Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Holy Crap

The Boise State vs Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl was the greatest football game I've ever watched. What a fantastic ending to a fantastic game. I'm so glad Boise State finished their season undefeated once again begging college football for something better than the shitpiece BCS popularity contest. Way to go Boise State I knew you had it in you.

12 comments:

russ said...

I don't understand two things:
1) If they played a great and very even game (in which the lead changed many times and they tied and won on two trick plays) why would that justify them playing a higher ranked team? I mean, if they blew out Oklahoma that would make me think they deserve a shot against a more highly ranked team.
2) What possible system could be better? Actually I don't know where the computer ranked these guys, but assuming it doesn't perfectly correspond to your preferred outcome, you hav eto admit this is imperfect and many, many reasonable people disagree. It's a hard problem that has no universal answer, and if it did, that woudl suck.

russ said...

Also, way to come back to the posting... I dig, I dig...

John said...

Russell, Russell, Russell, I know that you cannot possibly truly believe the bilge that spills from your argumentative mouth and that you obviously are the unfortunate victim of you uncontrollable desire to always play devil's advocate to my argument but I will humor you here just to promote conversation.

Boise State destroyed Oregon State 42-14
Oregon State edged USC 33-31
USC just destroyed Michigan 32-18

Now just to be argumentative, based on those 3 games you could claim that Boise State is roughly 46 points better than Michigan who many would still have argued was the second best team in the BCS heading into the bowls. Regardless, only 2 teams finished the season undefeated and both were BCS bowl bound, why then would you not let Boise State take a shot at the Buckeyes.

Maybe because you really think Florida is the second best team in the country however, Florida lost to Auburn. Auburn finished with a worse rank than Boise State. So how do you possibly rank Florida #2 when they lost to a team worse than Boise State and Boise State once again has no losses?

Outside of that you asked for my proposal to make this a non-issue and here it is.
32->16->8->4->2->National Champs

The arrows represent playoff games.
Each Division 1 team in the country is free to generate a schedule that would allow it to get ranked in the top #32 in an 8 game season. The National Championship game would be the 13th game of the season for the contenders same as Ohio State will end up playing this year. As for the cash generation of bowls, you can have a consolation bracket that means more than the current non-championship bowls. Nobody bitches about the NFL Champs, nobody bitches about March Madness, you can't deny that college football's methodology blows and eventually some playoff type method will prevail.

russ said...

Actually, Keith was complaining just the other day about the NCAA Bball tournament (too many upset) and I think there are lots of people who still doubt the quality of the last Superbowl Champs.

Sure, I do think a playoff system is better (with the one execption that was pointed out to me -- once you have playoffs, you'll have teams that are a lock to get in, and you'll have COLLEGEs resting players and not caring about wins like the pros... although I have heard a counter-argument that says this may just give some more experience to 2nd string players). But _no_ system guarantees you that you will get a perfectly correct ordering in which ever higher team will beat a lower team any given Sunday. That's the whole excitement of sports.

As for your meticulous math, now you're the one being a devils advocate. How about... Oregon? They Lost badly to USC but trounced UCLA -- who beat USC. What's more this team beat Oklahoma by just a nibble.

There will always be inconsistent results. I don't like Florida much... but the fact is most professionals involved in the sport thought it appropriate that those two play...

Anyway, you ignored the compelling item that this great game would not have been played in your world -- and I argue we would've seen a blow-out if Ohio State faced them.

Much better, right?

John said...

fans can argue whether there was an upset or not, however if you have a playoff all you have to do is win, which is all you can really ask for as a player. The players for Boise State could do no more than they did this season to win a national title. I don't buy the whole 'teams will be a lock' thing because if you're not winning games you won't be in the top 32. You only play 8 games and you pretty much need to win them.

russ said...

http://www.salon.com/sports/col/kaufman/2007/01/03/wednesday/index.html?source=rss

Anonymous said...

JV...that was damn funny! I didn't care for the OU vs Boise game. I'm a Sooner fan...but they just didn't play the game that day. It was sad, sad, sad. Congrats to Boise.

Carly said...

I wish I had it in me.

Johnny Virgil said...

Carly, you gotta know better than to post something like that on John's blog. You left yourself wide open.

Other Brother said...

One more game. That's all it takes. One more game. After Ohio State rips the shit out of Florida, give them a week or two off and have them play Boise State.
Call it the "Let's Settle This BCS Bullshit Once and For All Bowl" brought to you by Nike.

John said...

Other Brother speaks the truth. Let's hash it out. I know Ohio State will kill Boise State, that's why I want then to have their shot, so I don't have to hear Boise State fans and players talking shit about our tainted National Title.

Other Brother said...

See? Since OSU crapped the bed, Boise State has a somewhat legitimate right to say that they are champs. Being the only remaining undefeated team, they should at least get a shot at the Gators.