The media pundits are confounded (now there's a shock). The talking heads on various sports gab shows expressed utter confusion on the Manti Te'o fake dead girlfriend saga. They want to point fingers, but are too perplexed by all the spin cascading out of Twitter.
That's where we come in. You have questions? We have answers. The 10 things you're just dying to know about the best tale coming out of South Bend since "Rudy" (yeah, that one was mostly fake, too):
1. Why is the Te'o Hoax the best sports story of the year, and maybe all-time?
Because it has all the requisite ingredients for a salacious tale, absent a criminal element. Nobody actually died (Te'o's grandmother did, but she was not part of the hoax). Nobody was seriously traumatized by it (as in the Jerry Sandusky case). And nobody was even defrauded of money or glory (as in the Lance Armstrong case).
Yet, it involves one of the biggest and most iconic brand names of American sports. It really doesn't get much bigger than Notre Dame football and few teams are also so universally loathed outside of its immediate fanbase. Right away, there's enough flood of Schadenfreude to overflow Notre Dame Stadium.
2. Who really got played for fools?
The mainstream media. Almost every major publication from Sports Illustrated to the South Bend Tribune got a crack at this fraud of a story, yet nobody even got remotely suspicious about lots of things that just didn't add up. It took Deadspin - love it or hate it - to come up with the goods to nail this to the wall. And yet, in the immediate aftermath, the media types were still the ones most willingly toeing the Notre Dame company line. Pat Forde, normally a reasonable sort, went as far as not only defending the school, but taking shots at, of all people, Deadspin, for breaking the story.
Sports media has always had a kind of "Liberty Valance" relationship with Notre Dame football. It's just so easy to burn the notes and say, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
3. Is it so hard to check the facts?
SI's Pete Thamel interviewed Te'o extensively for a feature piece during the season, and now he claims there were a few "small red flags" from his conversation with Te'o. If you read the transcript, they weren't red flags. They were atom bombs.
For example, if this person was the "love of your life," would you not know what she majored in college and what year she graduated? And you couldn't take the time to visit her after a serious car accident or attend her funeral? Could SI's phalanx of fact-checkers not verify a few of these very simple details? When I worked as a freelancer for SI, I was grilled by its fact-checkers for every minutiae. So this is not a sin of omission, but commission.
4. Will we ever hear from Te'o?
Not really. While Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick implied during his Wednesday press conference that Te'o would be made available the next day, Tom Condon, Te'o's agent, apparently nixed that idea. Te'o has left school after graduating in December and moved to Florida to prepare for the NFL Draft. Chances are his next public appearance will be at the draft, and at which time he could just dismiss what by then would be "an old story."
5. Is this going to hurt Te'o's draft status?
This is the NFL we're talking about, sonny. Te'o's missing about 100 tackles against Alabama hurt his draft status, not something inconsequential like a made-up dead girlfriend. Remember, Nebraska's Lawrence Phillips used his real girlfriend's face to fetch mail and yet he was still taken sixth overall in the 1996 draft. Unless you're physically incarcerated, it's all good.
6. Now, is there a big winner in this saga?
The SEC, of course. The SEC wins everything.
7. Then who's the big loser?
Oprah. Thursday was supposed to be the big relaunch of her fledgling OWN network when she got Lance Armstrong on the couch to confess all his sins. Now Armstrong is so yesterday's news that he's about as relevant in the minds of the American public as the war in Mali. What's Mali, you ask? Exactly.
8. Is Notre Dame off the hook?
Maybe. With an indulgent media willing to buy whatever it sells, Notre Dame will get through this mostly unscathed just as it did from the other scandals. Call it "Sex (Lizzy Seeberg), Lies (Te'o) and Videotape (Declan Sullivan)," if you will. If a school can skate on the death of a student videographer being put to work under extremely unsafe conditions and stonewall a sexual assault allegation that led to the suicide of a young woman, this is child's play.
