota, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe.

The two schools from the Pelican State aren't going in any case, but if you count out the teams with one FCS win and Notre Dame -- whose players voted not to go to the postseason -- then you get to 62 teams for a 34-game bowl system. So without the 12th game and an easy win to put there, the whole bowl system could come crashing down. Sure, some of those teams might have scheduled and won a game against another FBS opponent. But best not to take any chances.

This isn't necessarily a reason to do away with the bowls. But it is a reason to do away with some of them.

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Comments

Ugh...

…that “not ranked high enough to begin with” BS is getting seriously tired. Comparing complete season resumes side-by-side, there’s no better argument for either team. Should TCU be allowed a chance to compete for the title? Absolutely. But not at the expense of a team that ran the table (including an extra game) in a BCS conference. Until we have a playoff system, this talk all remains, as Kevin Pollack put it, “coffeehouse crap.” Doesn’t mean that it’s not fun to argue though, lol…

by allhailcale on Dec 7, 2009 11:10 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I think the term "BCS conference"

as applied to the B12 this year is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? 3 teams pulling their best Vandy impersonation, 3 teams at 6-6, and (with the exception of texas and Ok st), the rest all have at least 4 losses…against schedules in the mid 70s.

"Hollywood made a movie of my life. The film had me proposing to my wife on the football field. I would never misuse a football field that way." -Crazy Legs Hirsch

by Stuck in the Plains on Dec 7, 2009 4:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Do you think the MWC...

…is better top-to-bottom? Is it any worse than the down big-ten? Much like the SEC, even in down years, the Big XII is a tough row to hoe…

by allhailcale on Dec 7, 2009 5:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The Big East was a tougher conference than the B12 this year...

"Hollywood made a movie of my life. The film had me proposing to my wife on the football field. I would never misuse a football field that way." -Crazy Legs Hirsch

by Stuck in the Plains on Dec 7, 2009 6:53 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

False...

…wow, really false. Nice try though.

by allhailcale on Dec 8, 2009 8:59 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Arguably false, but at least arguable

The Big 10 is the worst BCS conference this year. This much is not arguable.

...just apologize for not thanking me.

by kidbourbon on Dec 8, 2009 9:21 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

What? You’re saying I forgot one of those teams?

Oh, right. That’d be Utah.

You just had to go there, right? :)

"The goal is to be a champion," Saban said. "I didn’t say to win a championship. I just said be a champion. That’s our goal here. That’s what we want to do."- Nick Saban

by bammer on Dec 7, 2009 11:45 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

"A note to playoff supporters and the like..."

What do you mean, "You can’t say it’s not a “real” championship"? If we’re going to use the technical definition of an NCAA championship, then I don’t need to make an argument that it’s not an NCAA championship. It just isn’t. There is no champion of the Bowl Subdivision, which is why the other subdivision is called the Championship Subdivision.

(Yeah, I hate those terms for I-A and I-AA too, but as long as I’m arguing NCAA-speak figured I should be consistent.)

So, you’re probably referring to some other definition of a “real” championship, and to that I say, it’s as real as the person recognizing it wants it to be. I don’t think it’s a legitimate championship as long as some of the teams purportedly in the running aren’t really in the running. And the way I know they’re not in the running is because they won every single game they. played but still aren’t playing for the “championship”.

In the end nobody cares what I think and the public will crown the winner of the I-A “championship” game as champion. Just because it’s popular opinion doesn’t mean it’s legitimate or well-founded.

by PhilipVU94 on Dec 7, 2009 12:57 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I wonder...

…if you felt the same way about Hawaii in ’07, Boise in ’06, and Utah in ’04….?

by allhailcale on Dec 7, 2009 1:15 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah

And that Tommy Bowden Tulane team way back whenever in the late 90s when they probably weren’t among the best 10 teams in the nation.

Any time multiple eligible teams can go through the season including the postesason undefeated, but only the one with the biggest name has a chance in hell of being declared “champion”, said championship is a farce.

by PhilipVU94 on Dec 7, 2009 5:48 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"including the postseason?"

…in that case, Texas and Bama are the only qualifiers, as none of the other three undefeated squads have a conference title game.

by allhailcale on Dec 8, 2009 9:00 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

No, you're just complicating the meaning of very clear terms

If a team plays 12 regular season games, no conference championship game, and one bowl game, winning them all, then that team has won all games including the postseason.

by PhilipVU94 on Dec 8, 2009 12:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I misunderstood...

