This is clearly above the brainpower of LTP, so thank JHodges for this mindbender. All those in favor of figuring out a more efficient and quicker way to get bowl games slotted say "I". Away we go....
In a bit of a departure from Northwestern and it's current state of bowl-positioning, the current big debate in college football centers around Texas vs. Oklahoma and how Oklahoma ended up in the conference championship game despite identical records and Texas' head-to-head victory over the Sooners on a neutral field this season. It all comes down to the tiebreakers and the fact that those two teams and Texas Tech all have 11-1 records and 1-1 records against each other. Texas Tech has essentially been shoved to the side as they were destroyed by Oklahoma, currently ranked at #7 in the BCS, well below #2 Oklahoma and #3 Texas (again, despite an identical record). So, as a theoretical question, what if this 3-way tie occurred in another I-A/FBS conference and had the tiebreaker rules of that respective conference? Note that all have 11-1 records, 7-1 within the conference, 1-1 against each other, 4-1 within the division, and 3-0 against teams from the other division.
Under such a scenario, 5 of the 11 FBS conferences determine the division representative in the conference championship and/or BCS game based on final ranking in the BCS (this, of course, includes the Big XII itself), which would give the nod to Oklahoma in this scenario (which is what happened). Those conferences are: the ACC, Big XII, Big East, Conference USA, and Pac-10.
Three conferences do not receive automatic bids to BCS bowl games and do not have conference championship games and therefore do not have strict all-encompasing tiebreakers in place. Both the Mountain West (Las Vegas Bowl) and Sun Belt (New Orleans Bowl) would have the bowls decide which of the tied teams would be selected to represent the conference in their bowl game. The WAC would have a bowl placement committee (conference commissioner & athletic directors of non-bowl-eligible teams within the conference) decide the representative - note that their bowl placement committee also decides which teams will attend which conference-affiliated bowls except for Hawaii (Hawaii Bowl) and Boise State (Humanitarian Bowl) who are automatically placed in their "home" bowls if bowl eligible and not earning a spot in a BCS bowl game. These are outside the realm of this discussion, so I won't count them.
Now, things get a little more interesting.
Under Big Ten rules, teams would be compared based on the number of FCS (I-AA) opponents on the schedule, and since Texas Tech had 2 wins over FCS opponents this season (Eastern Washington and Massachusetts) they would be eliminated and the rules would then revert to the 2-team tiebreaker rules, giving the spot to Texas based on their head-to-head win over Oklahoma.
Under MAC rules, the tiebreaker would come down to "record against cross-divisional opponents in rank order" and I assume that to mean Missouri (5-3 in conference) would be placed over Nebraska (5-3 in conference) due to Missouri's head-to-head win over Nebraska. Since Texas was the only of the three teams to play Missouri (they won, of course), their 1-0 record trumps the others' 0-0 records and Texas would get the nod. (Note that each of the 3 teams played 3 cross-divisional opponents; Texas Tech and Oklahoma played the same teams: Kansas State, Nebraska, and Kansas; Texas shared Kansas but played Colorado and Missouri as their other opponents - all 3 had identical cross-divisional opponents' conference records of 11-13).
Finally, under SEC rules, the tiebreaker would come down to the BCS rankings BUT since the top 2 teams are within 5 places of each other in those rankings (Texas Tech would not be as they are at #7), a specific rule is in place that gives the spot to the head-to-head winner in the game between those two teams, which is Texas.
So, in the 8 conferences that have defined tiebreaker rules for all scenarios, Texas would gain the conference championship/BCS spot in 3 of them, while Oklahoma would gain the spot in 5 of them (all purely based on the BCS rankings).
Obviously this will be something that is addressed in the offseason by conference rules committees, although it is admittedly a unique sceario that only occurred thanks to a strong season by all 3 teams and Texas Tech's miraculous last-second victory over Texas. It's also interesting since the BCS is essentially being used for something it's not meant to do -decide conference championships. The BCS is designed to determine the #1 and #2 teams in the nation and to list the top 14 teams for the purposes of determining at-large BCS bowl eligible teams (also adding rules for non-BCS conference teams, i.e. automatically eligible if in the top 12 or top 16 if a conference champion is lower). And with the BCS formula now consisting of 2/3 polls (Coaches and Harris) it essentially turns into a big game of politics - as seen by numerous voters switching from Oklahoma to Texas this past week despite what happened on the field. Maybe they won't go to a WAC-like system of a Bowl Placement Committee (sounds eerily similar to the conference AD's voting one team in - like when the Big Ten voted in Ohio State over Michigan in the 1973 season despite both being unbeaten (they tied each other)), but something is bound to change in the system to prevent something like this from occurring again.
Now back to awaiting NU's destination...
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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3 comments:
Great article!
I like this also, but I'm not sure you are interpreting the MAC rule (same as the Pac-10 rule) correctly. I think all three of the teams need to have played the "cross-conf rival". I could be wrong, but there are a lot of holes the idea that 1-0 beats 0-0, and what if it's 0-1 v 0-0?
My head hurts.
Hi LTP - great job, as always. Only 1 minor complaint. I'm not sure TT win v. UT was miraculous, in that they were in position to kick a field goal to tie before UT's corner and safety turned into spectators. Nitpicking. Anyway, living in TX the wailing is pretty much what you'd expect. I'm not convinced Mack Brown's whining (remember, he cried his way into the 2005 Rose, beating a good MI team by 1 and setting the table for their NC year) doesn't continue to be effective with voters. It's the computers that put OU into the Big XII championship game with the strength of schedule weighting. To some degree, I think that influenced voters as most would have known they needn't do anything different and OU would jump. That's really beside your point. Head to head should trump - but that still leaves TT screwed, a fact UT backers ignore.
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