9. Maybe Te'o is gay, and this was a cover story gone bad?
This conspiracy theory emerged almost immediately after the Deadspin story broke. It goes like this: Te'o's gay, so having a long-distance relationship was the perfect cover to fend off unwanted female attention on campus. And with her "death," he could ask to be left alone to grieve.
This narrative has some logic to it, but it's simply too far-fetched to be true. There are a lot of ways to stay in the closet so it makes little sense to generate so much attention on yourself.
10. So, what's the deal, then?
Te'o seems a naively earnest sort, so it's doubtful that he perpetrated the hoax himself. But once he realized he was duped, he did nothing to stop it and ended up helping to perpetuate it. He did it partly to save himself from embarrassment and partly to revel in the attention it generated for him. While Notre Dame was not complicit initially, it did not come forth to reveal the truth and simply played along and hoped it'd all just go away.
It almost worked.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Alabama Still No.1, Unanimously (Sort Of)
For the first time, at the urging of a few readers, the Guru is putting together a Simulated BCS Standings at the conclusion of the postseason. Besides addressing the faux outcry about how Notre Dame still finished first in one of the computer ratings, we also wanted to deal with ineligible teams and where they would've finished in the standings.
* Because the Harris Poll doesn't publish season-ending standings, we used the AP Poll as the stand-in. And also, since Ohio State and Penn State weren't eligible to be ranked in the Coaches Poll, we mirrored their vote shares in the AP poll in order to obtain their true rankings in the standings.
* The Colley Matrix is getting skewered for still having Notre Dame No. 1 after getting lambasted by Alabama by 28 points - in a game that wasn't really that close. But blame that anomaly on the BCS, which in 2002 decided to mandate that margin of victory can't be part of any BCS computers. So to the computers, all losses are treated as 1-point losses, and most computers don't automatically rank one team higher than another with identical records based purely on head-to-head results.
* Still, five of the six BCS computers have Alabama finishing at No. 1, coupled with unanimous votes from the AP and Coaches polls, the Crimson Tide still earned a perfect score in the final standings.
* Ohio State just nudged Notre Dame for No. 3, even though it was ineligible to play in postseason. Likewise for Penn State, which finished at No. 28.
* There is significant agreement between the computers and the polls as to which teams should be in the top 25. After Michigan - the only 5-loss team in the top 25, though it did lose to teams ranked Nos. 1, 3, 4, 8 and 22 - there is a steep drop to No. 26 Cincinnati.
* The ACC teams - Florida State and Clemson - ended up being the victims of their conference's subpar season. Even though both teams won their bowl games, they both finished outside of the top 10 because of weak computer rankings.
* A total of 42 teams appeared in the final standings, including back-to-back FCS champion North Dakota State, which received a lone vote in the AP Poll. This practice was allowed by the AP after Appalachian State upset Michigan in the 2007 season opener.
* One more note about the polls. The Coaches Poll had only 56 voters in the final poll, with the explanation that Mike MacIntyre, Sonny Dykes and Ruffin McNeill could not be reached in time to turn in their final ballots. Is this lame, or what? MacIntyre and Dykes switched jobs, but surely they have cell phones. And what's McNeill's excuse? Last we checked he's still at East Carolina.
* Is there any more questions about the SEC's dominance? Half of the conference (seven teams) is ranked in the top 23, including six in the top 13. Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten each placed six teams in the rankings, and the rest: Big East (3), WAC (3), MAC (3), ACC (2), CUSA (2), MWC (1), Sun Belt (1) and Notre Dame (independent).
* Because the Harris Poll doesn't publish season-ending standings, we used the AP Poll as the stand-in. And also, since Ohio State and Penn State weren't eligible to be ranked in the Coaches Poll, we mirrored their vote shares in the AP poll in order to obtain their true rankings in the standings.
* Still, five of the six BCS computers have Alabama finishing at No. 1, coupled with unanimous votes from the AP and Coaches polls, the Crimson Tide still earned a perfect score in the final standings.
