Now that the selections are final, it's time to look at what happened:

#1: Auburn

It's hard to argue that the top 2 teams didn't make it to the Orange Bowl. Depsite winning the SEC, Auburn did little with it's OOC schedule this year:

USC: Air Force, Colorado st., Notre Dame
OU: Bowling Green, Houston, Oregon
Auburn: ULM, Citadel, LA Tech



#2: Cal

It's a shame they are left out of the BCS. People looked at the score of the USM game and didn't consider: Cal played without their top 2 WRs for most of the second half. Cal played on the road against a bowl team. Cal had a late TD taken away ona bad call. Texas didn't even play this week.

This is a Cal team that lost it's only game at #1 USC and almost won before USC snagged a 23-17 win. Texas lost only one game, to #2 OU, dhutout 12-0.


To make things worse, Cal now plays int he Holiday Bowl against BCS #22 Texas Tech (7-4).

MEanwhile BCS ranked #9 Boise St plays #10 Louisville.

The onyl way that non-BCS conference teams will be able to improve their programs is by playing BCS conference teams in bowl games at a neutral site. Such non-BCS teams rarely can get a quality BCS conference school to play them at home and must go on the road.

With utah off to the BCS, the Liberty Bowl was left without their tied-in teams (CUSA and MWC champs).

What would have been best for all teams would have been to let Louisville and Boise st. make the next step.

I'd like to have seen a simple swap of:

Holiday Bowl (at San diego):
Boise St. vs Cal

Liberty Bowl at Memphis:
Louisville vs Texas Tech

Instead we get two top non-BCS schools beating up each other while Cal, the #5 team in the bCS playing the #22 team. This doesn't help anyone.

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Quinn,
What REALLY stinks is that Bowling Green was suppose to play Auburn! BG had a buy-out clause that was only $25k or so and took it in order to play OU for more money. You could honestly say that OU BOUGHT THEIR SHOT AT THE TITLE! Auburn had to schedule the Citadel, because there was not enough time to schedule a better opponant. Despite this, Auburn's schedule was ranked #9 and OU's was around 26.

On another thread someone said that they thought that there was a PAC-10 bias, and someone else thought it was a Big East/Big 10 bias. I would agree with the later, but I honestly think that there is a prejudice against the SEC. Probably from jealousy.

We need a better system, but the presidents don't want anything that even looks like a playoff. Coaches seem to be coming around, and even some ADs, but the presidents have the power, and they don't want it.

FBfan

1) If there were no BCS, USC would've been locked in the Rose Bowl and Cal wouldn't have even been considered. It is asinine that they could win this weekend and geth DROPPED in the polls, and Coach Brown's campaign for Texas was embarassing, but any whining over this just compounds the materialistic nature of the game.

2) ESPN's Daily Quickie on Page 2 has it right: The BCS was designed to match #1 vs #2. Period. The rest of the match-ups were incidental. Without the BCS each of the top three teams would be playing someone else, with perhaps Oklahoma-Utah in the Fiesta being the only conest among undefeateds.

3) Should Auburn have gone to the Orange over USC or Oklahoma? Possibly. But this whole "undefeated in the SEC" reasoning is 1) egomaniacal, 2) a slight to other conferences, 3) weak. On average the SEC is among the best in the country, but that doesn't gaurantee the single best team MUST come from that conference. The Big 12 south was rather stout, and the at large bid for the BCS was going to someone from either the PAC 10 or the Big 12, not the SEC.

4) I will agree the BCS would've made tremendous jumps if it went with the Plus-one model instead of the piggyback. But I'll also contend that 1-A would be better off without either, letting the debates rage on year after year while the popularity grows. What's more important is the journey, not the destination.

First off, while Bowling Green abandoned Auburn to play Oklahoma, Oregon dumped Nevada for the same reason... which probably happened after the Bowling Green switch. Credit Oklahoma, I guess, for working to improve what originally looked like a dismal schedule. Still, I think voters need to override computer tendencies toward schedule strength by actually evaluating talent versus talent on the teams actually in the hunt.

Now, rant time...

The "Presidents don't want a playoff" argument is, IMO, bogus.

I firmly believe said presidents want more money from a playoff system than they get from the bowl system in order to buy into it. So far, no dice.

I think I ran the reasons why into the ground last year, but there's a couple more:

* Who would watch a first-round matchup between Southern California and North Texas? If the NCAA took over the post season, they'd HAVE to be fair to ALL 1-A conferences.

* Since the bowls will not host playoff games, do you run games during Thanksgiving when kids are home? During winter break when everyone's gone? During the NFL playoffs?

OK, I'll drag the basic argument out of the ground for a bit. Bowls may like a handful of well-heeled donors to really soak them out of some cash, but the economic power of the bowls stems from the travel industry selling thousands upon thousands of those 4-digit tour packages to the regular fans. With a playoff, many fans of favored schools will opt for TV early on, those non-BCS upstarts won't bring 10,000 fans on the road, and few to none of the fans are doing 3 weekends out of 4 or 4 out of 5 without eschewing the tour bus. There's no added value to that. I estimate national sponsors have to make up for that... probably to twice what CBS pays for March Madness. That's 3 billion to ensure each major conference gets at least what they get now, and they are prevented from preventing some funds flocking to the little guys, and there's an extra bureaucracy skimming off the top.

Agreed. The fact that in the human polls it meant that some people were voting Cal below #6 and Texas at #4 is sad. USC, OU and AU 1-2-3, correct.

And if you are a Big XII coach, perhaps you can vote Texas #4 and Cal #5, but even that scenario just with the Big XII coaches wouldn't have been enough.

We were told that the human polls (AP and Coaches) would hold the most merit to combat the problems of 2003.

Well, like 2003, the computer polls made the decision final...one that will likely push the Rose Bowl to leave the BCS (since ABC retains the Rose Bowl and dropped the other games...the Rose Bowl onyl agreed to joint he BCS at the urging of ABC)






Cal/Tex were 4/5 in the AP poll as well as the Coaches Poll.



Polls Used in BCS Formula:

Coaches Poll
Cal = 4, Texas = 5

AP Poll
Cal = 4, Texas = 5



"Computer Polls":

Anderson & Hester

http://www.andersonsports.com/football/ACF_frnk.html

Texas = 4, Cal = 6


Richard Billingsley
http://www.cfrc.com/Ratings_2004/WK_15.htm

Texas = 4, Cal = 8


Colley Matrix
http://colleyrankings.com/currank.html

Texas = 4, Cal = 6



Kenneth Massey
http://www.masseyratings.com/rate/cf-m.htm

Cal = 4, Texas = 6



Jeff Sagarin
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt04.htm

Cal = 3, Texas = 6


Peter Wolfe
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~prwolfe/cfootball/ratings.htm

Texas = 4, Cal =6

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6 voters dropped Cal below #6:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-FBC-Pac-10-BCS-Disappointment.html

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I have to disagree on moving teams from the Holiday bowl and the Liberty.

Can't wait for the Liberty bowl game on TV matching two undefeated conference champions.

The Liberty bowl is spirt of what needs to be changed with the BCS.

California did not win its conference championship and the Holiday bowl sounds about fair.

I would have replaced Texas with Boise State as the more deserving BCS team.

Then California could have played Texas in the Holiday Whining bowl.