THE BCS POLL IS OUT

ND bends over for the computers, but they’ll get an at-large if they win out.

Pat Forde is angry.

One thing in that article is spot on. If the SEC produces undefeated teams two years in a row and is playing for bronze both times, that’s uber-screwed. In the last 25 years, the SEC has had 5 different teams win the national championship (and a sixth that should’ve had a crack at it last year), something no other conference can boast.

It appears the SEC is being “punished” for having a large percentage of its members that are capable of winning it all. There’s no 2 or 3 top dogs like most conferences, there’s 5 or 6 top dogs and that now seems to be its undoing in the BCS. The “pundits” can’t always predict which 2 or 3 of those 6 have a legitimate shot in a particular year. When they don’t, teams like Auburn miss out.

Oh, goody, the “Team X destroyed their season” argument. The reason the computers don’t like ND is because Purdue sucks, Washington sucks, Pittsburgh sucks, Michigan and State are mediocre, and USC isn’t enough to cloak the fact that ND’s schedule doesn’t seem nearly as daunting as it did preseason. He has a point that because MOV and H/R are specifically excluded from the calculations ND gets less credit than they deserve, but that’s not the computers’ fault. That’s the BCS committee’s fault for listening to the Southeast Louisiana States of the world. Don’t blame the computers for idiotic decisions by people.

As you say, it’s academic anyway. ND isn’t going to the Rose Bowl with two losses but will definitely be in the BCS at 9-2 and definitely won’t at 8-3. So who freaking cares? Someone with column space to fill, that’s who.

(Please note that this post doesn’t disparage ND in any way, OMG RICK.)

Brian (the MGO Brian, right? Just checking…)—you’re exactly right. The computers can’t take things into account. It sucks for us Domers that the teams that looked so good preseason turned out to not be. I don’t think that ND’s defeat of Pitt made them into a bad team—they were a bad team with a bad coach. Purdue-sucks. UW-Sucks. Not sure I’d say MSU is mediocre, but they aren’t top shelf, we’ve seen—besides, it was a loss. I don’t know how the computers take into account last second losses that hinge on one play, but I doubt they count any differently than any other loss. ND will make up the ground in the computers if we go 9-2. And we won’t if we go 8-3, and we’ll end up in the Gator Bowl (once again continuing the tradition of playing in my hometown bowl game whenever I’m halfway across the world).