College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

[Patman]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

That will change once Virginia Tech wins the ACC title and Boise smacks Nevada this week.

Boise will be #3 soon enough...Then the debate will begin who belongs in the championship once/if Auburn or Oregon slips up.

I may agree with the Nevada bit... the "ACC" title bit is farce except as, yes, we do allow people to vote on this and they do tend to be fairly silly people.

edit: That is to say, if VTech wins the league it doesn't make the SOS argument THAT much better... though, yes, it does become better. VTech will be forever anchored by the JMU loss.

 

[bronconick]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Florida State's losing streak to Florida is exactly one week shorter than Michigan's to Ohio State, so about all of these apply equally.

"The Da Vinci Code" had come out earlier that year. Not the movie. The book.

Saddam Hussein was still at large.

Outkast had a big hit with “Hey Ya”.

Theatergoers anxiously awaited the release of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King", one month later.

“Elf” was the top film that weekend.

The European Union had 15 members instead of 27.

The world had known the name "Steve Bartman" for about five weeks.

The last "missing" episode of the recently-cancelled Fox cartoon "Family Guy" had been aired two weeks prior.

Barack Obama was in the Illinois state legislature, and Sarah Palin was the chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

None of us had seen Britney Spears naked yet, and it was still an appealing concept.

LeBron James had been playing pro basketball for three weeks.

After a trip to Europe, a friend spent $200 developing my pictures into prints from the rolls of light-sensitive film on which they had been captured.

The CIA would still contend that Iraq had WMDs for several more months.

The two defending NFL conference champions were the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

A child who is in first grade today was born.

Avenue Q and Wicked had just opened on Broadway.

Arrested Development's first season had premiered several weeks earlier.

New episodes of “Friends” were being aired.

GMail and Flickr were still months away from Beta release.

Howard Dean's "scream" was about two months away.

The minimum wage was $5.15 an hour.

You could still buy a new Oldsmobile.

Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were still alive.

Tyrone Willingham had another year at Notre Dame.

Urban Meyer was in his first year coaching... at Utah.

The NFL's New England Patriots had a trio of rising-star assistant coaches who were expected to go on to great success in head coaching jobs: Charlie Weis, Romeo Crennel and Eric Mangini.

Terrelle Pryor was in middle school.

Rich Rodriguez would be the Big East Coach of the Year.

John L. Smith would be the Big Ten Coach of the Year. Related: 8 Big Ten teams have changed head coaches since then.

Notre Dame was on a 40-year winning streak against Navy.

Michigan had the longest active streak of bowl game appearances.

No Michigan team had ever lost more than seven games in a season.

No Michigan team had failed to win back-to-back games at least once in a season since 1962.

Every fifth year senior had left Michigan with at least one win against OSU.

And finally...

The last time Michigan beat Ohio State was November 22, 2003. Nine weeks later, Facebook was founded.

 

[MountieBoyOz]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

edit: That is to say, if VTech wins the league it doesn't make the SOS argument THAT much better... though, yes, it does become better. VTech will be forever anchored by the JMU loss.

Which is what the BCS wanted to keep Boise out of the title game. I'm sure Frank Beamer got a nice check for that effort against JMU.

 

[unofan]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

That will change once Virginia Tech wins the ACC title and Boise smacks Nevada this week.

Not a whole lot. The SOS calculations for the comptuers do not include bonuses for winning a conference title. Boise will get a bump simply because VaTech will have won more games, but there's no built in bonus for winning a weak confernece.

 

[Kepler]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Heh: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/colleg...anford-hires-jim-harbaugh-are-you-kidding-me/

For a minute there I thought they hired Art Schlichter.

 

[blockski]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Not a whole lot. The SOS calculations for the comptuers do not include bonuses for winning a conference title. Boise will get a bump simply because VaTech will have won more games, but there's no built in bonus for winning a weak confernece.

That, and VT is only one data point on BSU's schedule. What happens if Frenso loses to a mediocre Illinois team? One step forward, one step back.

BSU will see a modest bump from the computers, but that will be because of playing Nevada, not because of VT's results.

 

[alfablue]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

That, and VT is only one data point on BSU's schedule. What happens if Frenso loses to a mediocre Illinois team? One step forward, one step back.

BSU will see a modest bump from the computers, but that will be because of playing Nevada, not because of VT's results.

And what happens when Fresno gets beat by Idaho....

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Boise will be #3 soon enough...Then the debate will begin who belongs in the championship once/if Auburn or Oregon slips up.

I will be surprised to see BSU leapfrog TCU if both win out and imho that would be the right outcome.

 

[PrezdeJohnson09]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

I will be surprised to see BSU leapfrog TCU if both win out and imho that would be the right outcome.

How can you say that when TCU's best win was Utah whose stock is sinking faster than a hooker in a church right now?

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

How can you say that when TCU's best win was Utah whose stock is sinking faster than a hooker in a church right now?

Technically speaking, one of the greatest stories of redemption in the Bible is that of Mary Magdelene

 

[unofan]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

How can you say that when TCU's best win was Utah whose stock is sinking faster than a hooker in a church right now?

Because you don't look at just one game, but the entire body of work? Same reasona Straight B student has a higher GPA than a guy that gets 1 A+ and 3 C-'s.

Overall, TCU has unquestionably played the harder schedule.

 

[Proud2baLaker]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Ohio State president says Boise and TCU are not worthy of being in the BCS championship no matter what. Here's a fine quote from him:

I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day.

