College Football Week 14: Controversy reigns
TIEBREAKER CENTRAL
Here’s what I don’t understand about the Big 12 tiebreaker debate: Everyone’s fascination with the SEC tiebreaker.
The SEC tiebreaker says that if the top two BCS-ranked teams in the three-way tiebreaker are within five slots of each other, you drop the lowest BCS-ranked team and go head-to-head on the other two.
Which I guess is OK. But how can anyone possibly argue that that’s a better system than the Big 12’s simple solution of going strictly by BCS.
The SEC uses the BCS to drop a team.
The Big 12 uses the BCS to elevate a team.
Why is one better than the other, other than the Big 12’s is less convoluted.
Here’s why the BCS uses the tiebreaker it does. What if Penn State hadn’t lost to Iowa. Think about what the BCS would look like:
1. Alabama
2. Penn State
3. Oklahoma
4. Texas
5. Florida
It’s possible there might be a little change, but not much.
And consider what the Big 12 would be facing. Penn State would be in the title game, and the Big 12 would need Florida to beat Alabama.
If the Gators indeed win under that scenario, you’ve got a 12-1 Florida battling in the BCS with a 12-1 OU or Texas. And every fraction of a point in the system would be huge.
Send the No. 2 (BCS) league team to Kansas City, and you risk not getting a team in the national title game when you could have had one with the No. 1 (BCS) league team.
It’s not very complicated, folks. The Big 12 does it right.
It worked out well for Oklahoma, bad for Texas. Maybe next time, it’s the other way around.
But the rule is fine.
TEN BIGGEST WINNERS OF THE WEEK
10. ACC: North Carolina State’s 38-28 victory over Miami made the Wolf Pack bowl eligible at 6-6 and gives the ACC 10 bowl-eligible teams. Virginia almost made it 11, finishing 5-7 after a narrow 17-14 loss to Virginia Tech.
9. Phil Fulmer: Give Tennessee its due. When the Vols fire a coach, they do it classy. Tennessee let Fulmer finish out the year, and they also gave him an honorable farewell, complete with a ceremony and a 28-10 over Kentucky.
8. Triple Option: While much of the rest of the country is throwing 60 passes a game and spreading the field like Band Day, Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson keeps using the option to great success. The YellowJackets won 45-42 at Georgia to finish off a 9-3 regular season. Expect more triple option next season from other ports.
7. Arizona State’s defense: The Sun Devils beat UCLA 34-9 by scoring four defensive touchdowns – interception returns by Troy Nolan, Travis Goethel and Mike Nixon, plus a fumble return by Paul Unga. Arizona State finished with 122 total yards, yet won by 25 points. I’ve never heard of a game like that.
6. Ohio State: Oregon State’s loss to Oregon put the Buckeyes back in the BCS bowl business. Ohio State likely is headed to the Fiesta.
5. Big East transplants: Virginia Tech and Boston College emerged from the ACC logjam to win their respective divisions for the second straight season. So in four years of the expanded ACC, five of the eight title-game participants have been Big East transplants, with no help even from Miami.
4. Oregon fans: Hard to have a better Saturday. You rout your arch-rival, at their place, 65-38, putting yourself in sunny San Diego and knocking the hated Oregon State Beavers out of what would have been their first Rose Bowl in 44 years.
3. Dabo Swinney: The Clemson interim coach was promoted to the full-time job after a 31-14 rout of South Carolina. The Tigers finished 7-5 after Tommy Bowden was canned at 3-3. But was this a knee-jerk move. Will Swinney be the next Bill Stewart?
2. Kerry Meier: One of the best college football stories in years. Kansas’ veteran lost a quarterback derby to Todd Reesing. Unlike most QBs, Meier didn’t pout or pack. He moved over to flanker, also worked as the backup quarterback and became a valuable member of the offense. In his last regular-season game, Meier caught 14 passes for 106 yards and two touchdowns, including the game-winner, from the quarterback who beat him out, with 27 seconds to beat Missouri 40-37.
