Southern California and Texas are in control at the top of the Bowl Championship Series standings for the second straight week. However, their positions are reversed.
The Longhorns are ranked No. 2 in the USA Today and Harris Interactive polls and are ranked No. 1 in all five computer polls except Sagarin. Texas took over the top spot in the standings Monday, with a BCS grade of .9763. The second-place Trojans, who last week had a BCS grade of .9923, were not far behind at .9756.
Rounding out the top 10 are Virginia Tech (.9164), Georgia (.8679), Alabama (.8513), UCLA (.7384), Miami (.7114), LSU (.7065), Penn State (.6450) and Florida State (.5735).
If either GA or AL goes undefeated and the championship game is Texas v. USC I would not be at all surprised to see the SEC withdraw from the BCS....
Another year with a team from the toughest conference in America going undefeated only to see teams in joke conferences play in the big game would just be too much....
At least the Pac-10 has some decent competition, the Big 12 is just a joke.
I'd love nothing more than to see USC, Texas, VT and AL/GA finish undefeated just to further make a mockery of one of the most ill-conceived ideas in modern sports history.
Seeing USC drop out of the top spot with the joke schedule they play year in year out does not surprise me.
However, them falling behind a team like Texas, who also plays a pretty pathetic schedule, isn't exactly what I had in mind.
To be fair, I DO think that USC and Texas are the two best teams in the country this year. But I also think that the chances that either of them would make it through the season undefeated in a tougher conference are quite slim.
Texas vs. Virginia Tech is the best National Championship game I think we can have at this point. USC almost lost to Notre Dame. While ND is good, Texas and Va Tech are in another league. Usc gets off to slow starts every game, they can't come from behind like that against VA Tech or Texas.
This does create another major BCS issue ecspecially if 'Bama takes ths thing out undefeated. I'll make a thread about it in a bit.
OK, let's crunch some numbers.... We will assign a ranking of 30th to all the schools that the teams play which are unranked....
Let's look at the strength of schedules:
Texas' average opponent: 27.2
USC's average opponenet: 23.9
Va Tech's average opponent: 23.7
Georgia's average opponent: 25.6
Alabama's average opponent: 23.6
So, by strength of schedule comparison, it would appear that if all of: Texas, USC, Va Tech, and Alabama go undefeatd, they should be ranked as follows:
Alabama
Va Tech
USC
Texas
And Texas, should not even be in consideration if there are more than 2 undefeated teams, because they have by far the easiest schedule of the 5....
Plindsey, that's a great analysis but it's inherently flawed because you're basing it on opinion poll rankings. I understand that this is the data you have so that's all you can use, but there it is.
Your four-team undefeated scenario is yet ANOTHER argument for scrapping the BCS and moving to a playoff. How do you REALLY know that the Pac-10 is weaker than the SEC/SCC/Big XII? It's a crapshoot, and again all you can base it on is conjecture.
I'd really like to see a four-team playoff between USC, Texas, VA Tech and Georgia. That would be three must-watch games, don't you agree?
knapplc wrote:Plindsey, that's a great analysis but it's inherently flawed because you're basing it on opinion poll rankings. I understand that this is the data you have so that's all you can use, but there it is.
Your four-team undefeated scenario is yet ANOTHER argument for scrapping the BCS and moving to a playoff. How do you REALLY know that the Pac-10 is weaker than the SEC/SCC/Big XII? It's a crapshoot, and again all you can base it on is conjecture.
I'd really like to see a four-team playoff between USC, Texas, VA Tech and Georgia. That would be three must-watch games, don't you agree?
But how do you stop at four teams? I know the Big Ten hasn't been as good this year as in year's past, but I think their champion deserves a chance to play for the national title.
And the Big East is still considered a big conference (at least, they get a berth into a BCS game). Give West Virgina a shot at playing for the title.
While I agree that a playoff would better determine a national champion than the current system, I don't know that a four-team playoff would be the answer. Although I have to say, I'd like to see those four teams play too.
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by JayM09 » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:31 pm 