So apparently teams like Ohio, Eastern Michigan, Chattanooga, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Monroe, and McNeese State are part of murderer's row now. I mean I know he is talking about conference schedules but come on. Even the SEC and Big Ten have some weak teams at the bottom who at least within the conference could be considered the "Little Sisters of the Poor."

He has another quote there about how having a playoff would be a slippery slope to professionalsim. Hmmm, then maybe we should institute a BCS system for every other NCAA sanctioned sport because every single one uses some sort of playoff. Man what a tool.

 

[PrezdeJohnson09]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

http://www.teamrankings.com/ncf/rankings/teams/

I don't know the validity of these rankings but Boise is listed at 50, while TCU is 63rd in SOS.

 

[unofan]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Ohio State president says Boise and TCU are not worthy of being in the BCS championship no matter what. Here's a fine quote from him:

I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day.

So apparently teams like Ohio, Eastern Michigan, Chattanooga, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Monroe, and McNeese State are part of murderer's row now. I mean I know he is talking about conference schedules but come on. Even the SEC and Big Ten have some weak teams at the bottom who at least within the conference could be considered the "Little Sisters of the Poor."

He has another quote there about how having a playoff would be a slippery slope to professionalsim. Hmmm, then maybe we should institute a BCS system for every other NCAA sanctioned sport because every single one uses some sort of playoff. Man what a tool.

I've always thought tOSU was as close to an SEC school (as in, most likely to be corrupt) as you'd find outside of the SEC, with the exception of USC. Now I know why, they're led by a former SEC man.

 

[bronconick]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Ohio State's 2010 schedule using the current rivals yahoo 120 rankings, since without ranking all 120 teams, I can't find half of Ohio State's schedule

http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1156589

#86 Marshall
#28 Miami, Florida
#54 Ohio U
#113 Eastern Michigan
AT #42 Illinois
#90 Indiana
AT #6 Wisconsin (Loss)
#79 Purdue
AT #98 Minnesota
#30 Penn State
AT #24 Iowa
#31 Michigan

Hmm. 4 road games. 8 home games. The last two weeks were the first time all season Ohio State has played teams in the current top quarter of college football consecutively. If hell freezes over and Iowa craps the bed at Minnesota somehow, they'd manage to beat 0 ranked teams.

I guess Penn State/Iowa/Michigan is their "murderers row", despite only one of them being ranked, one starting a freshman walk-on QB and the last having a defense that can't stop Lingerie Bowl opposition.

Wow.

 

[Priceless]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Ohio State's 2010 schedule using the current rivals yahoo 120 rankings, since without ranking all 120 teams, I can't find half of Ohio State's schedule

http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1156589

#86 Marshall
#28 Miami, Florida
#54 Ohio U
#113 Eastern Michigan
AT #42 Illinois
#90 Indiana
AT #6 Wisconsin (Loss)
#79 Purdue
AT #98 Minnesota
#30 Penn State
AT #24 Iowa
#31 Michigan

Hmm. 4 road games. 8 home games. The last two weeks were the first time all season Ohio State has played teams in the current top quarter of college football consecutively. If hell freezes over and Iowa craps the bed at Minnesota somehow, they'd manage to beat 0 ranked teams.

I guess Penn State/Iowa/Michigan is their "murderers row", despite only one of them being ranked, one starting a freshman walk-on QB and the last having a defense that can't stop Lingerie Bowl opposition.

Wow.

And yet that site says they have the #39 schedule. Schedules must be incredibly weak.

 

[bronconick]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

And yet that site says they have the #39 schedule. Schedules must be incredibly weak.

59th in the Sagarin ratings, which is average.

 

[blockski]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Some SOS measures look at home/road/neutral sites, too. I would note that OSU's two most difficult opponents (Wisconsin and Iowa) were both road games for them.

That's the general argument against the WAC and MWC teams - the SOS rankings don't fully bear out the difficulty of playing on the road in the major conferences. It's not just that Boise or TCU has a weak schedule when measured in total, it's that there are very few games that are even potential losses for them.

Looking at OSU's schedule, even though it is certainly average (or even weak compared to other top teams), there are potential losses in there. Playing back to back to back also matters - neither TCU or Boise has to face a stretch of teams like Penn State/Iowa/Michigan, even if those are mediocre Big Ten squads this year.

Just for comparison, let's use that same power ranking broconick used for BSU's schedule.

16 vs. Virginia Tech
104 at Wyoming
52 Oregon State
114 at New Mexico State
74 Toledo
119 at San Jose State
84 Louisiana Tech
59 Hawaiʻi
89 at Idaho
78 Fresno State
25 at Nevada
99 Utah State

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

Typically, an SOS based on RPI is 2/3 opponents' winning percentage (not including games against the team in question) and 1/3 opponents' opponents' winning percentage (not including games against the opponent of the team in question).

And typically, there is a 1.4 multiplier for away wins (positive) and home losses (negative) and a 0.7 multiplier for home wins (positive) and away losses (negative). This is used to calculate the "effective wins" of each team used in the winning percentages.

 

[Kepler]

Re: College Football III: We may lose, but we keep the score close!

I've always thought tOSU was as close to an SEC school (as in, most likely to be corrupt) as you'd find outside of the SEC, with the exception of USC. Now I know why, they're led by a former SEC man.

Um. Miami? Florida State? Va Tech?

Unless you are counting the ACC as the SEC's farm system, which is understandable.

But even so. Nebraska? Oklahoma? Texas? SMU?

tOSU and the University of Spoiled Children are in fine company as dis-honorary SEC members.