Instead of giving you a batch of links from the college football universe this week, we thought, since the season is winding down, we'd take a look the championship picture in the six BCS conferences. If it were up to us, the Big East and ACC wouldn't be included in those six, and in fact, let's get them out of the way first.
Big East
Contenders: Cincinnati, Pitt, West Virgina
You might be wondering why we're even delving into this, but the thought of another Pitt-Utah BCS game is just too exciting for us to pass up. Frankly, if you look at the standings, there are way more scenarios for this conference than we care to describe, so we'll offer the most likely cases.
Cincinnati will take on Pitt this weekend, and if the Bearcats win, all they need to do is beat Syracuse next weekend and they win the conference. Cincy's only loss came to UConn, and they beat West Virginia. So if WVU wins out (they still have to face Louisville, Pitt and South Florida) and Cincy does as well, they'll both finish with one loss and Cincy will win the tiebreaker. Pitt has the Cincy game, the Backyard Brawl with WVU and UConn left, and they will most likely need to win all three of those to win the conference. Of course, in the Big East, nothing is out of the question. But no matter who wins, we hope they play Boise State or Utah.
Prediction: Cincinnati
ACC
Contenders: Seemingly everyone
Good God, you need a PhD in physics to figure this conference out. Out of the 12 teams in the league, there are a whopping nine who have a conference record of either 3-3, 4-3 or 4-2. In a word: clusterfuck.
Of course the reason for this is that these teams are all evenly-matched. Or in non-political-speak, they all kinda suck. Again, there are probably 1,000 different scenarios, but here are the most likely.
In the Atlantic division, Maryland has the inside track to come out on top. The Terps are 4-2 while Florida State and Wake Forest are each 4-3. Maryland already beat Wake, and if they take care of business against Florida State this weekend, they’ll pretty much wrap up the division. If they lose, then all hell breaks loose. If you want to figure things out from there, feel free. In the Coastal division, Miami is 4-2 and they’re taking on 4-3 Georgia Tech this weekend. The winner of that game will most likely take the division. On a side note, remember when Miami was absolutely unstoppable? What happened? Blame the ACC.
Again, we never encourage you to watch ACC games, as they’re more frustrating than trying to watch Mark May on SportsCenter, who, by the way, would probably rank all the ACC teams ahead of Penn State if he had the chance.
But if you must watch the championship game, email us and tell us how it went if you’re still alive afterwards.
Prediction: Maryland
SEC
Contenders: Alabama, Florida
Allow us a moment to rant, if you will. Penn State got ripped a lot for it's soft schedule this season, to the surprise of no one. But mainstream media SEC man-love syndrome does not allow one to take an honest look at the schedule of a team like Florida. Florida has played games against three ranked teams, two of which have been badly exposed as incredibly mediocre (Georgia and LSU), and the other was #25 South Carolina, who your high school's JV squad could probably out-score. Add to that a non-conference slate including powerhouses like Hawaii and The Citadel, and even your mom could tell that schedule is a joke.
We're not trying to take anything away from Florida, they're a helluva team. (They're also a helluva team that lost at home to Ole Miss, but we digress.) We're just saying that there's always a counterargument, and if people want to point out crappy schedules in the Big11Ten, then allow us to do the same to the SEC. Moving on...
There's no longer any need for speculation; the SEC title game is already locked in. It's happening on December 6th, and Florida and Alabama will battle it out for the conference crown and most-likely a spot in the BCS title game. Watching Alabama squeak out some close games and seeing Florida just destroy teams ever since they lost, we will be shocked if the Gators don't win this one. And if there is any justice in this world, Nick Saban won't win a national title.
Prediction: Florida
Big XII
Contenders: Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma
Well, half of this conference is easy to predict. In the North division, we believe Missouri is locked in as the winner. The Tigers are 5-2 in the conference and second place Nebraska is 4-3. But even if Missouri were to lose their final conference game to Kansas this weekend and Nebraska ended up beating Colorado, Mizzou would be the division champ as they beat the Huskers earlier in the year. So essentially, Missouri is going to the Big XII title game.
Of course in the South division, things could get a bit more complicated. If Oklahoma knocks off Texas Tech this weekend, the South will most likely have a three-way tie between the aforementioned squads and Texas. If this is the case, check out the conference’s seven tiebreaker rules for a three-team scenario. Two points to make here: 1) how would numbers 6 and 7 ever come into play (because number 5 seems definitive) and 2) we could be wrong on this, but we think number 5 will have to be the deciding factor since all three teams will have beaten each other.
There’s no doubt that a three-way tie would be an absolute mess. Every team will have an argument to be the rightful division winner. But in the end, the computers will decide. Seems fitting, eh? Anyway, we think that if Oklahoma pulls the upset this weekend that they will have the best chance to get in. The win will be fresh in poll voters’ minds, and the loss to Texas seems like a long time ago. We think this scenario is the most likely, and if so, look for the Sooner to take a trip to the BCS title game.
Unless we understood the rules wrong, in which case, disregard everything we said.
Prediction: Oklahoma
Pac-10
Contenders: USC, Oregon State
This one is the most interesting to us, because it has implications for the Big11Ten champ via the Rose Bowl. Honestly, we kinda stopped thinking about Oregon State after they knocked off USC, but if the Beavers win their last two games, they're Pac-10 champs. That's right, a three-loss, #23-ranked team could be headed to the Rose Bowl. Woohoo!
Obviously, we are not happy about this scenario, no matter who wins the Big11Ten. Getting a Rose Bowl win over Oregon State probably isn't going to win you very many national respect points. But the fact remains that Oregon State is the only Pac-10 team who controls its own destiny. USC has one conference game left on the slate, and it's against UCLA, so we're assuming they'll win that one and finish 8-1 in the conference. The Beavers are at Arizona this weekend and face #24 Oregon at home in the final weekend of conference play. Neither of those are easy games, so start rooting for Arizona and Oregon if you care even a little about the Big11Ten's reputation.
Prediction: USC (please, God)
Big11Ten
Contenders: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State
I suppose we all know the scenarios by now, but what the hell, let's go over them one more time. Penn State controls its fate, and if they win Saturday against Sparty, then they win the conference. Simple as that. Ohio State is playing Michigan this weekend, so barring an apocalyptic meltdown, they will win and finish 7-1 in the conference. If they win and PSU loses, the Buckeyes are headed to the Rose Bowl, and this blog will probably shut down because we'll be wandering around aimlessly, pondering our broken existence.
Obviously Michigan State needs the most help to win the conference. Since they lost to OSU, they'll need to beat Penn State in the Beav and Michigan to beat Ohio State to have their ticket to Pasadena punched. Since there is about a .0001% chance that both those things happen (notice how we are avoiding the jinx-factor by saying both), we feel this is really a two horse race.
As a side note, should Penn State pull it out Saturday afternoon, Ohio State will claim that they are conference co-champions, since both teams have one loss, even though the Lions will get the BCS auto-bid (a la 2005). We have no idea why the Big11Ten allows this, because it is extremely annoying and makes pretty much no sense, since Penn State beat them straight up this season. Just another lovely quirk of college football.
Prediction: Penn State (duh)
2 Comments:
my guess, re the big XII is that, although it is really improbable - you can have a tie in the bcs.
Well, they could have the same average, but doesn't that tie get broken somehow too? I suppose it could happen. It would at least be interesting to see what kind of insane mess it caused if it did.
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