This is a really good article and does show the inherent problem with the BCS. It comes down to a publicity contest, with the computer polls just for "show".
Makes you wonder... if Miles didn't use that ridiculous (but somehow effective) "we never lost in regulation" argument would we have even gone to the NC?
Well you sure couldn't put VTech ahead of us. So that left teams like USC and OU, who were too far behind, and Georgia who didn't even win the East. I think it just made it easier for us to secure the #2 spot. I still say it was Herbstreit on national TV during the 4th quarter of the OU/Mizzou game prounouncing that he thought LSU deserved to be #2 helped make the difference.
Correct me if I'm wrong but the computer polls use to mean more until USC whined into 2003? Then that was changed?
The whole point of the BCS was to take the publicity out of it. To take data, spread evenly over a season and to all teams and then the raw data is used to pair the two best performing teams against each other because human's simply cannot be trusted to set aside their bias. Every year that passed, the data was weakened. After 2003 when the media annointed team didn't even make the final two, they pitched a fit. Instead of showing some backbone, the BCS removed the last unbiased bit of data (Strength of Schedule) and made it a popularity contest. They have no right to complain about the BCS because they're the ones that ****ed it all up.
This is correct. Remember, the BCS was also designed to avoid the situations where 2 teams are fighting for the MNC without playing each other in a bowl. Like it or not, it has done that nine out of ten times. The only way for it to happen this year is for OU to lose today and send Tex Tech to the BigXIICG. Then Texas could end up in the BCSNCG as the #2 team, but Tech would be #3, even though they have the same record and Tech won the game on the field. Still, I don't think anyone will really cry over that since OU demolished Tech. Determining a "champion" of college football has always been a popularity contest. The only difference now is that coaches have to lobby before the bowl selections, where before the bowls were locked in. But coaches did plenty of lobbying after they found out who their bowl opponents would be. All the talk doesn't change the fact that in 2007 LSU won the MNC by being the best of a weak field. No one had a win like us beating Va Tech. That was enough to swing it our way after all the games were played. And the play of the Tigers this year doesn't change that either. GEAUX TIGERS
It's not just the VaTech win, though. No one had as many wins over ranked opponents as LSU did, either and that's what set LSU apart in the computer polls IIRC. There will always be debate. Even if we have a playoff, there will be debate about the teams that were and were not involved to participate just like there is with college basketball and they start with 65 teams.