1. Oklahoma: Lose to Texas and still have a shot at the national championship. Christmas comes early in Norman.
DOWNTOWN DELIGHTS
We went to Bricktown on Friday night for a family gather. My nephew was in town from Chicago, so my wife’s family all got together, and we shot our Christmas picture in front of the big tree next to Mickey Mantle’s.
Festive night. The Devon boat show was going on, complete with fireworks, and there were hundreds of people milling around. Really made you again appreciate the transformation of downtown OKC.
I even got to chat with John Arnold, who I hadn’t seen since we were kids.
The John Arnold Band performed downtown during the tree-lighting ceremony. John’s a country music artist of regional renown. He never really made it big in Nashville, but he’s been very popular for decades in Oklahoma.
We grew up on the same street in Norman; he’s three years older. One heck of an athlete back in the day. Football and baseball player.
The family settled on Chelino’s for dinner, which I thought was a good call. I love Chelino’s, and it’s one of the early Bricktown anchors.
However, I learned a valuable lesson. Never go to Bricktown on a weekend with a party of 14. The service was not good, our food came 10-15 minutes apart.
Let me promise you something. Some things are good cold. Fried chicken. Ham. Some people even say pizza, though I don’t concur.
But enchiladas definitely are not good cold.
REALITY RANKINGS
Rankings based not on what anyone thinks a team will do or should do, but on what they have done:
1. Florida: Don’t discount Tim Tebow for the Heisman.
2. Alabama: Don’t discount Nick Saban running the table.
3. Oklahoma: Don’t discount awful weather in Kansas City.
4. Texas: Don’t discount the Longhorns from continuing their campaign.
5. USC: Don’t discount Pete Carroll from trying to steal January thunder with the Rose Bowl matchup.
6. Penn State: Don’t discount the possibility that Joe Paterno makes the Rose Bowl his final game.
7. Texas Tech: Don’t discount a bowl letdown for the Red Raiders.
8. Utah: Don’t discount the Utes from pulling a BCS bowl upset.
9. Oregon: Don’t discount the Ducks from staging the highest-scoring Holiday Bowl ever.
10. Ohio State: Don’t discount the Buckeyes from playing Texas in the Fiesta Bowl.
11. Boise State: Don’t discount the Fiesta Bowl from taking a flyer on the Broncos.
12. Georgia Tech: Don’t discount the Yellowjackets from playing Nebraska in a rematch of the 1990-season Gator Bowl.
13. Georgia: Don’t discount quarterback Matthew Stafford from turning pro.
14. Boston College: Don’t discount the Eagles from playing in the Orange Bowl.
15. Oklahoma State: Don’t discount the Cowboys from being the preseason pick to win the Big 12 South next year.
MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR
Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year. It’s Christmas without the commercialism. We had 26 people, or was it 28?, at our house and had a great time.
My brother has started a tradition of bringing frozen shrimp as an appetizer, and I must have eaten 30 before lunch. Maybe 30 after lunch. And maybe 50 on Friday.
Friday might be my second-favorite day of the year. While all the girls go shopping, I generally have the day off, with nothing but football on the TV and leftovers in the fridge. Hard to beat.
TEN BIGGEST LOSERS OF THE WEEK
10. Fresno State: Time was, the Bulldogs were the mid-major bullies out West. No more. Boise State routed Fresno State 61-10 to cap an unbeaten season and remind everyone who is king of the WAC.
9. Florida State: Double whammy. While the Seminoles were losing 45-15 to arch-rival Florida – a 30-point home loss to the Gators – Boston College was beating Maryland, knocking Florida State out of the ACC championship game. Florida State hasn’t won its division since 2005.
8. Houston: With a chance to win the Conference USA’s western division, the Cougars suffered a 56-42 loss to Rice. Ouch. Lose the division and lose the city, all in one afternoon.
7. Oregon State: Rotten luck. With a Rose Bowl trip on the line, the Beavers were without star tailback Jacquizz Rodgers. Not that a tailback could have slowed the Oregon offense, which routed the Beavers 65-38.
