AP Poll - 9/18

[Joe]

Blade, I'm sorry, WVU's schedule is nowhere near Notre Dame's. I cannot take pity on a team that schedules 5 games with schools who ave losing records since 2003.

I'll give them Marshall because the state mandate and Maryland because of the rivalry and they were decent.

However, Miss State, ECU, and Eastern Washington were all signed in the last 2 years...

Right before that Miss State was placed on one of the biggest NCAA sanctions since the SMU death penalty.

ECU hasn't put together a winning season since 2000 with an 7-28 record in the 3 seasons before they signed the deal in June of 2005.

Eastern Washington, they'll tell you it was a late replacement...however it was a late replacement for a Buffalo game signed in 2004. Buffalo...

The Big East might be MUCH improved this year, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that USC team that say loses one game, but used their OOC schedule to play Arkansas, Nebraska and Notre Dame isn't deserving over an WVU team that has steamrolled over 5 OOC teams that will be lucky to make bowl games...

[Sunil]

I won't argue with you. Notre Dame would have to be good to win out. But at the same time, something doesn't sit right with me about a BCS school going undefeated and not getting the chance to play for the title.

The problem is that it's hard to quantify who is truly more deserving. Do we look at who has better coaching, recruits, etc? Given the argument on strength of schedule...one could even say a 2 loss Notre Dame team might be more worthy than WVU depending on how much they lost by and to whom. We'll never really know.... <insert arguments on "why we need a playoff" here>

[BullsFanInTX]

2 points.  First I do not believe ND is going to run the table.  Not the team I saw last week.  Second, thier lost was by 26 points, not exactly a nailbiter, so hopefully the pollsters will remember they got blown out of the water at home.

[BullsFanInTX]

an undefeated wv will not go to national championship game over one loss usc,sec team,texas,osu,michigan

Yes they will.  They wouldn't go if any of those teams were undefeated, but they would if they were 1 loss teams.

What are you basing this statement on.  has there ever been an undefeated BCS team that was bypassed in favor of a ONE loss team.  An undefeated has been bypassed in favor of another undefeated, but not one loss team (at least that is my memory of the top of my head).  

[Ferdinand the Bull]

is this the year that they play the bowl games and then 2 teams are picked to play for the championship?

[Joe]

A 2 loss Colorado team was .05 (closest finish for BCS title game)  away from jumping a 1 loss Nebraska team in 2001, they jumped a 1 loss Oregon because Oregon's SOS blew.

There have been several instances over the last few years where 1 loss BCS teams have been ranked below 2 loss BCS teams (Maryland, Illinois, Oregon, etc.) usually stemming from bad schedule (The BCS does not use SOS, but most the computer bowls they use do).

The reason you have no examples of undefeated teams being passed because there have only been a handful of undefeated BCS teams and those teams usually aren't playing 5 terrible teams to open the season.

However using the BCS as an example is hard to do, there are only 7 years of polls to draw from.