It’s a hell of a thing, getting bent out of shape about the insanity of the BCS standings, and–let’s be honest–it’s a treat. When you’re indifferent to the madness of the way the BCS ranks teams, it’s because your team sucks. In those rare instances that your team is so spectacular that you get to care, well… lucky you.
The funny thing about the BCS is that time spent trying to out-think it is time wasted. All you need is for your team to win its games–there’s a remote possibility that if you do that, you’ll still get screwed, but usually you won’t. One of my primary concerns in the past week had to do with the weakness of Ohio State’s claim on the top ranking in the BCS; turns out that resolved itself (thanks, Illinois!). I shouldn’t have worried.
That said, it’s fun to worry, and the new worry is that even if Oregon and LSU win out, one of them will get bumped off by a team from the Big 12. In the spirit of fun, I compiled a list of each team’s wins this season:
Hell. Pasting from Excel doesn’t work. Well, here’s what the spreadsheet tells us:
Oregon lost to California–a team ranked (like) 37th nationally, right? Oregon is 4-1 against teams in the Top 40, but it lost that game. The kindest thing you can say about Kansas is that they are undefeated against teams in the Top 40; the most straightforward thing you can say is that Kansas has not played a single team in the Top 40. They haven’t even had a chance to lose to a team of California’s caliber (increasingly small-caliber as it is). That said, if Kansas gets to 13-0, and does so by beating top 10 Missouri and Top 10 Oklahoma–they’ll have an argument to make. Until they win those games, they don’t.
(There’s national consensus that Hawaii is a paper tiger, but at least it has one win against a team ranked in the Top 40–Fresno State.)
Regarding LSU: their schedule chalks up like ours does. They’re 5-1 against the top 40, including a loss to ~27 ranked Kentucky. Funny thing is to see their schedule has delicious cupcakes–they’re 3-0 against teams ranked 90th or worse. Oregon hasn’t even gotten to play cupcakes that delicious; our cupcakes have glass shards and stuff in them (Stanford, WSU, Washington…). If they win out, they’ll add one more quality win (probably Georgia or Tennessee (the latter being of fairly dubious quality)).
Oklahoma has a respectable schedule, I guess. Yes, they ate 4 true cupcakes (teams ranked 90th or worse), and their loss was to a team ranked 65th or so. Their strong wins, though, are decent–they’re 3-0 against teams in the top 40, including a win over #5 Missouri. If they pile on a win against an undefeated Kansas team (assuming Kansas escapes Missouri), they look pretty good.
Really, if any of these teams win out (Hawaii excepted), they have a good case for being in the national title game. Kansas’ schedule has been a cakewalk, but they run into actual competition in the next few weeks. Oklahoma has had a fair-to-middlin schedule, and they’ll have to beat two teams ranked about 35th and one team ranked in the top 10 by December 1. LSU and Oregon have had comparable seasons, but LSU has one more clearly difficult game to play in the Conference Championship.
We know that either Oklahoma or Kansas will get one loss, since they’ll have to play one another if they keep winning. In LSU and Oregon’s upcoming six games, the probability of both teams winning out (assuming, optimistically, that we each have an 80% chance of winning every game we play) is 25%.
Just beat Arizona, and watch the magic!
