A little known wrinkle in the BCS may get Texas to the Fiesta Bowl afterall

Quote by Pete Fiutak, Collegefootballnews.com:

"The conferences whose champions have a guaranteed annual berth in one of the BCS bowls are subject to review and possible loss of that guaranteed annual berth should the conference champion not have an average ranking of 12 or higher over a four-year period."

he goes on to explain:

"Miami finished first in the BCS in 2001 and 2002 and ninth in 2003. Pittsburgh
is currently 44th. That averages out to 13.75. To be 12th or higher over the
four-year span, Pittsburgh (or the champion) will have to finish 37th in the
BCS. There's a better chance of Oklahoma and Auburn fans respecting USC 's
Pac-10 schedule than there is of the Big East champ getting hosed out of the big payday, but if the average really is worse than 12th, the BCS should politely say thanks, but no thanks to the Big East and put Texas in. No one, not even Big East fans, could complain."

My sister emailed this to me, so I can't locate the original write up on this. But I assume he wrote this just before the latest BCS standings came out, since Pitt is now listed as 30th in the BCS standings.

Of course should Pitt lose this weekend, they would easily fall to 38th or worse, and Syracuse is waiting at #43. Both teams will be 38th or worse, and would force the BCS to reconsider allowing the Big East champion to participate in the Fiesta Bowl.

It's a good rule. It's made for a situation just like this. They should make good use of it should Pitt lose this weekend to South Florida.

 

My sister emailed me this one. I just came up with the analysis of the South Florida game and it's implications.

 

It's hard to say if Pitt losing will drop them below Syracuse, but it should. I mean come on, South Florida?

But it is a road game for Pitt. We shall see.

 

Pitt has had a funny season, beating teams in which they were underdogs and then losing to UConn, Nebraska and Syracuse. On top of that, they barely beat Temple on the road as well as Notre Dame. This is possibly the worst road team in the country (relative to how they perform at home).

So like I said, we shall see this weekend.

I say strip em.

 

Regarding the computer polls, if a team is not in the top 25, you use zero for 26, -1 for 27th, -2 for 28th and so on.

Pitt averages 35.25 in the computer polls and has a -.37 computer poll result.

If you didn't do it that way, how would you be able to decide who has a better BCS ranking between Syracuse and Pitt should Pitt lose this weekend. In that case, you could possibly have neither team with a single vote by the AP/Coaches and definitely neither team in the top 25 of any of the computer polls.

So you have to use negative numbers in order to correctly order teams out of the top 25 in the computer polls.

Pitt is now 30th, was 44th before they beat W. Virginia.