…you’re projecting. I thought we were speaking about teams as they stood right now. I see your point, I just don’t agree with it. Everyone knew that Tulane, Boise last season, Hawaii the year before, Utah before that, wasn’t as good as their record would indicate, and, with the lone exception of Utah, their bowl performances proved that out. The only reason that the argument is so much stronger now is that the non-AQ undefeated teams (and the Big East champ) are PERCEIVED to be stronger than they have been in the past. If Cincinnati gets blown out by Florida, everyone will cry ‘overrated’ and laugh at the fact that their coach thought they should have been playing for the title game. Barring a repeat of the 2006 Rose Bowl, the loser of the title game will have the same thing said about them, especially if it’s Texas. Does that mean that those teams aren’t as good as we thought they were? Absolutely not. It only means that they didn’t play like it on that day. Is Bama 19 points better than Florida? Certainly not. Or, at least, if you wanted to argue that, you’d also have to at least entertain the idea that Auburn is also better than Florida, which we all would unanimously agree is not the case. All of our postulating means nothing. The system has decided the match-up, which is the ONLY thing it’s charged with doing. Doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun arguing about it…

by allhailcale on Dec 8, 2009 12:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Non-AQ conferences are 3-1 in BCS bowls

How does that prove that they aren’t “as good as their record would indicate”?

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 8, 2009 2:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The proof is in the fact...

…that even the victorious teams were never really taken seriously as national title contenders before their respective wins, some of them even after. Does anyone really think that Boise was a better team than OU? No, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t beat them on a given day. All it proves is the same thing that everyone has already known for their entire sports-watching lives. Namely, than any team can beat another on any given day. Do their triumphs in years past have anything to do with the football that’s been played on the field for the past four months? Absolutely not.

by allhailcale on Dec 8, 2009 4:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

While it's understandable

Given your “is a fan of” section on your profile page, that you have no idea what a champion is, we do have to accept that this is the manner by which this sport has agreed to crown it’s champion. Lest we wind up with a team who tries to claim they have ~~twelve~~ some national championships that they really don’t.

Tennessee Fans: We win at teh Internet!

by bobo_the_vol on Dec 7, 2009 3:00 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It's not the way the sport has agreed to crown its champion

It’s the way the bowls and the BCS conferences and Notre Dame have agreed to crown their champion.

The other conferences and independents were not part of the decision.

by CraigT on Dec 7, 2009 7:08 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Incorrect

The other conferences now sign the contracts just like everyone else.

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 7, 2009 7:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I guess this is what you alluded to just below

After all, what is the NCAA if not a collection of members, all of whom have now signed onto the BCS?

I didn’t follow the minutiae of this when it was going on so forgive me my ignorance now. As I recall the chronology goes something like this:

1998: the Big Six + ND form the BCS as basically their own closed party.

Early 2000s: some sort of outcry that leads to some arcane way a non-Big Six team can get to the BCS, which adds the Championship game as a 5th bowl and gives us Boise-Oklahoma in the 2006 season.

Last two years: Some other sort of outcry that leads to some other precarious agreement.

And I guess it’s this last step where you’re saying the small conferences “signed onto the BCS”? The BCS is certainly not a fair, nor IMO a legitimate system. Just because they signed onto it basically as their only way to get at any of the BCS money doesn’t IMO confer legitimacy on the thing.

It really comes down to the NCAA being the governing body for major college sports versus the BCS being a contrivance for the big conferences to impose their way on the little conferences. (And yes, of course a playoff is about money, it’s all about money, or else we’d all look like the Ivy League.)

by PhilipVU94 on Dec 8, 2009 2:12 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The BCS is a series of contracts between all parties involved

In recent years, the midmajors have signed those contracts just like everyone else.

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 8, 2009 10:02 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

That they agreed to participate

doesn’t mean they were involved in setting it up.

by CraigT on Dec 9, 2009 7:13 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It is the way that the sport's establishment has chosen to crown a champion

The example I’ve used before is that if major league baseball decided to determine the championship by who scored the most runs during the season, I would both think it was a stupid way to do thing and recognize the winner as the legitimate champion. Just because the system is horribly flawed — and I won’t argue that it isn’t — doesn’t mean the championship that results is “mythical.”

