Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I Love the BCS

I removed the embedded link because it was messing with our formatting on the blog, but I urge everyone to go view the song on Hulu:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/52186/saturday-night-live-update-bcs-song

I promise this is the last BCS and Utah post of the year, but I wanted to share this great video from SNL about how much Will Forte loves the BCS.

Also, three more additional points:

1) Utah had the 56th best schedule according to Jeff Sagarin. He has Penn State as the 55th toughest schedule and Notre Dame is 50th. Can anyone claim with a straight face that if one of those two "storied" programs had been the only undefeated team in the nation that they would not have won the national title? Exactly.

2) Even the focus on strength of schedule is a bit of a red herring, because it assumes that teams "slip up" against mediocre but not good teams within a conference. This doesn't happen to teams in the top 5-10. They lose to other good teams. Florida ended up playing 5 teams that finished the season ranked in the top 25 (and went 4-1). Utah played four teams in the final top 25 and went undefeated. I'll acknowledge that Florida's conference is tougher, but to me there isn't a huge difference between beating the 58th best team in the country in the computer rankings, such as Tennessee, or beating Wyoming, a team that beat Tennessee on the road but is still ranked 122. A top team is going to destroy both squads pretty easily. The true test is success against other good teams, something that Utah had more than enough of this season to justify their National Championship, which is how I will always remember this season.

3) I got really angry last night when I saw a Sports Illustrated commercial honoring Florida's win in the BCS runner-up game because now I can't subscribe to SI to get my limited edition t-shirt, DVD, and commemorative book in honor of the Utes' unrecognized national title. Oh well, at least the BCS saved me some money this year.

2 comments:

  1. And here is a fun email that has been making the rounds:

    After determining the Big-12 championship game participants, the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

    "Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work--including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule--our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking."

    Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories--Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by head-to-head contests--they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event."

    German Chancellor Adolf Hitler said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to enhance Germany's rankings. Hitler protested "Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces."

    The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented " France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2."

    Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.

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  2. Utes are national champs, nuff' said!

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