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NCAA College Football 2007 (1 Viewer)

Chris

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So, KU v VT ; OU vs. WVU..

Wow. I'm not sure KU can hang with VT, but I'd give them a shot at it, I think OU should ring the neck of WVU... LSU will wail on OSU.
 

Adam_S

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MU/VT, MU/WV, MU/OSU would all be great games.
but it'll be fun playing Arkansas, you'd think they'd be a natural rival, but we've never matched up against them traditionally, part of the problem with bordering eight states (Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois), is that even without an in state rival you can't play teams from all of them. Cotton bowl is pretty big but MU will get their first BCS bowl next year, maybe even an NC game. This year my private prediction/hope/pipe dream was MU/USC for the NC, and it came a heck of a lot closer than anyone would have thought. So that's now my official prediction for next year, MU/USC in the national championship game. :)

Illinois playing USC scares me a little, it'll be an interesting game, but I trust Coach Carroll to have a fully healthy team prepped and ready for their spread offense and mobile QB.
 

Adam_S

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I'm both happy for hawaii for making the bowl game, and annoyed at them for taking what was probably a slot Mizzou could have got. Hawaii should be in the NC game, their schedule was at least as hard as OSU, if not tougher, considering the amount of traveling they did. :D
 

Adam_S

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oh and VT totally deserves the spot LSU got on favoritism alone. VT lost to two teams ranked number two, and they later beat one of those teams in a rematch. LSU lost to two unranked teams. And the prior weak LSU was ranked below VT, they both pulled out wins this week, but LSU got a huge bump in the polls while VT had no change in many polls. I think a lot of the voters had just already decided early in the season who the best teams were, and those teams get preferential treatment despite the results on the field. See USC, our weakest team in six years, and we're probably at least three or four spots higher than we deserve to be after the game we played Saturday, with a nearly entirely healthy team.

Had LSU not made it the the NC I think LSU would have lost their head coach to Michigan as well. I think getting the NC bid is what really decided him.
 

King Ghidora

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Hey I never said that OSU was better than LSU or that the Big 10 wasn't off this year. To be honest I haven't seen too many Big 10 games against opponents from the other big conferences. I'll withhold judgement based on that.

I had hoped to avoid any predictions in this thread but I think you're wrong to assume that the Big 10 is incapable of competing. If we've learned anything this year it's that predictions about who has a better team is minefield of analysis and assumption. I can name you many instances of teams that weren't supposed to be able to compete but when push came to shove they certainly could. OSU was supposed to be much better than Florida last year and we know how that worked out for example. I could point out that Kentucky likely wouldn't have made the top half of the Big 10 just as easily as you contend that Ill. wouldn't have made the top half of the SEC. But I am not in the business of predicting things that can't be proven.

It so happens that I've been telling my wife the entire year that LSU has more talent than OSU (IMO) but they are also very inconsistent. OSU had a lot of talent last year but they weren't able to use it. Speed and size aren't the whole story and OSU proved it last year. I'll not even mention the Kentucky and Ark. games but rather I'll point you back to the early season contest between LSU and Tulane. The Green Wave outplayed LSU in a big way in the first half despite LSU having much more talent. LSU did lead at the half by a score of 10-9. Just as a very talented Ohio State team stumbled in the BCS championship last year LSU has failed to play up to their potential all year IMO. Potential isn't everything. If it was no team would have beaten LSU this year and OK likely wouldn't have been Mizzou twice.

There's a reason they play the games. I'm not here to defend the talent level or strength of schedule for personal reasons. But I will say that it's a mistake to look past OSU so easily. They have been severely hampered by the loss of the Chris Wells in many of their games and I strongly suspect he will be much more healthy for the BCS championship. If you think losing your best offensive weapon has no effect on your team I'll direct you to the WVU / Pitt game as an example.

Besides all this I think the Big East was down much more than the Big 10 this year. WVU didn't impress me nearly as much as past WVU teams and I've been a fan of their program for many years. And VT was overrated too IMO. I've seen them have much better teams and I've seen the ACC have much better years. Those are the conferences I see as being severely down this year despite what we hear and see in the media. WVU losing to Pitt should have proven that without a doubt. Now there's a team that wouldn't have made the top 5 in any conference. If you want to talk about conferences that are down those are the two I would point to.

It's always a mistake to second guess the Big 10 IMO because they don't play a strong out of conference schedule. It's hard to gauge that conference IMO because they don't give you enough to go on except how they've done in recent years. And I remember OSU taking Texas to task in the recent past. That's about the most important game to go on IMO. Yes OSU lost big to Florida last year but they sat for a long time without playing and IMO they really had never been tested after the early season. IMO Ginn was overratted because he lacked football skills and he didn't have to develop them because of his natural ability. I believe OSU is a vastly different team this year. If they can get Todd Boeckman's head back on straight and Chris Wells healthy then they should be a formidable force. They have players with actual football skills this time and Wells can generally carry a team buy himself if need be.
 

