The first preseason poll just came out and while it doesn’t mean anything I am going to use it today. The Bowl Championship Series is in its final year this football season. Lets take a look back on the end of an era shall we.
Eight teams have played in five or more BCS bowl games, four of those teams have winning records. Ohio State, Florida, USC, Oklahoma, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Michigan and Alabama are the said teams. Ohio State is the only team to play in nine games while Oklahoma played in eight Florida and Florida State each went to seven Virginia Tech competed in six and Alabama and Michigan were in five. Only two of those teams Ohio State and USC have six wins Florida comes in with five and Alabama has three victories. Looking back that’s impressive seeing that USC had one coach (Pete Carroll) go 6-1, Ohio State had two coaches (Cooper and Tressel) go 6-3 (Cooper 1-0), Florida also had two coaches (Spurrier and Meyer) finish 5-2 (Meyer 3-0), and Alabama also had two coaches (Mike Dubose and Nick Saban) to go 3-2 (DuBose 0-1). Carroll is the only coach will 6 wins himself but Urban Meyer holds the distinction of being undefeated in BCS games going 4-0 with Utah and Florida. Nick Saban is a combined 5-1 with his Alabama and former LSU teams. Saban and Meyer are the only two coaches on this list still active and could possibly add to their record in this final year.
Next season there will be a playoff system that will go into place. The two semi championship games will pit #1 seed vs #4 seed and the #2 seed vs #3 seed. The games will be alternated between bowls and will either be played on Dec. 31st or Jan 1st with the final game the on the first Monday after the semi championship games are played. The National Championship will not be a bowl game. There will be a committee will have to whittle down to get the four “best” teams by using their win/loss record, strength of schedule, head to head results, if they are conference champions. Just like any other system there will probably be issues and controversy but hopefully it wont be the mess as there has been in years past.
The committee won’t be using any polls to help them in their selection process but I am just for examples. If the top four where to finish as the preseason poll suggests the semi championships could be #1 Alabama vs. #4 Stanford and #2 Ohio State vs #3 Oregon. That would be awesome right well there’s a good possibility Ohio State could be left out looking in. The problem would be strength of schedule and right now Ohio State’s is very weak. Another SEC team could jump them and it would be SEC vs Pac 12 games.
This is where the non conference schedule is very key to teams like Ohio State while they wait for the rest of the B1G to get better. I know the Buckeyes have key non conference games scheduled years in advance and Oklahoma Sooners is coming up and years past they played teams like USC, Texas and Miami. No one could have seen that Cal wasn’t going to be as terrible as they are now. I love the idea of Ohio State playing other Ohio teams as a way to help that school out and its a way of giving back but it would seem to me those days might be coming to an end. Could we see where they play a game versus the SEC, Pac 12, Big 12, the ACC’s (new and old).
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