Back when the AP and the coaches’ poll were just voting on the award at the end of the year with no structure in place, you could make that argument. But it’s different. All of the FBS conferences, even the midmajors, sign the contract that enshrines the BCS as the way to choose a champion. As far as the NCAA endorsement issue, I think that’s bogus for two reasons. First of all, don’t discount the fact that the NCAA has a financial incentive in not giving its blessing to the current system. It made and got to distribute $15.8 million from the basketball tournament last year — before television revenues. It gets to do none of that with the BCS money. (Which is why I’d also like supporters of a playoff to spare me the sanctimony about the current system being “all about money.” Every system is.) Second, if we’re arguing about whether you’re going to allow the BCS or the NCAA to decide what a “real” championship is, then we’re just arguing about who you’re listening to. One has no more moral or legal authority than the other. After all, what is the NCAA if not a collection of members, all of whom have now signed onto the BCS?

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 7, 2009 7:40 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Does the NCAA have financial incentives?

How would that even work? The NCAA is not a for-profit company. You can’t buy shares. The secretary’s don’t get to retire at 38 if CBS’s ratings for the Final Four are strong.

The NCAA is essentially just a rulebook and a couple of rulebook enforcers. Any money going to the NCAA is simply redistributed back to the universities. I saw that you mentioned this point, but obviously you don’t think it cuts against a financial incentive argument.

I guess any entity would want to have their hands on the money — if only for a second — even if the reason is solely because they want to distribute the money how they see fit. My take is this: If I have to choose between the money being distributed by (a) the BCS, which is essentially a bargained-for contract, or (b) the NCAA, which is a much less bargained for kind of quasi contract that comes with a pre-installed rulebook enforcer bureaucracy….I will choose option (a).

...just apologize for not thanking me.

by kidbourbon on Dec 8, 2009 9:42 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Add me in as another one who is sick of hearing the preseason rankings excuse.

It’s bogus. The preseason rankings are NOT the reason Texas went before TCU.

I run my own computer poll, which is based off ONLY this season stats, and it looks at each team individually, and does not give any weight to conferences or previous rankings. It looks at the entire season, rather than just a few games.

Texas blew TCU and Cincy out of the water in my poll because of strength of schedule. People do not give Texas proper credit for the SoS.

Is the Big12 down? Well they were certainly down from the SEC this year, no doubt about it. But they were still the 2nd best conference. The Big East had a great year this year, and ranks #3 by my measure, which is pretty big for that conference.

I don’t know why people are actually like the Big12 was as weak as the Big10. Because Oklahoma wasn’t it’s normal self? Does anyone really believe Oklahoma’s record is a reflection of that team? Do people not realize Oklahoma played one of the toughest schedules in the country, and outside 1 bad loss, they only lost to top teams, and only by a few points?

Top 25 this, top25 that. Oklahoma might not be in the top25 today, but they are ever bit as strong as many of the top25 teams. As far as power ratings goes(which consideres margin of victory), Oklahoma is a top 10-top15 team. This is due to their losses being just barely and against good teams.

TCU does rank really high in the power rating category. #2, right behind Texas(#1) and right above Alabama(#3) and Boise St. But what kills TCU is the SoS, because I don’t award points for margin of victory in the final point tally, only count who you beat.

Taking in margin of victory for teams is a bad bad bad measure in most places. To do so is to say that Alabama should be penalized for running upchurch for the last 3 or so minutes of the game on every play and taking a knee with 1:30 left to go instead of going for a TD. But that is exactly what TCU fans want to be taken into account, their margin of victory wins over Utah and BYU.

BCS sucks, playoffs would be better. But the 2 most deserving teams are in the championship game. 3 undefeated teams were getting left out no matter what, the only thing they could have done differently was make it worse.

Still don’t care for seeing TCU vs Boise St. I’d have liked to see TCU vs Florida. But even then, they gave Florida the highest ranked undefeated opponent in Cincy since Cincy passed TCU this week.

In the end, Texas is legit for the NCG, and it has nothing to do with hype over the conferences, nor preseason rankings. These are nothing more than excuses from people not looking at the entire season, but only a few select games of their choice.

I issue a challenge to everyone. Find me an article that argues for TCU in the NCG that does NOT try and narrow things down to only 2 or 3 games and pretends like that is the entire season.

by cal n on Dec 7, 2009 10:08 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

"Taking in margin of victory for teams is a bad bad bad measure in most places."

