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Thread: Dawgs are #1

  1. #21
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    The Birmingham of the North
    Quote Originally Posted by rockymtn devil View Post
    I'll tackle this in bullet points.

    1. I'm an Auburn fan (have family ties to it) and was upset to see them get shut out of that game.

    2. Bowling Green did have an impact. Besides Utah and Boise State, BG was the best Mid Major team that season (9-3; finished ranked 27 in the AP Poll) and was a good SOS/computer ranking boost to anyone's schedule. When BG dropped Auburn and took a game with Oklahoma, it initially had a double impact. Auburn lost that good SOS/computer boost and Oklahoma got it. In the end, when the Sooners beat out the Tigers, it had an impact. A third impact was that Auburn replaced the 3rd best mid-major team in the America with a 1-AA opponent. 1-AA opponents can do nothing but harm to your BCS score.

    3. The SEC was down.

    http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt04.htm

    This is Jeff Sagarin's 2005-2005 rankings. The SOS of SEC teams is pretty low. Auburn's schedule is 60; LSU's is 46; Georgia's 41. Given that the bulk of their games were against SEC teams, it's reasonable, IMO, to state that the SEC was down that year. Auburn suffered from that in the computer rankings (note: OU's schedule was ranked 13 according to Sagarin that year).

    In bowl games, ranked SEC teams did as follows:

    LSU-lost to Iowa
    Georgia-beat Wisconsin
    Auburn-beat VT
    Florida (not actually ranked, but 1st receiving votes)-lost to Miami
    I'm not claiming that the Bowling Green fiasco (they backed out very, very late, and Auburn had to scramble just to fill the date) didn't hurt Auburn. I'm saying that in the court of public opinion, Bowling Green had the most marginal of impacts. The Herbstreits and Corsos of the world were beating the drums for USC-OU, and they got it, despite the fact that OU's defense was very often a seive.

    Auburn absolutely dominated every regular-season game they played save LSU, and if Tuberville had wanted, he could have beaten Georgia by 35, Tennessee by 50, and everybody else by more than that. By the SEC Championship game, though, the handwriting was on the wall, and Auburn made a couple of mental mistakes they hadn't made all year to beat Tennessee by 10 points, despite completely dominating the game.

    Normally I'd be interested in crunching all of the numbers you could throw at me. But in that case, I watched all three of those teams all year, and based on their bodies of work, there's was no reasonable argument for Auburn not being rated in the top two by thinking humans, except that they started lower than USC and OU, which is where this thread was before the hijack. Auburn had a better quarterback, running backs, offensive line, kicking game, and secondary than Oklahoma, and it really wasn't even close. And fwiw, I'm not conceding a single thing to the USC "we were dangerously close to losing to 5-5 UCLA" Trojans.

    So, I readily concede the computers thought more of OU of USC, and that they would have thought more of Auburn had the Tigers been able to keep the BGSU game. But I won't concede that it would have mattered. The human polls drove everything, and there simply weren't enough people with Auburn in the top two for it to matter. Auburn was an objectively superior football team to OU, and it should have been clear to the country even before their pathetic secondary was completely exposed against USC.

    Thought experiment: Part I: If Auburn had started #2 and everything else had gone as it did, what would have happened?

    Part II: If the helmets had been switched, would Oklahoma have been able to overtake an Auburn team that had to hang on for dear life against two mediocre teams?

  2. #22
    I'm SHOCKED that this thread has digressed to a topic about a previous year in college football and a team that may or may not have been robbed. It just goes to show that it's near impossible to have a conversation about who's the best because of the stupidity of the BCS and the lack of finality with all of it.

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
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    Denver, CO.
    Quote Originally Posted by ugadevil View Post
    I'm SHOCKED that this thread has digressed to a topic about a previous year in college football and a team that may or may not have been robbed. It just goes to show that it's near impossible to have a conversation about who's the best because of the stupidity of the BCS and the lack of finality with all of it.
    The other side of the coin is that, given how this discussion has switched gears, the BCS is great for college football. Even if it's terrible (it is), and even if we all moan about it (we do), at least people are talking about college football and, more importantly, watching it.

    And the Auburn fiasco isn't special to the BCS. In fact, the BCS is more of an equal opportunity hoax than the previous system. Before there was 2004 Auburn, there was 1994 Penn State who, despite being #2, didn't even get a shot at the title, let alone a split. Under the BCS, teams from all conferences--and not just the Big 10 and Pac 10--have a shot at getting robbed.

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Acworth, GA
    Go Dawgs!!! Mark Richt is a great coach, and a better person. I am excited for us this year!

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by rockymtn devil View Post
    The other side of the coin is that, given how this discussion has switched gears, the BCS is great for college football. Even if it's terrible (it is), and even if we all moan about it (we do), at least people are talking about college football and, more importantly, watching it.
    No, no, no. People would talk about and watch the sport just as much with a more intelligent system in place, and quite possibly more.

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Denver, CO.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wander View Post
    No, no, no. People would talk about and watch the sport just as much with a more intelligent system in place, and quite possibly more.
    I'll look for a link when I have a minute, but ESPN ran a "BCS at 10" series earlier this summer and, IIRC, stated that ratings are up immensely for college football and bowl games during the BCS era.

    Link: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?id=3402083

    I think people forget how bad the old system was. Or, perhaps only those who lived in B10/P10 country were aware of it because we watched Penn State get hosed up close.

    Most importantly, we're getting very close to the start of the season and it should be a great one. We have a solid slate of national title teams that are all loaded--Georgia, USC, OSU, OU--and we actually get to see two of them play early in the year.
    Last edited by rockymtn devil; 08-21-2008 at 10:39 AM. Reason: Added link

  7. #27
    I agree it's better than the old system. It still sucks. And by sucks, I mean sucks a lot.

  8. #28
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    San Diego, California
    Quote Originally Posted by ugadevil View Post
    I'm SHOCKED that this thread has digressed to a topic about a previous year in college football and a team that may or may not have been robbed.
    Thank you, Captain Renault.

    Quote Originally Posted by ugadevil View Post
    It just goes to show that it's near impossible to have a conversation about who's the best because of the stupidity of the BCS and the lack of finality with all of it.
    I agree. But nearly as egregious is the blatent East Coast bias of fans and the media. The best football is played out west.

    Link

  9. #29
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by RPS View Post
    Thank you, Captain Renault.



    I agree. But nearly as egregious is the blatent East Coast bias of fans and the media. The best football is played out west.

    Link

    I have nothing against the Pac-10 but if the best football is played out there, then why has the same team won the conference for the past six seasons?

  10. #30
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    San Diego, California
    Quote Originally Posted by Classof06 View Post
    I have nothing against the Pac-10 but if the best football is played out there, then why has the same team won the conference for the past six seasons?
    Besides a nit-pick about shared titles, that fact illustrates the strength of USC rather than the weakness of the rest of the conference. Besides, if Dennis Dixon stays healthy last year, Oregon probably wins everything. It's tough to make an argument for the overall power of the SEC (good though its teams are) when the overall out-of-conference schedule is worse than that of many 1-AA (now some long name that shows that 1-AA championships are actually won on the field -- fancy that) teams.

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