Boise State’s less-than-dominating 44-33 victory over Nevada on Friday night unfortunately supplemented the case against the Broncos, but if the Bowl Championship Series doesn’t include Boise State among its 10-team club, I’ll be more upset than a Tiger Woods agent.
Designed to create a suitable matchup for a mythical national championship, the BCS does a fairly good job of setting up that “extra” bowl game. But if it’s going to continue to provide the framework for the other top-tier bowl games, the system needs additional tweaking to lessen the impact of non-football considerations.
If these decisions focused on football, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Sadly, they don’t, so here we go.
Barring any unforeseen occurrences, the decision on the Broncos will likely rest with the Fiesta Bowl, which will have two at-large selections to make if Texas wins the Big 12.
After the Sugar Bowl grabs the SEC runner-up with the first pick in the BCS’ at-large draft, the Fiesta will snap up either Iowa or Penn State from the excellent traveling Big Ten, in what should be the only debated selection this season.
That’ll be followed by the Orange pairing TCU against the ACC champ.
Then, the Fiesta will leave undesirable Cincinnati for the Sugar and select from a diminishing pool of eligible teams that’ll likely include schools with two or even three losses … and undefeated Boise State, which recently enjoyed unparalleled success in that particular BCS bowl game.
Before you consider it a slam dunk that the Broncos would get the call from the Fiesta, think again. There has been serious talk about Oklahoma State being selected over Boise State. Heck, it happened last year when 12-0 Boise State was ranked ninth in the BCS Standings, but was relegated to something called the Poinsettia Bowl.
If it happened again, it would be criminal.
This time around — if they don’t lay the biggest egg since prehistoric times next Saturday in a home game against New Mexico State — the Broncos will be 13-0, likely ranked no lower than sixth by the BCS and feature a resume that includes a dominating victory over Oregon, which is in the very least the Pac-10 co-champion.
Seriously, how can the Broncos get bypassed in favor of the two-loss Cowboys or even a three-loss USC or Miami? That would be pure insanity. The BCS would be showing its true colors if something like that happened and there surely would be more congressional proceedings.
Hopefully, Oklahoma takes care of business in Norman on Saturday afternoon and removes some of that anti-Bronco temptation from the minds of powers-that-be.
“undesirable Cincinnati”? Arguably one of the three best offenses in the country, and they are undesirable? How about UC and Brian Kelly versus Florida and Urban Kelly in the Sugar/Notre Dame Head Coach Bowl? The final score could be 56-49. That would be more exciting than Boise St vs Iowa….snoooze…..
I don’t think John was talking about Cinncinati as an undesirable football choice. The Bearcats are basically an east of the Mississippi River team. Boise ( or any west half) team would have more recognition in Tempe.
Boise State’s wins come against teams with 43% winning percentage. That is BY FAR the lowest percentage of any of the top 25 BCS teams. PSU is the only other team that is close with 47%.
We really need a 16 team playoff!!! I can only imaging the cupcake schedules we’ll see from UF, Boise St, PSU…
You can’t reward a team for playing a poor schedule. And it is their fault. Schedule 3 tough non-conference games every year. The SEC teams play tough games almost every week and can’t gear up for any ne game. When you are in a weak conference, you can gear up for the few tough games. Finally, if you feel that you can’t control your schedule, leave the conference. It is not up to the BCS to make up for your inadequacies.
john tamanaha and cft and pft,
are you jerks using the term criminal as a civil rico term or in some other context?
we already know that the bcs and college football are civil rico enterprises.
however, you jerks are participants in those civil rico enterprises, in addition to conning money out of companies in which we own shares, for civil rico purposes and egaging in numerous acts of wire fraud for purposes of civil rico actions.
just like you jerks, the bcs will continue to do what benefits them financially until we take you all down in the civil courts before next season.
I think we’re all forgetting Georgia Tech. Boise State is done for the year. Georgia Tech SHOULD go on to beat Georgia and Clemson. If they win out, their resume is extremely impressive and they might leap frog Boise State. Alabama or Florida will be knocked down with the loss, and assuming Texas wins, the BCS should look like this…
Alabama or Florida
Texas
TCU or Georgia Tech
TCU or Georgia Tech
Cincinnati
Boise State
Alabama or Florida
I’m going to guess that Tamanaha didn’t actually watch the game between BSU and Nevada. Nevada scoring a TD with a minute left to make the score look closer than what the game really was doesn’t mean that BSU didn’t dominate from the opening kickoff (which BSU returned for a TD). Boise held the #1 rushing team in the country well below their usual (almost) 400 yards of rushing per game. Nevada being the #4 scoring team in the country and being held to 33 points was not bad and below their 41 point average.
AFT53, I’m going to guess that you are not a fan of BSU but instead a fan of one of those BCS teams that has refused to schedule BSU despite ESPN exposure, a big payout and being a home game with no return. Either that or you haven’t been paying attention to CFB news. No one wants to play BSU, even when presented with all of the advantages.
To address another key point, anyone who thinks that a school can just jump from conference to conference whenever they want just because the school’s conference isn’t challenging enough has their head up their own posterior. Teams must be invited and a conference must be willing to expand, and the conference actually gets to vote on having a team join or not. The PAC10 is NOT expanding and if they were, wouldn’t invite a smaller school like BSU with no travel partner. The MWC may expand, but in previous years their ADs have made it clear that they want to try to become a BCS AQ conference without adding BSU.
Some people seem to be forgetting that Boise State has one more game this year. They get a 13th game during the regular season due to travelling to Hawaii. Any team that plays a road game in Hawaii is allowed to add another game to their yearly schedule.
Funny to hear people complain about Boise’s schedule when Florida was the team that went out of its way to play almost nothing but cupcakes. Boise deserves a lot of credit for scheduling that Oregon game (as does Alabama for scheduling VA Tech).
Boise St. deserves a spot in the BCS and anything less than that will open up the BCS to more Congressional scrutiny for violating “Anti-trust Laws.”
why should the bcs reward the broncos for beating one team then lighting up local high school teams? If boise st is as good as they will tell you then why not schedule someone? they keep using the excuse that noone will play in boise, thats crap! Hasnt usc, nebraska, texas, ohio st, miami, and oklahoma to name a few went to high profile road games the last few years? Boise st doesnt want to play in noorman or the horseshoe in columbus, they only want one home game where the crowd and refs are on there side. Does anyone remember the beating they got from georgia a few years back? They do and thats why they dont travel during the season……….
If anyone is interested – here’s how I see it…
The whole deal with college football team dominance is a total farce because there is no real, honest way anyone can say that one team is better than any other unless there is a viable and legitimate playoff program. Most people would have a hard time arguing that the concept of Bowl games is not a mechanism invented by the BCS money managers to make boocoo bucks, based on a system where ambiguity exists almost every step of the way. I do have to admit though; their system is a pretty impressive success.
All that aside, I think the best way to make a true determination of who has the best team is to have a true playoff program. The ranking system is already set up to select the final eligible teams; putting it into practice would be stupidly simple. Here’s how I think it should work; let the sports junkies who rank teams do what they do, then take the top 6 or 8 or whatever, and match the 8th with the 1st, the #2 with # 7 and so on. Then, winners of those games advance in a manner we are all accustomed with from watching our kids play baseball, soccer, football, or xyzsport. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Cinderella team get a chance at breaking ice with the upper crust silver-spooner teams? How about it you match-makers out there – care to take a chance that make result in fireworks?