Wow, November started and ended on a really sour note, if you're a Texas Longhorn fan. I found out about oklahoma's jump when Kayla and I stopped in Abilene for a meal at Chili's (Where small business gets done) with Kayla's cousin and her husband. I wasn't really surprised by the jump, since 0u did win by twenty points, and UT had a very small lead in the B(c)S polls beforehand anyway, but after getting home and reading this article, I've officially gone back to serious suicide watch territory. It seems that Texas actually increased their lead in the human polls, but got caught by the computers because of oklahmoma's big win on the road. What gets me about this is two-fold. One, had zero-u not gotten their late TD (with all the starters in, no less. Classy Stoops) and their tip-drill 'look what I found' TD by their tight end in the third quarter (I think) the margin of victory may not have been enough to pass UT in the computers. Second, the tie-breaker for the Big XII is obviously out of whack, but after reading the article it seems that the SEC has the three-way tiebreaker figured out. I won't ruin it for you, but if the Big XII had it right, on the field performance would mean something, and yes, Texas would be going to Kansas City next week. Read it and weep Longhorn fans.
Also, this marks the second time in three years that Texas beat both teams that ended up playing in the conference championship game. Awesome.
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Two Things:
1. Margin of victory is NOT factored into any of the computers at all. The BCS took that out a few years ago. Obviously humans can take MOV into account, but as you mentioned UT actually gained a bit in the polls.
2. I don't know how so many UT fans have refused to understand why a 3-way tie is impossible to "break" by head-to-head results.
Really this all comes down to the order of these games. If the UT/Tech game had been this weekend, there's no way that UT would be where they are in the rankings right now. The most interesting situation would have been if the UT/OU game was this weekend. Tech would obviously be ranked behind OU (due to the loss) but ahead of UT (due to beating them in the interim). So the question would be if a UT victory over OU would be enough to get the voters to ignore Tech's victory on the field against UT.
There's no doubt that no matter the result yesterday there's no way that someone wouldn't be screwed. I am sorry that it had to be your team though and you never know what will happen this weekend.
i know that margin of victory has been taken out of the BCS rankings. however, the margin of victory deal was the 'style points' that ou may (or may not) have benifitted from with the human pollsters. Bottom line, a 61-41 victory is more impressive than 54-41, even if the last TD is in garbage time.
The way the system is now, there is no fair way to break a three-way tie. The fairest way would be to play it out on the field, but there obviously isn't enought time to do that with conference championships/bowl games coming up.
The most realistic way to break the 3-way tie is the way the SEC does it, which is explained in the article: Drop the lowest BCS-ranked team of the three and use the head-to-head with the other two. Clearly, this isn't fool-proof, but at least it doesn't leave it all up to computers.
I agree that scheduling bit Texas in the butt big time in this situation. Texas played the toughest schedule out of the three, but their last three games were significantly easier than the first five in conference. Meanwhile, oklahoma got beat early, housed some cruddy teams, and finished the year by beating two top 15 teams.
It's been said that in college football it's better to lose early than late, and this is a great example of that.
I realize that naming his national security team might be foremost in President-elect Obama's mind right now, but Barack, my man, can you start throwing around a little of that political capital to bring the American people change they truly can believe in: i.e. an 8-team BCS playoff.
You gave Chris Berman your word, Mr. Obama. The American people will not forget that promise. We await your response.
Lance,
You're right that MOV does have some effect on the voters. I guess I just didn't think those garbage time TDs did much for OU since they already had them crushed pretty good.
Also, I'm going to disagree with the "at least then the computers don't decide" part of your comment. In actuality the computers are the only rational part of the equation. They don't care about when you lost are where you started the season ranked. They only care about how good the teams that you've played are, whether it was home, away or neutral and whether you won or lost (obviously to varying degrees for each computer system). They're obviously not perfect either but they aren't human and susceptible to human biases.
To the scheduling. You're right that UT's schedule hurt them. I think it did on a few levels. First, if they beat OU last weekend and had lost to Tech a month ago, their poll rankings would be better. Second, if they had blown out Missouri, OSU and KU the last few weeks that would have helped with the polls as well.
However, the biggest scheduling problem for UT was the out of conference schedule. They lined up Rice, Arkansas, UTEP, and Florida Atlantic. OU played TCU, Cincinnati, Washington and UT Chattanooga. Dr. Saturday does a good job of lining up their respective schedules here:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Settling-the-Oklahoma-Texas-debate-with-the-big-?urn=ncaaf,125519
I also like his post after the BCS came out:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/BCS-Realpolitik-Oklahoma-it-is-but-a-new-route?urn=ncaaf,125550
Alright, I've gone on long enough. I guess you can tell that I essentially agree with the way things came out (assuming obviously that changing the system to a playoff is off the table) but I cannot begrudge any UT (or Tech fan for that matter) that disagrees with me and feels their team got jobbed. That's because they did. One team was going to be left out that beat the team that went so there's no "fair" outcome.
Thanks for letting me monopolize your comments and keep the opinions coming.
Fair enough, Austin-quick point about the OOC scheduling-oklahoma played Chatanooga, a D1-AA opponent, UT played zero 1-AA's.
Also, you're not really including Washington as a 'quality' opponent for oklahoma, are you? Sure, they're in a BCS conference, but Arkansas is definitely better than the Huskies, and for my money, so is Rice.
Then again, i'm terrible at betting money, so what do i know?
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