Out of curiosity, I wondered what the bowl landscape would look like under the “old-old system,” meaning pre-BCS, pre conference championships and pre Big XII merger. Here’s what I think the bowl situation for the five big bowls (under the old system) would look like: Orange: OU-Miami (OU wins the Big 8 which had a tie-in to the Orange, and the Orange Bowl always loved to have the hometown Canes in there) Sugar: LSU-FSU (LSU wins the SEC in a tie-breaker with UGA due to the head to head win; FSU is next logical “independent” choice) Cotton: Texas-UGA (Texas wins the SWC; UGA would not go to the Sugar for an LSU rematch, and this makes for an interesting matchup) Rose: USC-Michigan (no explanation needed) Fiesta: Ohio St.-Tennessee (I think these would be the next best available teams after bowl tie-ins) Obviously, these types of situations are what started the move towards our current system. We would have to hope for OU and USC losses, but a win over FSU might not be all that impressive, making it hard to earn the outright national championship.
I know it's not the main focus of this post, but why would there be a tiebreaker between LSU and Georgia? Georgia has 2 losses, LSU has one.
Good point, BayouBengal. The SWC/Big 8 is much harder to determine given the current situation, but the real point of this is to show how much more muddied the landscape would be under the old-old system. But, if Arkansas wins the SWC, Texas likely ends up replacing FSU in the Sugar. I'd still have UGA playing the SWC Champ in the Cotton.
Wasn't it originally the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl? I'd say they'd take TCU (since USM goes to the Liberty) against Northwestern. HOF has Boston College against Clemson. I'm not sure about the Aloha Bowl, though.