King Ghidora

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Kentucky was ranked 17th when they beat LSU. They had been ranked 8th the week before but they lost their first game to South Carolina. They returned to the 8th position after beating LSU. UK was actually a very good team but was seriously hampered by the loss of their top 2 running backs later in the season. Their qb, Andre' Woodson, was considered a Heisman trophy candidate at the time they beat LSU also.

I don't mean to step on anyone's toes here but I believe VT was very much overrated this year. They have been much better in the recent past IMO. They were blown out by LSU and Boston College was seriously over ranked at the time VT lost to them. There were some real cupcakes on VT's schedule and there really wasn't any tough opposition except for LSU and again they weren't even close in that game. Losing 48-7 pretty much meant they had no chance at being a BCS championship team this year. It was only the fact that the entire season has been turmoil that caused VT to be a top 10 team at all. They didn't deserve to be in the top 10 IMO. The strong conferences this year were certainly the SEC, the Big 12 and the Pac-10 with the Big 10 on the second level. This was a seriously down year for the ACC and that's the only reason VT appeared to be a good team.
 

Todd H

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I'm loving this BCS meltdown. By the time the last game is over, there's going to be a number of teams that can legitimately claim they should be the national champion.

Hopefully this moves us closer to a real playoff system, although I won't hold my breath.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Actually, you should be more upset with Illinois. That is the team that took Missouri's BCS bowl spot. The Ilini lost three games and finished third in the Big Ten, yet they got the Rose Bowl bid. That makes no sense to me.
 

Chris

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The only person responsible for taking Kansas slot is Missouri or Oklahoma. Under the BCS system, no league can have more then two teams in. So once OU and Kansas were in, even if a bowl wanted MU, they contractually couldn't take them.
 

Marty M

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As a University of Illinois fan, I was pleasantly surprised to see that we will be going to the Rose Bowl. I understand the frustration of teams ranked higher than the U of I being passed over for this bowl, but fortuneately for the U of I, the Rose Bowl committee really wants to maintain the historic Pac Ten - Big Ten matchup. See you in Pasadena.
 

Chris

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Missouri does have to feel bitter though.. a team they beat (Illinois) goes to a BCS, and they don't. Even though it's the rules that no league gets more then two, has to chafe their hide. Hopefully they will come out and play like it in their bowl game.
 

Joseph Bolus

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Actually ... Missouri beat *two* teams that are going to BCS Bowls:
Illinois and Kansas!!

It really makes no sense to me that they're not in a BCS Bowl ...
 

KevinGress

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Actually, I think the computer rankings make it more fair; people are too often swayed by what happened last week instead of taking the season in total. Now, I also think that the computer rankings need to take margin of victory in mind, as well. If you do that, then it's easier to see why LSU is in it- 2 losses, both in triple overtime.
 

SethH

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I tend to agree. However, if you look at Sagarin's rankings that DO use margin of victory, those would put a 3 loss Florida team in the National Championship game (against Oklahoma).
 

King Ghidora

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If I saw a computer program that actually took things like triple overtime losses into account and 40 point blowouts into account and late season improvements into account and injuries into account etc., etc., etc., then I'd be all for a computer system. But I don't believe that is going to happen in our lifetime.

I think the voters finally did take the entire season into account this year when they let LSU jump over teams in the final poll the way they did. How would LSU fans have felt if a team they beat by nearly 40 points ended up playing in the BCS championship when their losses were triple OT squeakers? Usually the polls don't take such things into account by I think they actually took a look at the teams and avoided the old method of voting based on the position team's held in the previous poll.

The fact is neither the computer rankings or the polls are perfect. That's why they mix them together for the BCS but we see clearly this year that that doesn't really fix anything because it can all be messed up bad.

The bottom line is we will never have a true college football champion until they have a playoff. I'm not talking just 4 teams either. They need at least 8 and maybe 16. It happens all the time in the 1-AA division. It can work in 1-A. The bowl system needs to be ended and I don't care how much tradition is involved. The fact Illinois got a Rose Bowl bid instead of Missouri shows that the old problems with bowl bids are still with us. I know they still want Big 10 vs. PAC 10 teams in the Rose Bowl. But sometimes that really isn't fair in the age of the BCS system.

Let them have the playoffs in the old bowl cities. They could still call it by a bowl name. Teams need to play where it's warm in January anyway. But there absolutely needs to be a playoff system.
 

Scott Merryfield

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Keeping the old bowl system around has nothing to do with tradition, Jeff. It's all about money. The bowls stand to lose their cash cows, and they are in bed with the NCAA to make sure that does not happen.
 

Carlo_M

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I'd really like to know how large of a cash cow the smaller bowls have. I know the big BCS New Years bowls have crazy payouts, but anything before Jan.1 (and even some lower tier Jan.1 bowls) have some pitifully low turnouts. I can't remember which bowls, but last year I tuned in to some that looked like they had 30,000 max watching.

Jeff, I gotta ask: is your font size button broken? :)
 

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