6. Colorado: About to go bowling at 6-6, the Buffs had Nebraska beat. The Huskers faced 4th-and-25 from the CU 40-yard line in the final minute Friday. Then Alex Henery kicked a 57-yard field goal, and Nebraska ran back an interception for a 40-31 win.
5. Les Miles: From a national championship just last January and a 4-0 start this year to a 7-5 finish, including LSU’s 31-30 loss to Arkansas on Friday, Miles status has tumbled fast in the Bayou. Maybe everyone would have been better off had Miles taken that Michigan job.
4. Offensive masterminds: Hal Mumme and June Jones are two of football’s most innovative minds of the last 20 years. But this season showed that ingenuity can only go so far. Junes capped off a 1-11 record in his first year at SMU with a xx-xxx loss to Southern Miss. And Mumme’s New Mexico State Aggies finished 3-9 after a 47-2 loss to hapless Utah State.
3. Charlie Weis: Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, all the predictions came to pass. Notre Dame’s offense actually was just as bad as we thought. The Irish didn’t get a first down against USC until the final play of the third quarter of a 38-3 loss.
2. Texas: The Longhorns lost the tiebreaker in the Big 12 South’s three-way tie. Catch an easy interception against Tech or push Michael Crabtree out of bounds, and the ‘Horns are in the national semifinals. Instead, not.
1. Black coaches: The departure of Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom, on the heels of the firings of Ron Prince at Kansas State and Tyrone Willingham at Washington, leaves only three black head coaches in major-college football. Buffalo’s Turner Gill, Miami’s Randy Shannon and Houston’s Kevin Sumlin. Shameful.
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Comments
Agreed with Pat. I can’t believe how Mack left Colt in the game for so long post the OU/Texas game yet Bradford never played in the fourth quarter in almost all of the games post the Texas game. Bravo Pat and Bravo Stoops for showing character.
Austin Murphy of Sports Illustrated said it best: The BCS is designed to reward a body of work, not a snapshot in time.
Surprising how hard it’s been for the national pundits to get their arms around that simple fact.
The meeting in which this tiebreaker system was decided, no doubt, was attended by a representative from The University of Texas. It seems to me that if the fans of Texas have a right to be mad at anybody, it would be him!!!
Hey Pat, Boomer Sooner! It’s so sweet to get to play for our third consecutive Big 12 title AND at the expense of Texas. Life doesn’t get much better for the Sooner Nation.
I agree with Barry that the SEC tie-breaker isn’t really a better or fairer solution than the Big XII tie-breaker. However, no one seems to point out a bigger flaw in the SEC tie-breaker. Tech is 5 spots within Oklahoma and Texas. Why should Tech drop out of the tie-breaker when it’s so close to the other two? Tech is still considered a national championship caliber team. What if one year Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee are 3, 5, and 6 in the BCS and are all in a three-way tie in their division. Florida is the highest ranked team but lost to Tennessee the lowest ranked team. Could the SEC really justify dropping Tennessee?
The big 12’s tiebreaker is fine. It was made to try and give the highest ranked bcs team from the big 12 a chance to make it to the national title. This year would have probably been either OU or texas but there are other cases like in the SEC where you could hurt your conferences chances because you picked a team that was lower in the bcs.
Berry, are you saying the Croom, Willingham and Prince were fired because they were black? That’s absurd, just look at their records and you will see they were fire because they were incompetent as head coaches at this point in their careers. In Willingham’s case, his 0-12 season should pretty much eliminate him from consideration at any school, to be honest. Prince may very well succeed in the future, and Croom had five season but couldn’t get it done at MS State. If you want to make a point, you should address the issue of access to the search process, which already has minority interview requirements built into it. It doesn’t help to call something shameful if you have no solution. And it doesn’t help to hire a black coach that can’t produce, just to satisfy a principle. When they fail, as these three have, it just makes it tougher for the next guy to get hired.