* Ohio State just nudged Notre Dame for No. 3, even though it was ineligible to play in postseason. Likewise for Penn State, which finished at No. 28.
* There is significant agreement between the computers and the polls as to which teams should be in the top 25. After Michigan - the only 5-loss team in the top 25, though it did lose to teams ranked Nos. 1, 3, 4, 8 and 22 - there is a steep drop to No. 26 Cincinnati.
* The ACC teams - Florida State and Clemson - ended up being the victims of their conference's subpar season. Even though both teams won their bowl games, they both finished outside of the top 10 because of weak computer rankings.
* A total of 42 teams appeared in the final standings, including back-to-back FCS champion North Dakota State, which received a lone vote in the AP Poll. This practice was allowed by the AP after Appalachian State upset Michigan in the 2007 season opener.
* One more note about the polls. The Coaches Poll had only 56 voters in the final poll, with the explanation that Mike MacIntyre, Sonny Dykes and Ruffin McNeill could not be reached in time to turn in their final ballots. Is this lame, or what? MacIntyre and Dykes switched jobs, but surely they have cell phones. And what's McNeill's excuse? Last we checked he's still at East Carolina.
* Is there any more questions about the SEC's dominance? Half of the conference (seven teams) is ranked in the top 23, including six in the top 13. Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten each placed six teams in the rankings, and the rest: Big East (3), WAC (3), MAC (3), ACC (2), CUSA (2), MWC (1), Sun Belt (1) and Notre Dame (independent).
Monday, January 7, 2013
The Guru's BlogPoll Ballot (Final)
The Guru's final BlogPoll ballot for 2012, with notes below:
* OK, so Notre Dame was thoroughly exposed as a fraud. In retrospect, that wasn't hard to see. While nine of the Irish's 12 opponents went to a bowl game, they only went 3-6 and five of those teams were pounded - Oklahoma, Purdue, Navy, Pitt and USC. The only "good" win they had turned out to be Stanford, at the time yet to start the more dynamic quarterback Kevin Hogan.
* The SEC is once again the best conference, leading all AQ leagues with a 6-3 bowl record, including New Year's Day (or later) wins by Georgia, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Alabama. The only real disappointments were LSU, which lost a nailbiter to Clemson, and Florida, which was inexplicably routed by Louisville in the Sugar Bowl.
* Despite constant harping about the inadequacies of BCS 2.0, it'll be far superior to the current version - IF - it could've included Notre Dame, Alabama, Oregon and another SEC team in the Final Four. We could've had Alabama-Oregon or an all-SEC championship game - and either would've been preferable to the debacle in Miami on Monday night.
* The worst BCS conference once again is the Big Ten, which was lucky to finish 2-5, as Michigan State really should've lost to TCU to make it 1-6. The only B1G team that did its conference proud was surprising Northwestern, which finished the season with a 10-3 record and routed Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl.
* But the most disappointing team of the year has to be USC. My - and many others' - preseason No. 1 team finished 7-6, ending the disastrous year with a desultory loss to Georgia Tech in the Sun Bowl.
* Conference-by-conference tally: SEC (7), Pac-12 (3), Big Ten (3), Big 12 (3), ACC (2), WAC (2), MWC (1), MAC (1), Big East (1), Sun Belt (1), Independent (1).
