http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/story/9818296 That is a good take on ND. I personally agree with that and I hope Florida can get by Arkansas and keep this board pretty lively during the bowl season with an Irish-Gator match-up in the Big Easy. Of course if ND beats SC then my hopes go a little higher but that will be easier said than done. The other possibility I have seen for UF that is very attractive is if the Gators lose the SECCG and the Rose takes them to play SC or Michigan. I would hate to depend on that happening so a win over Arkansas and a conference championship is #1 on the wish list. Otherwise...games are taking shape with the Big Ten accepting 5 bids with Wisconsin in the CapOne and PSU in the Outback.
Mo, Don't count your chickens before they hatch. You have a bad FSU team to play on the road. Even a bad FSU team can beat Florida. Let us pray that you didn't jinx yourself. These boards would be too quiet and less entertaining if that were to happen. I like reading your stuff, even if I don't always agree with everything you post. You contribute a lot of excitement and interest to this board and make it fun. We can't have a quiet Mo ! :lol:
Thanks for your very kind words AJ....likewise. I agree that Joe Pa's best is behind him but even though the noles were truly average he did manage another big win last year in the OB in a very entertaining bowl game. BB has a pretty darned good bowl record as well so that was no small feat. Agreed that FSU can rise up and bite Meyer in the a** for his projections this week. Looking ahead with the Fla schedule can be embarrassing.
:roll: My God, what a trashy little article. The guy has Brady Quinn 5th on his Heisman list and even tosses in a drinking joke just to make certain that ethnic Irish like me know for sure that he's talking about us. He needn't have worried. I've run into guys like that all of my life and I can smell them before I see them. Have you read any real football articles? Most of the scuttlebutt here has the Rose Bowl undecided between Notre Dame and West Virginia...
ND in the Rose Bowl guarantees some kind of match-up...either with Michigan or with SC. Why would that happen if it can be avoided? I have seen ND projected in the Sugar musch more than the Rose. I have seen WVa as a Rose team but in more than one projection I have seen UF as well if they are 11-2 playing either SC or Mich.
Any of those matchups makes sense. I would prefer to not play MI only because we play them during the regular season and nothing but pride would ride on a rematch, unlike a MI-OSU rematch for the NC. I'd like to play a team we normally would not play, like FL or WV. However, a trip to the Rose Bowl would be cool regardless of the opponent. A FL-MI game would be interesting, as would a ND-FL matchup.
Check out the annual "root-for-chaos" scenario at the end... Merit has no place in BCS Article Last Updated:11/22/2006 02:32:52 AM PST Today's 101-more-reasons- to-dislike-the-BCS edition of The Sporting College football used to have this quaint little rule that the best and the biggest bowl games were only open to those teams that actually won their conference. It's a neat and reasonable little concept. Of course, there's nothing reasonable about the BCS. Five seasons ago, Nebraska failed to even advance to the Big 12 title game and still earned a bid to the national title game, where they were turned into corn mush by Miami. So here we are again. The prospective national title game could be a rematch of the Ohio State-Michigan game, and with no disrespect meant to the Wolverines, they did not win their conference title. So why should they get a shot at a national title berth? They had one Saturday and lost, and in today's cluttered world, that should be a consideration. By the end of the season on Dec. 2, there will likely be four teams with one loss (Michigan, the USC-Notre Dame winner, the SEC champ and Big East champ) plus unbeaten Boise State. Michigan had its shot. Indeed, if anyone from the Big Ten deserves a shot at Ohio State, it's Wisconsin, which went 11-1 this season and did not play the Buckeyes. Ahh, but that's another Ugly Betty aspect of the BCS. The Badgers have no access to the BCS because no conference is allowed more than two berths in the series. Well, if a team can play in the national title game without winning its league, why should another not even get a BCS sniff? It's just another reminder that the system has many flaws. Each year provides another example that the BCS is a power and money grab among the major conferences and that little things like merit