60-13 Damn

[gratuitous]

Any questions, college football fans?

I mean, except for the standard one about why the NCAA computers seem to have a default SEC/Big 12 chipset. Exhibit A:

Oregon 60 UCLA 13
UCLA 34 Texas 12
Oklahoma 28 Texas 20

Oh yeah; Oklahoma deserves to be number 1.

[Tobin S.]

1. What happened to Boise State?

[gratuitous]

2. Boise State is another casualty

They're a double casualty in that they're out West, where sportswriters apparently think the brave white settlers are still fending off Injun attacks and mail still arrives by pony express, and that they play in a non-power conference, so their schedule isn't very highly regarded. I relish the times Boise State gets a crack at the Big Boyz and shows them a thing or two about playin' football.

[Broken_Hero]

3. I hope U of O keeps it rolling along...

I agree about the OU bias that many pollsters have, hell last year they were 2-2 and still ranked number 15(or so), but I'm an avid OU hater.

[Arugula Latte]

4. Hey, UCLA -- Eat my shorts!

Go Bears, Go Ducks.

UCLA and USC and Stanford -- Bleah. x(

[fishwax]

5. it's not a default SEC/Big 12 chipset, it's that the computers don't count margin of victory

And so they give a lot of credit to Oklahoma since Oklahoma has played a tough schedule. Oregon's got some great wins--particularly the win against Stanford (the only team with a winning record that they've played), and I think it's appropriate that the voters have them at #1.

But they haven't faced the schedule that Oklahoma (or Auburn or LSU) have faced. If Oklahoma should get by Missouri this week, they'll have three wins against ranked teams--and two of those wins will be on the road. They'll be deserving of their ranking, no matter how many touchdowns Oregon put up against a UCLA defense that ranks somewhere in the 90s.

The transitive property doesn't ever work with college football scores. James Madison, after all, beat Virginia Tech by a larger margin than Boise State did.

[gratuitous]

6. And how do those SEC and Big 12 teams get ranked so highly in the first place?

It's a nice little racket, and I don't blame SEC or Big 12 fans for liking it. If the same system was instituted in basketball, Duke and Kentucky would have free passes to the championship game, too. But SEC or Big 12 teams that had to face Stanford, Washington, Arizona, USC and Oregon on an annual basis would be bawlin' for their mamas before the first year was over. Especially when away games were more than 100 miles from home.

[fishwax]

7. by playing tougher schedules

well, at least that's the case with Oklahoma, which has a respectable non-conference schedule year-in and year-out. That's why, when OU is undefeated (as they are this year) the computers tend to rate them highly. Human pollsters, on the other hand, have moved Oregon steadily up the rankings this year because they've been convincingly winning against their mostly below-average opponents.

"But SEC or Big 12 teams that had to face Stanford, Washington, Arizona, USC and Oregon on an annual basis would be bawlin' for their mamas before the first year was over."

:rofl:

Just for the record, Oklahoma has gone 5-2 against those teams in the last six years. Some Big 12 and SEC teams would suffer against the Pac 10, sure, but then again those teams aren't doing so great playing Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska or Alabama, Georgia, and LSU every year.