BCS Guru Ballot - Week 15
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama Crimson Tide |  4 |
| 2 | Oregon Ducks | 1 |
| 3 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish |  -2 |
| 4 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | -2 |
| 5 | Texas A&M Aggies | 5 |
| 6 | Georgia Bulldogs | 2 |
| 7 | Stanford Cardinal | -- |
| 8 | Florida Gators | -4 |
| 9 | Florida St. Seminoles | 3 |
| 10 | South Carolina Gamecocks | 3 |
| 11 | Clemson Tigers | 3 |
| 12 | Kansas St. Wildcats | -6 |
| 13 | LSU Tigers | -4 |
| 14 | Utah State Aggies | 2 |
| 15 | San Jose St. Spartans | 2 |
| 16 | Louisville Cardinals | 9 |
| 17 | Oklahoma Sooners | -6 |
| 18 | Northwestern Wildcats | 3 |
| 19 | Boise St. Broncos | 5 |
| 20 | Vanderbilt Commodores | New |
| 21 | Texas Longhorns | New |
| 22 | Oregon St. Beavers | -7 |
| 23 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -4 |
| 24 | Northern Illinois Huskies | -2 |
| 25 | Arkansas St. Red Wolves | New |
| Dropouts: UCLA Bruins, Michigan Wolverines, San Diego St. Aztecs | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings
* The SEC is once again the best conference, leading all AQ leagues with a 6-3 bowl record, including New Year's Day (or later) wins by Georgia, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Alabama. The only real disappointments were LSU, which lost a nailbiter to Clemson, and Florida, which was inexplicably routed by Louisville in the Sugar Bowl.
* Despite constant harping about the inadequacies of BCS 2.0, it'll be far superior to the current version - IF - it could've included Notre Dame, Alabama, Oregon and another SEC team in the Final Four. We could've had Alabama-Oregon or an all-SEC championship game - and either would've been preferable to the debacle in Miami on Monday night.
* The worst BCS conference once again is the Big Ten, which was lucky to finish 2-5, as Michigan State really should've lost to TCU to make it 1-6. The only B1G team that did its conference proud was surprising Northwestern, which finished the season with a 10-3 record and routed Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl.
* But the most disappointing team of the year has to be USC. My - and many others' - preseason No. 1 team finished 7-6, ending the disastrous year with a desultory loss to Georgia Tech in the Sun Bowl.
* Conference-by-conference tally: SEC (7), Pac-12 (3), Big Ten (3), Big 12 (3), ACC (2), WAC (2), MWC (1), MAC (1), Big East (1), Sun Belt (1), Independent (1).
Friday, January 4, 2013
Win or Lose, Notre Dame Already Won Big
No matter what happens Monday night in the BCS championship game against Alabama, Notre Dame will be the big winner for 2012, and many more years to come.
Call it the luck of the Irish if you want, but they could not have picked a better time to put together a dream season.
As recently as the end of last season, it was legitimate to question whether Notre Dame was even relevant. Squeezed out - on its own volition, no less - of the mad conference realignment money-grab, Notre Dame has become a perennial also-ran in a landscape increasingly dominated by the SEC and other power conferences. The Irish had lost 10 of their last 12 bowls games, including nine in a row from 1994-2006. And their TV ratings have slipped so much that they were even mocked by their own network.
All it took was a 12-game winning streak to fix all that.
Expectations weren't high as the Irish began their third season under Brian Kelly, unranked in the preseason AP poll with a brutal schedule that included Michigan, Stanford, Oklahoma and top-ranked USC, with the latter two on the road. They were an independent outfit, an anachronism from a bygone era.
But as it proved this season, Notre Dame is uniquely qualified to strike out on its own. And independence is a vital part of its identity as the team rang up victories and cash registers alike.
Win or lose on Monday, Notre Dame will collect $6.2 million this season by playing in a BCS bowl game, which dwarves the payout to any given conference member. The Pac-12 teams, which lead the rest, will collect $2.48 million each this season by virtue of having two conferences members in BCS games to divide $29.8 million 12 ways.
Notre Dame went with a winner-take-all approach in the first eight years of the BCS, during which it earned $27.5 million by appearing in two BCS games. Starting in 2006, it opted for a more risk-averse route, accepting a smaller but guaranteed annual payment with a bonus in years it qualifies for a BCS game. Even if the Irish fail to make a BCS bowl next season, they will have collected at least $21.6 million over eight years, an annual rate of $2.7 million that outstrips every school during that timespan.