and common sense are victims of BCS circumstances. Consider the Rose Bowl and Pac-10, which has always been perched on the periphery of the BCS system since it became a reluctant partner. The conference has received just two at-large bids since it joined for the 1999 bowl season, and league officials had to threaten breaking its contract to get one of those (Oregon State in 2001). Oregon deserved a shot at the title game in 2002 instead of Nebraska, USC was humanity's choice in 2004 but the BCS computers stiffed the Trojans, and Cal was bumped from a BCS bid in 2005. Now the Rose Bowl could lose both of its usual tenants, the Big Ten and Pac-10 champs, to the title game. It will happily accept Michigan or USC when the finals shake out, but finding a suitable opponent will be difficult. Rose officials wouldn't be automatically predisposed to take Notre Dame, since the Irish played both teams this season, so they would consider their options among the Big East champ (Louisville, West Virginia or Rutgers), a Southeastern Conference runnerup (Florida, Arkansas, Auburn or LSU) or Boise State. I'll pause a moment so your heartbeat can return to normal. They have no access to Wisconsin, because of the aforementioned rule. They couldn't invite Pac-10 runnerup Cal, because a team has to finish in the final BCS Top 14 for consideration, and the 8-3 Bears are now No. 19 and not going to move up after playing 1-10 Stanford this week. Oklahoma is a quality team but it is also outside the Top 14. This being somewhat snobby Southern California, local fans might not find any enthusiasm for one of the Big East teams or Boise State, which, by the way, did beat Oregon State, something USC can't say. The Oklahoma-Washington State game in 2003 had the smallest crowd since the 1944 game, when a war was going on and two west coast teams played in the game (USC and Washington). Locals might get excited about an SEC team. Southern titans were regulars in Pasadena before the Rose Bowl signed the Big Ten deal for the 1947 game. Auburn and LSU have history and travel well. But Arkansas played USC this season, and one wonders how many Gator fans would fly across country after losing the SEC title game. Double those considerations if it's Michigan, not USC, in the Rose Bowl, because it would be an intersectional between teams with no local flavor. That's why Notre Dame, which last played in the Rose Bowl in 1925, might still be a candidate even if we're looking at a rematch. USC may be No. 3 in the current BCS standings, but wins in its next two games, against No. 5 Notre Dame and bowl-eligible UCLA will more than likely lift it past idle Michigan when the computers get done byting the numbers. The Pac-10 is going to have eight bowl-eligible teams and might actually send all eight to games. USC will either be in the title game or Rose Bowl. Cal appears headed to the Holiday, Oregon State or Oregon to the Sun and the other to Las Vegas, UCLA to the Hawaii Bowl, and Arizona to the Emerald. The ACC isn't going to have a qualified team to fill its berth in the MPC Bowl in Boise State, so good neighbor Washington State is a logical fit there, and Arizona State is a solid bet to pick up an at-large berth in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego. There will be some interesting opponents, too. Cal might see Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl, one of the Big East runnerups will play in the Sun Bowl, BYU, 9-2, is host team in the Las Vegas Bowl, and Hawaii, also 9-2, hosts the Hawaii Bowl. Here's the annual root-for-chaos bowl scenario: USC beats Notre Dame but loses to UCLA. Arkansas loses to LSU this week but then beats Florida in the SEC title game, and West Virginia loses to Rutgers. That might leave Wisconsin (ineligible for a BCS berth), Louisville, Boise State (BCS game rookies) and LSU (didn't win conference division) ranked No. 3-4-5-6 in the final BCS rankings, ahead of the SEC champ, Notre Dame, Texas and USC. Not exactly how they planned it.
Hey JO'Co, I love your chao's scenario except for Florida. :roll: :roll: The BCS has become a nightmare in my personal opinion. Look at what's going on with Michigan and USC right now. There are three equal componetns, the Coaches Poll, Harris Interactive Poll, and a combination of all the compter polls that are used in the BCS. USC wins 2/3 but because of the way they are calculated Michigan is 2nd because the diffence in the computer polls, for one position yet, over rides the two human polls. Not a good system in my opinion and I came around some years ago to needing a playoff. Even if it is only 4 or 8 teams.