Good game on saturday. Michigan got a solid conference win on the road and took out almost every QB PSU had. Mich. definitely deserves their top five rankiing. I hope you enjoyed your time in Happy Valley. We'll get over our loss soon enough!
GO STATE!
re: Texas at #2
We'll never know whether Michigan is better than Texas or not since they will not play each other this year. So, who cares about this ranking? M controls its destiny: this team has nobody to blame but themselves if they don't win out.
re: LSU
What these Vegas oddsmakers don't take into account is that Les Miles is a "great" coach and his sideline presence alone should move the spread by a score or more.
If I must embrace communism to get what I want, than embrace it I shall. Amo il comunismo!
The argument cited here harkens me back to 1997 when Nebraxa fans claimed "The Vegas oddsmakers think NU would win by seven points! What more does one need to say?"
All we can use to judge a team is their performance on the field. Speculation about the opinion of gamblers couldn't be more irrelevant. If they had played one other, nobody knows for which team would have won. People could argue either way and make some very strong points. But because that is not a clear way to judge teams, their on-field performance must be the only measures we use. Now that we have a national championship game, this applies to the polls leading up to said game.
Michigan has not played USC, nor will they (not before bowl games, anyway). All we can ask ourselves is "which team has outperformed the other?" Making a "poll" based solely on conjecture is an extreme example, conjured up by someone who probably doesn't know much about college football in the first place. [See, now I'm conjecturing about the Steinberg because his blog is about "DC Sports" - how're the Hoyas doing this year? - and because he wears a silly hat.]
FTR: Steinberg gets a big thumbs-up in my book. And he spent an evening asking WVU fans how much Maryland would win by, which is more than any of us can claim to have done and survived.
Also, FTR: I don't want Vegas linemakers touching the sport, either. Though it's comforting to know that Texas beats most opponents in the empty stadium bowls 51+ times out of 100.
Sadly, we play Nebraska in Lincoln this Saturday. Where I hear some folks may show up.
Fortunately for you, Peter, so will Nebraska.
I think the Oddsmaker poll, coupled with the old 'number of losses' column from the original BCS system might make for a good list.
RE: Nebraska 1997.
Uh, pretty sure that the oddsmakers declared that ND would beat Michigan this year - how did that one turn out? Of course, many thought that but oddsmakers set lines where they think fans will put money and that's why lines are adjusted during the week. Does anyone think that a team's odds of winning move during the week along with the betting lines?
Bottom line - maybe USC would be Michigan right now on a neutral field but without the matchup we can only guess based upon available evidence (which in turn does not account for how teams matchup against each other).
This is an interesting study of who the oddsmakers would favor, but I think it has some fundamental flaws in terms of ranking teams.
Seriously, there's no way in any reasonable ranking that you could have LSU ahead of Florida, considering that Florida already beat LSU and has ONE loss to LSU's TWO...
The same holds true for Tennessee, which kicked the crap out of Cal but somehow is significantly behind them according to the oddsmakers. Anyone who watched those teams play knows who the better team is, so I think this sort of ranking loses its credibility to a certain extent.
Great stuff, Bri.
(and seriously, folks: Texas racked up 200 yards offense versus OU and rode a fortuitous turnover blizzard to the win... they aren't the #2 team in the country or anywhere close)
#2? Ha! We're not even in the top 10. Sure, the d-line is good, but the secondary often might as well not even be on the field. And on offense, there's always the chance that Greg Davis is going to call a hitch pass or all-comebacks or something equally stupid on 3rd and long. Colt is pretty good for a freshman, but he can only work with what he's given.
Taylor is going to throw for at least 400 yards this weekend. And the fact that fucking Baylor managed to pop a 56-yard TD run on our starters is not particularly heartening, either.
Someone gets it!
It's *not* about who's the best. It's not. At the end, it's about what they earned. Before the end, it's some mix of what they've earned to date and a best guess about what they will earn.
If you lose, you get back in the line. If you lose to Indiana, you get way back in the line. Period. I do not care that Iowa would beat Indiana 98 times out of a 100. They didn't. They're out.
Now a playoff makes all this clearer. We deal will this dissonance all the time. Were the Steelers the best team in the NFL last year? Was Florida the best basketball team? Don't care. They're the champions. Be nice if college football worked the same way.
Why isn't this same line of reasoning applied to basketball. I'm pretty sure the LVSC did not think FLA was the top NCAA basketball team last year. Lat's take away their National Championship and award it to Texas or Duke or whomever was their #1. It's insane we keep having the same discussion over and over. Pretty soon someone will come up with the solution....WE'LL HAVE A SEASON ENDING TOURNAMENT and MAKE LOTS OF MONEY. The winner will become the National Champion. Brilliant!
If Joe Theismannn didn't have a tongue, he wouldn't have been able to utter the most perfectly egotistical quote, I've ever heard. When he was going through a divorce, his soon to be ex-wife asked him why he was having affairs. Joe's response?
"God wants Joe Theismann to be happy."
Beautiful. Invoking the almighty and referring to himself in the third person in the same sentence to defend his philandering.
Dan, please pass the crack pipe. It appears as though you've got some good rock.
Which part of my comment do you consider factually incorrect, Peter?
The parallels between this argument and 1997 are, indeed, apt. It reminds me of this horribly written column I penned nine years ago about the split national championship. Save for a few factual errors (Akron Division II?) and a lack of eloquence in making my point, it's nice to see that it is generally the favored sentiment of most bloggers today: http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1...se/
sports2.html
Most of us are familiar with
USC>Ark>Aub>Fla>Tenn>Cal
What if OSU loses to Michigan and USC loses to Notre Dame (Also, WVU and Louisville each lose). It would create this:
OSU>Texas
OSU>ND>USC>Ark>Aub>Fla>Tenn>Cal
So should the national title game be a rematch of UM and OSU??
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