With the arrangement of BCS 2.0, Notre Dame likely will increase the BCS payout gap on its conference-affiliated competition. With six bowls and a total of 12 slots available annually, the Irish will have a better chance to become a fixture in the new setup, especially if Kelly can build on his success this season with more banner recruiting classes. In the new scenario, Notre Dame should qualify for a BCS game every season with two losses or fewer, not a particularly high bar considering it'll be playing at least five ACC foes per season by 2014.
And it gets better (if you're a hater, it might be a good time to close the browser now). Notre Dame's renaissance comes just in time as negotiations for a new TV contract heat up. NBC pays Notre Dame a reported $15 million annually in an eight-year deal that expires after 2015. And this year's TV ratings for the Irish, capped by a blockbuster 10.3 in the regular-season finale at USC and maybe double that for the BCS title game, will only reinforce their brand power and value.
Since most of the major conferences have recently signed new TV deals worth at least 20 million annually to each school, expect NBC to match that to keep Notre Dame home games on the Peacock Network. At the very least, Notre Dame's new deal should exceed the $17 million per school the ACC is getting, but no one should be surprised if the new TV contract pays the Irish $25-$30 million a year.
All in all, things have worked out swimmingly for the Irish this year. They beat the posse out of the fast-imploding Big East by putting all their Olympic sports teams in the ACC. The five-football-games-per-year agreement with the ACC allows the Irish to play a high-profile schedule without being too severely challenged. All the while they get to maintain their cherished independence as the only truly national program in college football.
And if they manage to beat Alabama and Nick Saban on Monday night? It's a prospect that just might be too terrifying for some to contemplate.
(FULL ARTICLE @ SB NATION)
Call it the luck of the Irish if you want, but they could not have picked a better time to put together a dream season.
As recently as the end of last season, it was legitimate to question whether Notre Dame was even relevant. Squeezed out - on its own volition, no less - of the mad conference realignment money-grab, Notre Dame has become a perennial also-ran in a landscape increasingly dominated by the SEC and other power conferences. The Irish had lost 10 of their last 12 bowls games, including nine in a row from 1994-2006. And their TV ratings have slipped so much that they were even mocked by their own network.
All it took was a 12-game winning streak to fix all that.
Expectations weren't high as the Irish began their third season under Brian Kelly, unranked in the preseason AP poll with a brutal schedule that included Michigan, Stanford, Oklahoma and top-ranked USC, with the latter two on the road. They were an independent outfit, an anachronism from a bygone era.
But as it proved this season, Notre Dame is uniquely qualified to strike out on its own. And independence is a vital part of its identity as the team rang up victories and cash registers alike.
Win or lose on Monday, Notre Dame will collect $6.2 million this season by playing in a BCS bowl game, which dwarves the payout to any given conference member. The Pac-12 teams, which lead the rest, will collect $2.48 million each this season by virtue of having two conferences members in BCS games to divide $29.8 million 12 ways.
Notre Dame went with a winner-take-all approach in the first eight years of the BCS, during which it earned $27.5 million by appearing in two BCS games. Starting in 2006, it opted for a more risk-averse route, accepting a smaller but guaranteed annual payment with a bonus in years it qualifies for a BCS game. Even if the Irish fail to make a BCS bowl next season, they will have collected at least $21.6 million over eight years, an annual rate of $2.7 million that outstrips every school during that timespan.
With the arrangement of BCS 2.0, Notre Dame likely will increase the BCS payout gap on its conference-affiliated competition. With six bowls and a total of 12 slots available annually, the Irish will have a better chance to become a fixture in the new setup, especially if Kelly can build on his success this season with more banner recruiting classes. In the new scenario, Notre Dame should qualify for a BCS game every season with two losses or fewer, not a particularly high bar considering it'll be playing at least five ACC foes per season by 2014.
And it gets better (if you're a hater, it might be a good time to close the browser now). Notre Dame's renaissance comes just in time as negotiations for a new TV contract heat up. NBC pays Notre Dame a reported $15 million annually in an eight-year deal that expires after 2015. And this year's TV ratings for the Irish, capped by a blockbuster 10.3 in the regular-season finale at USC and maybe double that for the BCS title game, will only reinforce their brand power and value.
Since most of the major conferences have recently signed new TV deals worth at least 20 million annually to each school, expect NBC to match that to keep Notre Dame home games on the Peacock Network. At the very least, Notre Dame's new deal should exceed the $17 million per school the ACC is getting, but no one should be surprised if the new TV contract pays the Irish $25-$30 million a year.
All in all, things have worked out swimmingly for the Irish this year. They beat the posse out of the fast-imploding Big East by putting all their Olympic sports teams in the ACC. The five-football-games-per-year agreement with the ACC allows the Irish to play a high-profile schedule without being too severely challenged. All the while they get to maintain their cherished independence as the only truly national program in college football.
And if they manage to beat Alabama and Nick Saban on Monday night? It's a prospect that just might be too terrifying for some to contemplate.
(FULL ARTICLE @ SB NATION)
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
College Football With an NFL Flavor
What if college football was, say, organized like the National Football League?
With the sport's powers-that-be rapidly moving toward another segregation of the haves and have-nots - just like when Division I football was split into I-A and I-AA in 1978 - the days of the super conferences hoarding just about every last dollar to themselves will be upon us soon enough.
They have the power and the clout to ditch the NCAA if they want to. So what if they did and formed a super division of top-echelon college football teams? We can have a balanced schedule, a sensible playoff, and above all, a legitimate champion every season. There will be less griping and more football. Who'd be against that?
It's probably not going to happen, but since we do traffic highly in hypotheticals, let's say it did ...
1. First, we have to determine who's IN the big boys' club. The easy thing to do is to include the five conferences that will comprise BCS 2.0 starting in 2014 - the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC - and their 64 members, plus Notre Dame. But to have balance, we need an even number of 72, which makes the math easier, and there are a few worthy candidates to choose from.
Boise State would be a no brainer, as are UConn and Cincinnati, which probably will both end up in a BCS conference at some point anyway. That leaves us with four more to pluck, and we would go with BYU for its pedigree, SMU and Houston, former members of the Southwest Conference now on the upswing, and San Diego State, which just edged South Florida for the last spot.
2. Then, we need to divide them up neatly and sensibly. With 72 members, this allows us to form two 36-team conferences, within each four divisions of nine tams. And to make sense geographically, we'd have a Union League composed of Big Ten and Pac-12 teams plus Notre Dame, and a Dixie League composed of SEC, ACC and Big 12 teams - plus a few variations.
For geographical reasons, we'll reassign Syracuse, Pitt, Boston College and Iowa State to the Union League, as well as add UConn, Cincy, BYU, Boise State and San Diego State. Naturally, SMU and Houston will join the Dixie League. Now you can draw a boundary along state lines from Chesapeake Bay to El Paso and the teams will neatly fall on either side of this divide.
3. Next, we can put together a balanced schedule. With each conference composed of four nine-team divisions, each team will play a full round-robin divisional schedule, plus games against a team from each of the conference's three other divisions and a game against a team from the other conference, for a total of 12 regular season games.
As for the postseason, the eight divisional winners would qualify for the playoffs, with first-round winners matched up for the conference championship and then conference winners would play in the College Football Championship, staged annually at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1. At the most, a team would play 15 games in a season, exactly the same number as the setup in BCS 2.0.
4. And the divisions, with an eye on preserving and restoring college football's cherished rivalries, would look like this:
Northern League
With the sport's powers-that-be rapidly moving toward another segregation of the haves and have-nots - just like when Division I football was split into I-A and I-AA in 1978 - the days of the super conferences hoarding just about every last dollar to themselves will be upon us soon enough.