Getting to the Big 12 championship without deserving it is embarassing. Stoops should defer and let Texas go. This would be the classy thing to do. Take a stand and let the nation know the Sooners don’t take championships they don’t deserve.
Texas didn’t deserve it either, since they needed a Tech win to go play Missouri. I like Berry’s explanation better than what I’ve heard elsewhere. It shows the importance of the non-conference season. Even with a last minute Chattanooga replacement, the overall strength of schedule is better. Berry, go on a national broadcast and explain it to everyone! Great job.
Nice article, but to clarify – Georgia Tech and Nebraska played in the Citrus Bowl after the 1990 season, not the Gator Bowl.
James Evans – Oklahoma’s average margin of victory was higher than texASS vs. the other Big 12 South teams. Oklahoma’s non-conference schedule was way more difficult than texASS; the Sooners defeated the Big East champion and texASS defeated Arkansas (scary). texASS did defeat OKlahoma 7 weeks ago, but as Florida fans like to say, “It’s not the same team”. We will be thinking of you as we polish our latest Big 12 and national championship trophies. Enjoy Phoenix, Oklahoma’s heading to Miami!!!!!
Texas fans remind me of Democrats after the 2000 election, whining and moaning about a system after the fact. Yes, Texas won in Dallas, and Yes, Gore won the popular vote… But Bush is president and OU is going to the Big XII championship.
At least Texas will probably have a winnable game against Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, and we can all watch Big Game Bob and Chokelahoma mail in another BCS championship laugher.
Berry,
I heard you on the radio this afternoon, then I got on here and read “Tiebreaker Central.” I am glad to hear you making these points. The Big 12 rule worked. It got the highest ranked team in the game. Now, they have one team on track for the national title game, and another team waiting in the wings. That’s good for the conference. Also, imagine if OU had beaten Tech by one point, in Norman. Imagine that, and the Big 12 having an SEC type rule. The madness would have multiplied. In that scenarion, Tech might not have slipped below OU. Mack Brown probably wouldn’t like the SEC rule so much, at that point. Also, the Big 12 rule really helps the conference in a situation where there are nonconference losses involved. I really like Jim Traber, so this is not a shot at thim. But, as you brought this up today, it was hard for him ito imagine a scenario where the top two teams wouldn’t be within five places of each other. But, it could happen, with nonconference losses. Think about USC and Oregon State, with Oregon State having two nonconference losses. Or, imagine if OU had lost to TCU and Cincinatti, and Texas, then gotten on a roll.
Anyway, I agree that the Big 12 rule is better than the SEC rule. The Big 12 rule worked for the Big 12. That is what it is supposed to do. This may not happen again for years. Or, with Tech and OSU elevating their programs, it could happen again as soon as next year. I think the Big 12 rule will work well in just about any scenario.
First, Texas should man-up and accept what has happened. Second, now that we have this experience, keep the system. Every school now knows that every victory is important, strength of schedule is important. I see this whole incident as a motivation, an incentive. Next time around, Texas may be the beneficiary and OU fans will have tl live with it. But if that happens, we need to show the class that some Longhorn fans didn’t. Simply accept what happened as the only real way to solve the dilemma and work like hell to beat your bowl opponent.
What the BCS did was simple…They handed the national championship to the FLORIDA GATORS. The only team in the Big 12 that could keep up with the GATORS was TEXAS, now that wont happen. We GATORS will get the Big 12 wantabees…OU…..GATORS 77 – OU 6…TEBOW will be eating hotdogs watching the game before halftime
This is a no brainer. No 2 loss team should play in any BCS tournament. You wouldn’t do that in soccer, volleyball, or ping pong…why would you do that in College D1 Football?
Look, if this is a Bowl Championship Series, then Boise State should play a Texas, or Texas Tech, in the Fiesta Bowl. Utah should play at the larger venue of the Orange or Sugar Bowl.