I disagree with you on a great deal, including the real reason Texas gets to play for the “championship” — even though there are merit-based arguments, they’re totally tangential, because even if the merit-based arguments all favored TCU, the polls would still favor Texas.

But I think it’s interesting that you’re one of the anti-MoV folks. I used to be in your camp. Then a discussion here convinced me that we simply don’t have enough sample size to try picking the best teams based on a 13-game schedule without considering MoV.

I can see both sides, but as I recall you’ll find yourself in the minority among the regulars on this blog.

by PhilipVU94 on Dec 8, 2009 12:56 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

majority certainly doesn't decide right and wrong.

There is a very good reason why i don’t care for MoV. I have thought about it long and hard, as I have a computer poll and want to be as far as possible to all teams.

But the fact of the matter is that gameplans aren’t designed to score the most points. They are designed in order to win the game. I’m an Alabama fan, so I’m going to use Alabama as a reason why margin of victory is bad.

Alabama is not a team that tries to run up the score. Instead, Alabama likes to eat up the clock. From Alabama you will see drive after drive that will take 6 or 7 minutes off the clock. Especially late in a game. It happened against Auburn, and it happened against Florida.

It keeps their defense on the field, while our own team’s defense is well rested. It keeps offenses off the field, which doesn’t allow them to get into sync. It puts the offense into a hurry up mode, and keeps them from playing their normal game. This was evident in the Florida game, as Florida is normally a rushing team, but was kept mostly to a passing game. Why? Desperate need to score points. The need for speed on their part made them unbalanced, and that showed when Florida failed to score in the 2nd half.

But MoV would punish Alabama. MoV says that you should only try to win games by scoring as much as possible, as quickly as possible. And if you don’t score a ton of points, then you aren’t a good team. But yet, when you play against a team and they have the ball 2/3’rds of the time, that turns out to be crap.

This is not even mentioning the running up of the score. MoV says Alabama should be punished for showing class against Florida and running our 3rd string RB at the end of the game, and then taking a knee with 1:30 to go in the game. We could have scored another TD with effort, but we already had a lead by 3 scores, there was no point. Yet, again MoV says Alabama should be punished for that.

Do you think teams should be punished for not throwing hail mary’s when they are up by 20? That is what MoV does.

Plus, teams match up differently. Is Alabama really only 2 points better than Tennessee? Well, lets take a look at the entire situation for that game.

For Alabama, it was the 5th straight week of playing SEC teams. For Tennessee, they had a bye week the week before. Does that no factor into the MoV? Same thing for the Auburn game, Auburn had a bye week right before that game. Both ended up being close games. But the MoV was not a true measure of the teams.

Meanwhile, TCU plays 2 cupcakes, and by cupcakes I mean teams not even in the top75 before every tough game they play.

All these things matter, but they are completely ignored with MoV. I don’t really see how anyone can be in favor of it. Oh sure, we remember the conditions surrounding them today, but when you go back and look at week 1, and you look at the scores of games you didn’t see, or teams you didn’t follow – do you? I certainly don’t.

by cal n on Dec 8, 2009 6:01 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

But that ignores the fact that MOV is very relevant in some cases

For example, Texas didn’t defeat Nebraska by only one point because they weren’t trying to run up the score. You’re focusing on only one aspect of the MOV debate. It’s a lot more complex and nuanced than that. Also, while Alabama didn’t try to run up the score against Florida, they did outscore the Gators by 19 points. I find that pretty impressive and far different than if they’d kicked the winning field goal in the last seconds of the game. (Coincidentally, this is the problem I have with just about any computer poll. No matter what you count or don’t, there are times when it’s important and times when it isn’t. A computer can’t account for that.)

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 8, 2009 10:08 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

wasn't that what the +14 cutoff was put in place for...

…in the first tweak to the BCS back earlier in the decade? MoV was a big part of the original computer formula, if I remember correctly, which spawned the great sportsmanship debate. It was then tweaked to not reflect any wins by more than 14 points. Which would mean that it did give greater weight to blowout wins than to close shaves while still keeping the most important thing the most relevant: actually winning. I don’t have enough time to go searching for it, but is that still a part of the formula at all….?

by allhailcale on Dec 8, 2009 11:01 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

No MOV

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 8, 2009 12:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Consider this.

