Tuesday, November 14, 2006

BCS

It's that time of year again. Time for BCS controversy. I have a particular interest this year, as the Florida Gators are ranked #4 in the BCS. Clearly the winner of this weekend's Michigan vs. Ohio State game will be #1, so the question I am most interested in is, can Florida make it to #2?



It seems to me they will need some luck. Their final two regular season games are against Western Kentucky and FSU. Now in most years a game against FSU would be a chance to improve your BCS ranking, but not this year. The Seminoles are only 5-5 going into this week and just came off a game where they were shutout at home. In the BCS view of teams, they are a cupcake, only slightly better than Western Kentucky.



So that would leave the SEC Championship game as Florida's best chance to improve its BCS standing. Indeed, Florida could play Arkansas, another one loss, top ten team. A win over Arkansas would be huge, and could really push Florida forward.



Still, I think Florida needs to hope for USC to lose. They have home games against Cal and Notre Dame is ranked similarly to Arkansas, and Cal is far ahead of Western Kentucky or FSU. So if they "take care of business" it would seem like they would stay ahead of Florida. If they lose to Notre Dame, the Irish would seem like they would have a decent chance of passing Florida. It would be close, but I think Florida would stay ahead.



Of course the other wildcard in things is the loser of the Ohio State/Michigan game. Would it be too far fetched to see the loser of a close game, particularly if it was BCS #1 and road team Michigan, stay ahead of USC and Florida? It would seem kind of unfair for the winner of that game to have beat the other team twice to win a National Championship. That's what FSU couldn't do in 1996 to setup Florida's only National Championship. How many more years like this before we finally get a playoff...

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