Here’s a couple items for consideration. First, an article from the Washington Post, and Second, an insiders insight to the Boise proposition:
Since the goal is to make a bowl game, it’s important to schedule quality opponents that will give you the strength of schedfule you need to be judged as having a successful season.
Boise State ranks first among the 14 BCS-eligible teams by scheduling and beating eight bowl eligible teams. The Broncos became just the fourth non-conference team in 17 years to beat Oregon in their home stadium, and also beat Nevada, Southern Mississippi and San Jose State on the road and Bowling Green, Fresno State, Hawai’i and Louisiana Tech at home.
Alabama places second in facing bowl eligible teams. The Crimson Tide are 6-0 with a game against Florida in the SEC Championship this weekend. Ball State and Utah are both 5-0, followed by Florida at 8-1, Oklahoma and Texas both 6-1, Texas Tech 5-1, then it’s Penn State and USC at 4-1, Cincinnati 5-2, and Ohio State (4-2), Texas Christian (3-2) and Oklahoma State (3-3) bringing up the rear.
“What the BCS did was simple…They handed the national championship to the FLORIDA GATORS. The only team in the Big 12 that could keep up with the GATORS was TEXAS, now that wont happen. We GATORS will get the Big 12 wantabees…OU…..GATORS 77 – OU 6…TEBOW will be eating hotdogs watching the game before halftime”
Sweetheart… Have you SEEN OU play? Do you REALLY think that Texas is the only team in the Big XII that can “keep up” with Florida? Obviously you’re not familiar with the best offense in the Big XII, an offense that NO ONE has shut down… Not even Texas…
I’m not gonna argue whether OU’s defense can shut down Florida (if these 2 teams are, indeed, matched up come January)… However, OU has enough firepower to match any score that Florida can make on our defense…
Admit it… You really don’t know anything about football, do you, davey-poo?
Oh, BTW, davey-love… Ole Miss… At home… ‘Nuff said…
GATORS 77 – OU 3. TEBOW and family eating hotdogs before the half in the stands…… What offence, the last 20 points on the oklahoma stepchild (osu ) were garbage points. We lost to Ole Miss because they had a TEXAS QB. OU will keep its losing bowl streak in tact unless the crash this weekend, which I hope they do. We want to play the Big 12`s best, not the imposters..
Dave, you’re a flippin moron. That’s a Moron with an ‘M’. Fl has held no one of any consequence to 3 points. You are not a real gator but a Texas Whorn Troll on our site. Go somewhere else.
Ok OU fans…so the BCS got the better of us Longhorn fans…so be it…it’s over. But, I hope everyone of you Sooners is screaming from the rooftop FOR Texas if you now have your “BCS religion” because it favored you…That is right Texas deserves something from the BCS..hear me out….
Texas deserves to play OU for the national title if Alabama is beaten by Florida – here’s why…
Texas lost to the #7 team (#2 at the time) AWAY by less than a touchdown and under a minute..If OU beats Missouri (and Alabama loses) – OU will probably be #1 – Texas will then have beaten the #1 team in the nation
Florida lost AT HOME to Mississippi !!!! Mississippi -who is not even in the BCS top 25..Just a reminder, Mississippi lost to Wake Forest (AWAY) and Vanderbilt and South Carolina (HOME)
So as you celebrate you “BCS victory” do not be hypocritical and not push Texas to be above Florida.
Let’s then see if you still truly believe in BCS justice
I’m with you Stewart. Texas vs OU in the Orange would be sweet.
Who did Florida beat to deserve all this attention? LSU and Georgia? Mighty stiff competition……….ESPN and the SEC are living last year. It was obvious after week one when then number 1 Georgia struggled with that power house Georgia Southern. Hey SEC, Daveinfloratexas and ESPN it’s time to visit 2008 and realize your only a step ahead of the Big 10.
By the way Trammel, you seem to have some sort of guilt thing going on. Any time something happens you just see skin color. Fulmer, Bowden, Mumme just to mention a few……..shamfeful!
It should be OU versus Texas in KC this weekend. If you really want the two best teams in the conference playing – there you go…
As far as UT over UF, I totally agree… I don’t understand the love fest with UF… OR why they get a free pass for losing to the SEC equivalent of Kansas AT HOME – missed PAT or not… For some reason, the media is infatuated with Florida and has been for awhile… Maybe it’s Tebow… Maybe it’s Urban Meyer… I don’t know… But the fact remains that Florida beat a bunch of nobodies – a couple of which were totally overrated (LSU anyone???) – that inflated their national standing and their sense of “being hot”… I’d be all for an OU/Texas BCS Championship Game, rather than a team that played (albeit in a dominant fashion) in an overrated conference…
Davey Poo… How can you say the last 20 points against Oklahoma State were garbage points when at least one of those was necessary for a victory? Because, you know… College games don’t end in a tie anymore… Or didn’t you know that? (I’ll bet you didn’t…)
You’re hilarious… You do realize that the “only team that could hang with Florida” very nearly lost to “stepchild” from Oklahoma AT HOME, don’t you? Oh, you didn’t? Not surprising…
I’ll bet any response from you involves Tebow and hot dogs… Because that’s all you can retort with… Florida education, huh?
I just read Mac Brown’s statement that he issued when Oklahoma finished in front of Texas in the BCS. He said “I am really disappointed for our kids … I will try to explain to them”. He made similar statements as he was on countless TV shows last week campaigning for votes, suggesting that he didn’t know how he could explain this to his kids. I think that is ridiculous is the nation to believe that all “Mac’s Kids” are so stupid they won’t be able to get it. I coach high school basketball and we treat our players like young men and we teach them from day one don’t let the game be close enough that one fluke play or one bad call could cost us the game. When we lose a close game and all our parents feel like we were robbed, we remind the players this is why we can’t let this happen and never put the blame on the officials. It seems to me this is part of growing up.
I guess Mac’s Kids just won’t understand:
1. Every game counts
2. That strength of schedule matters – yes that cuts both ways Texas is glad to be ahead of Utah and Boise State on that principle and Mac would have been on every show trashing Penn State and the Big 10 if they were still undefeated to move in front of them.
3. The computer is unbiased and it concluded that OU beating 4 top 15 teams including one on the road was better than Texas beating 3 top 15 teams none on the road.
4. That even though he and ESPN analysts shamed voters into voting for Texas it wasn’t enough.
5. That a three way tie breaker has three teams – that is why heads up goes out the window.
6. That giving up an 80 yard drive in the last 1:30 of the game to Tech took them out of the driver seat and they let someone/thing else decide their fate.
I guess I am just amazed that Mac’s Kids can’t comprehend those facts. Now Mac suggest that if they were in two other conferences they would be in the title game, well Mac wake up your in the Big 12 and you will be home Saturday. The fact that he is trying to encourage change in the 3 way tie breaker in the Big 12 is short sighted and just plain stupid. Mac will push for it as some sort of vindication. The fact is that it is that it serves the Big 12 best to have the highest rank team advance. What if OU was 2nd Ranked and Texas had three loses but only one in the Big 12 (beating OU) and when ranked 9 and Tech was at 10. It would be a disaster for the Big 12 if they had the tie breaker at head to head of the top two teams and it kept all Big 12 teams out of the National Title game.
Mac it is time to suck it up, say “we blew it in Lubbock and next time we are in the driver’s seat let’s work harder to stay there”.
MartzMimic Says:
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Hey Pat, Boomer Sooner! It’s so sweet to get to play for our third consecutive Big 12 title AND at the expense of Texas. Life doesn’t get much better for the Sooner Nation.
We know that life doesn’t get much better for the sooner nation, MartzMimic. sooner nation is in oklahoma.
Bad analogy Wes. Gore won the popular vote and was cheated out of the presidency by hacks on the Supreme Court who broke all precedent to even hear the case. The result was the unnecessary war in Iraq and over 4,000 dead Americans not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. I hardly think Texas being left out of a game is hardly at the same level.
This may be old news to some, but I think it’s relevant in light of the HUGE campaign Mack Brown waged to steal votes in the Harris and Coaches’ polls. I can’t take credit for this “research,” but I can probably provide links to confirm it.
In 2006, Texas A&M beat Texas in the last game of the year, and both teams finished 9-3. However, Texas finished well ahead of A&M in the Coaches’ poll. In fact, A&M may not have been in the Top 25. Oh, did I mention the game was played in Austin? Anyway, with both teams sporting identical records and A&M owning the precious head-to-head win, Mack Brown voted Texas SEVEN spots ahead of A&M in the final Coaches’ poll.
Does this take any of the p and vinegar out of Brown’s indignant lobbying this year? It does for me.
So is it just coincidence that every single other conference goes out of their way NOT to use the Big-12 tie breaking method? Instead, settling the 3 way tie straight from the BCS is ‘clearly’ the best method because the real reason conference champions are even named is for getting a team into the BCS national championship game?
If that really is the case, than where is the outcry to ditch conference records altogether? Why is it better to use the BCS rating for 5th a tie-breaker, and not the first criteria altogether?
If you have a shred of intellectual honesty, you’ll be demanding the Big 12 change its rules right now, change the rules to completely ignore the win-loss records of teams, and determine the participants of the Big 12 championship game based on the BCS rating.
Wait, what am I thinking ….why actually make the teams play (we’re obviously well past actual football games meaning anything) the higher ranked BCS team might lose! Better start lobbying that the team with the highest BCS rating is simply named the conference championship, right?
You can’t, with a straight face at least, argue that a method for performing a FIFTH tie breaker is best, if it’s completely counter to the principles behind the FIRST criteria, which is what would be used with no tie at all. After all, if there really is some overriding principal we’re only now becoming aware of, as the Big 12 frantically grasps for a fig leaf to deal with the national embarrassment, why should it only now come into use on a 5th tie breaker that will seldom come into play?
Nah …no after the fact rationalization going on here at all …..
Tim Flatt- Texas Tech had a 57 yard drive not an 80. plus, bob stoops has only won 1 BCS bowl and lost 5 while mack (thats how you spell it chokelahoma) brown is undefeated. Oh yeah some adults have a habit to call any body younger then them ‘kids’.
But, put that all aside the BCS took care of the mess, so if the Big 12 really wanted to have to best team going in to the BCS championship they should TEXAS VS. OKLAHOMA instead of a not so great mizzou team.
Hey Boob…. I mean Bob get your fact straight when trying to debate or win an argument. OU has been in to 6 Bcs bowl games. ( orange, rose, sugar, orange, fiesta, fiesta.) 2-4 in the bcs, and once again Texas has been to how many bcs games?… Yeah 2. You got asses handed to you by ou for 5 years, you choked against Colorado in 2001 when ou handed you the big 12. Maybe if Texas would have take care of business all those years ( OU 6 big 12 titles to UT’s 1). How many #1 rated recruiting classes has Texas had? Oh yeah 5 in the 10 years and 1 title to show. Choking is a daily occurence at Texas by your coaches. Should have scheduled better, not choked at tech, and hired espn to lobby for you. Just because your complaining worked in 2004 and the bcs jobbed a better Oregon squad.
Get over it show some class, like your qb and wish us luck in beating Florida! For Florida Dave…. That’s why they play the game. Last time ou went to south florida as an underdog lime this your fellow Florida bretheren look dishoveled like they didn’t know what hit them an left them with a gift, 2 point saftey.. OU 38-UF 35!
Maybe
How stupid is Mack Brown for thinking sportsmanship is rewarded in our civilization.
If you want to get ahead you need to learn to step on somebody neck when their down, not to show compassion. Just because the other team realizes the game is lost and puts in their 2nd and 3 stringers so they can get to play in a game is no reason for you to stop kicking them. That’s the message we want to send to our youths.