Is the Texas vs Nebraska score a reflection of a weak Texas, or a reflection of a stronger Nebraska? Or, is it just a matter of how the 2 teams matched up?

Lets take a look at Nebraska. Lost to Virginia Tech by 1 point. But VT only scored 16 points.

Texas Tech blew them out, scoring 31 points to 10. But that was the only time all season they gave up more than 20 points.

On average, Nebraska’s Defense was one of the best in the nation, allowing just over 11 points per game all season long. The problem was their offense, they had none.

They held Iowa St. to 9 points, but their offense only managed 7 points.

So is the 13 points by Texas really a shocker? No. In fact, my computer predicted the score to be exactly 13-12. Still, it sees Texas as the #1 power team on the season. Nebraska? only 69% of what Texas is. Why did it predict that score? Based on the match up between the 2 teams, even the computer could see that Nebraska’s defense was a force to be reckoned with.

Sure, a computer poll isn’t perfect. But as far as crunching the numbers, it is the only thing that is able to look at every team’s complete season, and process things without bias. It’s not the final word, but it is 1 hell of a resource. I can honestly say that the computer picked many upsets this year. Crazy upsets. Like that USC vs Stanford upset nobody could believe? Computer predicted it, and many others. I’d say it has a bit of value in it.

by cal n on Dec 10, 2009 5:20 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'm not saying that computer polls are value-less

I’m just saying they have their flaws, just like any human poll. It’s the same reason that software often has problems — a computer does exactly what you tell it to do. And so whatever information a human finds to be important and tells a computer to see as important will be important to that computer.

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 10, 2009 6:20 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes, exactly

Which is why I try to look at the philosophy on how we decide what is important and what isn’t in relation to my rankings.

A good bit of the reason I debate these issues is to get different opinions and philosophies. In the end, my goal is to be fair and so forth.

I’m all for changing my philosophy in it, but I have to have good reason in order to do it etc. I find more flaws in MoV than I do with my current method(which is using MoV to determine a power score of a team, which is then in turn used to score and take away points for wins/losses), and thus the rankings are mostly based on “quality” wins. But the rest of the schedule still matters too.

by cal n on Dec 10, 2009 6:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Also, how can MOV be "a bad bad bad measure"

While this

Do people not realize Oklahoma played one of the toughest schedules in the country, and outside 1 bad loss, they only lost to top teams, and only by a few points?

is a reason to believe that Oklahoma is underrated?

The other problems that I didn’t get to in my earlier response:

-In my BlogPoll ballots I dock teams that basically lost to every good team they played, which is basically what Oklahoma has done this year with the possible exception of annihilating Texas A&M and the rivalry win against Oklahoma State (for some reason, everyone dismisses rivalry losses but not rivalry wins, not that I believe in doing either).
—Finally, if you don’t include MOV in whatever form of rankings you use, you’re effectively banning schools like TCU and Boise from ever getting into the Top 5 or so. Because unless they schedule a murderers’ row for the nonconference schedule that even the best teams in the nation would be insane to try, there’s no way they can balance out the weakness of their league slate.

Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.

by cocknfire on Dec 8, 2009 12:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

RE: your second point...

I don’t have a problem with that. Like it or not, they play in weaker conferences. If TCU had beaten Clemson, Ole Miss, Texas Tech and Iowa instead of Clemson, Virginia, Texas State and SMU, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Of course, the flip side is those supposed “big-boy” teams actually have to agree to play them…

by allhailcale on Dec 8, 2009 1:02 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

That is exactly right

TCU’s schedule while weak would only require the upgrade of a few teams in order to be competitive with the other teams schedule. What you have listed there would likely do the trick.

I don’t know about TCU, but I have heard Utah turned down offers from Florida and Texas to play. I would guess after this year, TCU would get a few more offers from teams.

by cal n on Dec 11, 2009 7:20 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes, because Oklahoma's schedule is one of the toughest in the country.

They aren’t ranked very high because of their losses, but they have played one of the toughest schedules in the country and did decently well. They are easily tougher than most 7-5 teams are.

Are they are tough as a TCU or such? No. But they are tougher than the normal 7-5 team.

As for MoV banning schools. That would have to be completely false, because Utah ended up #1 in my poll last year in the exact same system. As well, TCU and Cincy are in my top5 this year.

by cal n on Dec 11, 2009 3:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs