Playoffs? Four-Team Final Comes a Year Too Late

"Playoffs?" asked the elder Jim Mora? "Are you kidding me?"

There wasn't a playoff for the 2001 Indianapolis Colts. And there won't be one for the 2013 college football season.

And that's a shame, because we really could use one. The way this season is shaping up, there might just be four quality teams vying for a shot at the BCS national championship. That won't be a problem next season, as the College Football Playoff kicks off. But it'll be coming a year too late.

The latest simulated BCS standings reveal that there are seven unbeaten teams at the top, exactly the same ones as last week, in a slightly different order. They come from four different conferences and conveniently, six of those teams will meet later this season, essentially serving as quarterfinal games to narrow down the field.

But the question is, where do we go from there?

Alabama and LSU will meet on Nov. 7 to decide the SEC West, and perhaps the SEC title as well. Two days before that, Stanford will take on Oregon to settle the Pac-12 North, and also maybe the conference. Florida State and Clemson have a death match in Death Valley on Oct. 19, with at least the ACC Atlantic crown on the line.

If there were a four-team playoff, Ohio State is poised to seize that last spot, as it seems to be cruising toward a second consecutive undefeated regular season, thanks to a Big Ten that so far has had no answer for Urban Meyer, who's 16-0 and counting since taking over in Columbus a year ago.

But this is where we rudely awaken you from that nice dream. There is no four-team playoff this season, but the same-old BCS for one last go-around. Only two teams get to play for the BCS title and the rest will get nice parting gifts from one of those sunny bowls out west or down south.

(FULL ARTICLE @ BLEACHER REPORT)

Blowout City and That 70s Show

This weekend, 20 teams ranked in the AP Top 25 were in action, with 19 of them winning. No. 23 Arizona State was the only one to lose, but it was beaten by No. 5 Stanford in the only game pitting two ranked teams.

That's not bleak enough to paint the picture of mismatch city? OK, how about this: Five ranked teams actually faced FCS teams and wound up mauling their overmatched opponents by an aggregate of 298-34 (or about 60-7 on average). Shame on No. 18 Northwestern for only getting by Maine, 35-21.

Wait, it gets better (or really, worse): FCS teams were not the only ones that took a beating. Some of the worst woodshed treatments were administered to FBS teams. Louisville whitewashed Florida International, 72-0, and Baylor annihilated Louisiana-Monroe, 70-7. Just how bad did it get? Urban Meyer went for a score as to not humiliate Florida A&M in a 76-0 rout, and Miami shortened the fourth quarter to 12 minutes to end its 77-7 mercy killing of Savannah State.

That's four teams scoring at least 70 points in a game on a single day – a record. That's also four teams winning by a margin of at least 60 points – another record.

So what is the point? Actually, there isn't one.

(FULL ARTICLE @ BLEACHER REPORT)

Bridgewater Rising ... Not So Louisville

Teddy Bridgewater certainly put on a show and launched his Heisman campaign in style. But for his team, it was but the first in a series of low-impact, low-return matchups.

Louisville is stuck at No. 14 in the simulated BCS standings after the first week, and don't look for the Cardinals to make much of a move either in the polls or the computers anytime soon. They face FCS Eastern Kentucky next, and then Kentucky and Florida International before opening American Athletic Conference play against Temple.

Only one of Louisville's opponents is ranked above No. 55 in the Massey Ratings, which has Louisville at No. 40 currently. In the other two BCS computer rankings currently available, the Cardinals are No. 29 in Jeff Sagarin and No. 12 in Richard Billingsley. But the high ranking in Billingsley is nearly meaningless because of its high frequency of being discarded by the BCS formula.

Another national title contender facing considerable headwind early in the season is Ohio State, which despite being ranked No. 2 in the Coaches Poll and No. 3 in the AP Poll finds itself only No. 6 in the simulated BCS standings. The Buckeyes also have an impact-free nonconference schedule that features FCS Florida A&M and San Diego State, which was trounced in its opener by FCS Eastern Illinois.

(FULL ARTICLE @ SB NATION)

The Last Days of BCS

For college football, this is 1991. The Berlin Wall has fallen. The Soviet Union is scheduled to be dissolved. There is a fin de siecle feel to things. No matter what happens, we know for certain that the much-maligned BCS will be consigned to the ash heap of history at the end of the season.

Few will mourn the passing of the BCS while we leap into a new, unknown age. But some day, we might look back to the BCS era with some fondness, reminiscing about when there was so much transparency to how things are settled. Under the College Football Playoff, there will be no BCS standings, no formulas, no publicly available polls and computer rankings to dissect. The fate of the playoff aspirants will be decided in a smoke-filled -free conference room on the last day of the regular season.

So while we can - and for the last time - we have put together the simulated preseason BCS standings. The method is the same as before: We used the AP poll to stand in for the Harris poll and the median rankings of 24 computer ratings to replace the six "official" computer rankings to produce a facsimile of what the BCS standings would look like 10 days before the season's first kickoff.

Even though computer rankings tend to be very volatile early in the season, you can already see some patterns emerging. Three of the six official BCS computers will have a preseason ranking, with Sagarin and Massey basing theirs on the expected strength of schedule and outcome while Billingsley basing his entirely on the rankings at the close of the previous season.

The simulated standings do not closely conform to the two polls, even though they account for two-thirds of the standings and are nearly identical. We can clearly forecast that one top team will have a lot of trouble with the computers: Louisville.

(FULL ARTICLE @ SB NATION)