BCS Thoughts

Well, the bowl matchups are out, and while I was a little disappointed TCU didn't climb up the two spots in the standings that they needed to get a BCS bid, they probably didn't deserve a bid this year. The championship match-up of two SEC schools is the topic of converstation, after Oklahoma State made a big case for themselves in the final game of the season by blowing out Oklahoma 44-10.  They were edged out in the rankings by Alabama, putting two SEC West teams in the championship and creating a rematch of the 9-6 overtime game from November 5th. How should it have turned out? There are three 11-1 teams with a reasonable case for being in the championship game discussion: Alabama, Oklahoma State, Stanford, and Boise State.  Strangely, only one of these teams (Oklahoma State) won their conference, although Alabama finished behind #1 overall LSU.  I chose not to include 12-1 Houston, based on the fact that their best win was probably a road win over Tulsa.   First, let's compare their losses.  I have them ranked like this (by "best" loss):     1. Alabama (LSU, 9-6 (OT) @ home) 2. Boise State (TCU, 36-35, @ home) 3. Stanford (Oregon 53-30, @ home) 4. Oklahoma State (Iowa State, 37-31 (2 OT), @ Iowa State) These losses are difficult to rank, other than Alabama's is easily the least damaging, since they lost to someone no one else has beaten by 3 points in overtime.  I chose Boise State's as the second best, since they lost to a highly ranked team by one point on a last-second field goal miss.  Oregon is better than TCU, but Stanford was blown out by Oregon at home; it was the only blow out in this group (the others were OT or last-second losses).  Iowa State was easily the worst team that any of these teams lost to, but it was on the road and in double overtime, so it is not much worse than Stanford's blowout loss to Oregon.  Ultimately, it was the loss to this opponent (once they were already #2 late in the season) that cost OSU, but let's look at the teams' wins... Each team had an impressive "signature win": Stanford over USC 56-48 on the road, Oklahoma State's blowout of Oklahoma, Alabama's blowout of Arkansas, and Boise State's two-touchdown win over SEC East champion Georgia in Atlanta.  But once you get past the top win, the schedules begin to separate themselves very quickly: The top five wins for each school (by my estimation): Alabama 1. Arkansas 38-14 (home) 2. @ Penn State 27-11 3. @ Auburn 42-14 4. @ Florida 38-10 5. @ Mississippi State 52-7 Oklahoma State 1. Oklahoma 44-10 (home) 2. Kansas State 52-45 (home) 3. Baylor 59-24 (home) 4. @ Missouri 45-24 5. @ Texas 38-26 Stanford 1. @ USC 56-48 2. Washington 65-21 (home) 3. Notre Dame 28-14 (home) 4. California 31-28 (home) 5. UCLA 45-19 (home) Boise State 1. @ Georgia 35-21 2. @ San Diego State 52-35 3. @ Toledo 40-15 4. Wyoming 36-14 (home) 5. Tulsa 41-21 (home) You can see here that the depth of these schedules vary drastically.  Oklahoma State has more depth in number of quality opponents, but they faced their toughest opponents at home.  Stanford has a really good road win, but what they have left in even decent opponents, they got to face at home.  Boise State has no really good win except for the Georgia win.  I think we can eliminate Stanford and Boise State from the discussion here, since they didn't clearly distinguish themselves from Alabama or OSU based on the previous criteria. That leaves Alabama and Oklahoma State as #2 and #3 (in some order), just like everybody else has them.  Here are the top five wins by these two teams combined, in no particular order: Oklahoma State 44-10 over Oklahoma (home) Alabama 38-14 over Arkansas (home) Alabama 27-11 over Penn State (road) OSU 52-45 over Kansas State (home) OSU 59-24 over Baylor (home) So OSU has three of the top five wins between the two of them.  OSU's top win over Oklahoma was at least as impressive as Alabama's win over Arkansas.  But you might protest that OSU was winning at home, while Alabama had road wins over Florida and Auburn.  Well, here are the top nine wins between them: OSU over OU (BCS #14) Alabama over Arkansas (BCS #6) Alabama over Penn St (BCS #22) OSU over Kansas St (BCS #8) OSU over Baylor (BCS #12) OSU 45-24 over Missouri (road) OSU 28-26 over Texas (road) (BCS #24) Alabama 42-14 over Auburn (road) (BCS #25) Alabama 38-10 over Florida (road) Expanding the look to the top nine wins for each school adds in these road victories, but OSU still has five of the nine.  By BCS rankings, the victories rank like this (disregarding home/road and margin of victory):     1. Arkansas (Bama) 2. Kansas State (OSU) 3. Baylor (OSU) 4. Oklahoma (OSU) 5. Penn State (Bama) 6. Texas (OSU) 7. Auburn (Bama) 8. Missouri (OSU) 9. Florida (Bama) Oklahoma State has three victories over BCS top 14 teams.  Alabama's second-best victory is over BCS #22 Penn State.  Missouri fell out of the BCS top 25 this week (replaced at #25 by Auburn), despite being idle, so they are probably about #26 and more or less dead even with Auburn.  Florida is not ranked, so out of the eight wins by these two teams over BCS top-26 teams, OSU wins 5-3. If we choose to go deeper in the schedules, here are the next five best wins between the two schools OSU @ Texas A&M 30-29 (A&M ranked #8 at the time) OSU @ Texas Tech 66-6 Bama @ Mississippi State 52-7 Bama over Vanderbilt 34-0 (home) OSU @ Tulsa 59-33 OSU over A&M was probably the last real quality win on the schedule (depending somewhat on how one rates 8-4 Tulsa).  If you were to make one combined "resume" out of the two schools' records, with the top 11 wins and the least damaging loss, you'd take Alabama's loss but at least a majority (6-5, probably 7-4) of the wins would be from OSU's record. Conclusion I don't think it's clear cut one way or the other.  Alabama's one loss to LSU is certainly more excusable than Oklahoma State's loss to Iowa State.  (A win over LSU would have obviously been Alabama's best win; a win over Iowa State would have been OSU's 7th or 8th best win).  But Oklahoma State earned their 11-1 record by beating more quality opponents, which is surprising given the quality of the SEC, but Alabama did not face the best of the SEC East, Georgia and South Carolina, while OSU had to navigate the entire Big 12.  In the end, I think Oklahoma State is at least as deserving as Alabama. The tiebreaker is this thought: if we assume an Alabama win over LSU and do this whole comparison over again with LSU versus Alabama, we would have another stalemate.  In fact, LSU would probably have a better case than Alabama for the national title, based on wins over Oregon, Georgia, and West Virginia.  LSU would have more quality wins with the one loss being to one another.  You'd want a tiebreaker national title game the next week Although you could probably still make a case that LSU is #1 regardless of who they could hypothetically lose to in a bowl game, at least with Oklahoma State-LSU, you have the champions of the two best conferences going head-to-head for the title.  I think that is a more satisfying match-up and in the end will produce a more clear-cut champion.