They have the power and the clout to ditch the NCAA if they want to. So what if they did and formed a super division of top-echelon college football teams? We can have a balanced schedule, a sensible playoff, and above all, a legitimate champion every season. There will be less griping and more football. Who'd be against that?
It's probably not going to happen, but since we do traffic highly in hypotheticals, let's say it did ...
1. First, we have to determine who's IN the big boys' club. The easy thing to do is to include the five conferences that will comprise BCS 2.0 starting in 2014 - the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC - and their 64 members, plus Notre Dame. But to have balance, we need an even number of 72, which makes the math easier, and there are a few worthy candidates to choose from.
Boise State would be a no brainer, as are UConn and Cincinnati, which probably will both end up in a BCS conference at some point anyway. That leaves us with four more to pluck, and we would go with BYU for its pedigree, SMU and Houston, former members of the Southwest Conference now on the upswing, and San Diego State, which just edged South Florida for the last spot.
2. Then, we need to divide them up neatly and sensibly. With 72 members, this allows us to form two 36-team conferences, within each four divisions of nine tams. And to make sense geographically, we'd have a Union League composed of Big Ten and Pac-12 teams plus Notre Dame, and a Dixie League composed of SEC, ACC and Big 12 teams - plus a few variations.
For geographical reasons, we'll reassign Syracuse, Pitt, Boston College and Iowa State to the Union League, as well as add UConn, Cincy, BYU, Boise State and San Diego State. Naturally, SMU and Houston will join the Dixie League. Now you can draw a boundary along state lines from Chesapeake Bay to El Paso and the teams will neatly fall on either side of this divide.
3. Next, we can put together a balanced schedule. With each conference composed of four nine-team divisions, each team will play a full round-robin divisional schedule, plus games against a team from each of the conference's three other divisions and a game against a team from the other conference, for a total of 12 regular season games.
As for the postseason, the eight divisional winners would qualify for the playoffs, with first-round winners matched up for the conference championship and then conference winners would play in the College Football Championship, staged annually at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1. At the most, a team would play 15 games in a season, exactly the same number as the setup in BCS 2.0.
4. And the divisions, with an eye on preserving and restoring college football's cherished rivalries, would look like this:
Northern League
- Northeast Division: Boston College, Connecticut, Syracuse, Rutgers, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Ohio State, Cincinnati.
- Great Lakes Division: Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
- Northwest Division: Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Boise State, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Iowa State.
- Pacific Division: California, Stanford, USC, UCLA, San Diego State, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, BYU.
- Southwest Division: Texas, Texas A&M, Houston, TCU, SMU, Baylor, Texas Tech, Arkansas, LSU.
- Central Division: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt.
- Deep South Division: Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Florida, Florida State, Miami (Fla.).
- Atlantic Division: West Virginia, Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest, South Carolina, Clemson.
5. Finally, this is how the 2012 season would've turned out had this alignment and format been in place. Keep in mind we discarded results from conference championship and bowl games (AP regular-season ranking):
Of course, something this sensible and logical will never happen. That's why you own an XBox or PS3, right?
(FULL ARTICLE @ SB NATION)
- 1. Notre Dame 12-0 (Great Lakes winner) vs. 8. Stanford 11-1 (Pacific winner)
- 3. Ohio State 12-0 (Northeast winner) vs. 5. Oregon 11-1 (Northwest winner)
- 7. Kansas State 11-1 (Central winner) vs. 9. LSU 10-2 (Southwest winner, by virtue of head-to-head win over Texas A&M)
- 2. Alabama 11-1 (Deep South winner, assumed winner over Florida) vs. 11. South Carolina 10-2 (Atlantic winner, by virtue of head-to-head win over Clemson)
Of course, something this sensible and logical will never happen. That's why you own an XBox or PS3, right?
(FULL ARTICLE @ SB NATION)
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