Congrats UCF on the East Divsion championship

[Jihme]

so if you finish first in CUSA then you still go to a crappy bowl?

how much moeny does the Librety bowl CUSA team get?  is it less than any of the the BE bowls?

will the trophy you get but out o'liar's contract?

[BrahmanBulliever]

Same level?  I have to slightly disagree on that one.  It took a twilight zone of a season for things to fall the way they have(but isn't that why they play the game).  Schools such as West Virginia, Missouri and Kansas took advantage of mishaps from the USCs, LSUs and Oklahomas.  Without help, they never would have overtaken them.

However, kudos to those schools for taking advantage when they did.

For a one time harvard student I don't know why you're having trouble grasping things. The polls work as follows 'win and move up, lose and move down'. The difference is from where you start ranking wise at the beginning.  WV came into the season ranked #3/#4. WV only slipped up once and can play for the title if they don't slip up this saturday. That's not really taking advantage of a twilight zone of a season.

[DawgPound]

Same level?  I have to slightly disagree on that one.  It took a twilight zone of a season for things to fall the way they have(but isn't that why they play the game).  Schools such as West Virginia, Missouri and Kansas took advantage of mishaps from the USCs, LSUs and Oklahomas.  Without help, they never would have overtaken them.

However, kudos to those schools for taking advantage when they did.

For a one time harvard student I don't know why you're having trouble grasping things. The polls work as follows 'win and move up, lose and move down'. The difference is from where you start ranking wise at the beginning.  WV came into the season ranked #3/#4. WV only slipped up once and can play for the title if they don't slip up this saturday. That's not really taking advantage of a twilight zone of a season.

There is no exact science to the polls as humans are not computers.

Let's look at 4 teams that got to the end in different ways: Georgia, West Virginia, Kansas and Hawaii.

West Virginia started 3rd and was always expected to be a title contender.  The slip up against South Florida knocked them back a bit, but because of their preseason hype, didn't hurt them all that badly.  They had to keep winning to have a chance and have lots of other teams lose.  After their loss to South Florida, they were 13th and considered a non-factor.  It took multiple upsets for them to even have a chance.  This year had the most unranked teams beating top 10 teams in NCAA I-A history.  You had 4 teams rise from unranked to top 5:  Kansas, Missouri, South Florida, Boston College and Arizona State got to #6.

Twilight Zone point:  Who would have thought that NO ONE in the preseason top 10 other than WVU would have less than 2 losses?  WVU took advantage of other teams falling more than once and kept creeping back up to title contention.  WVU helped themselves with a soft OOC schedule and a well timed Big East schedule.  The conference had a couple of surprise teams win, but the conference competition for the most part did not live up to expectations(Louisville in particular).  They were able to use the subpar competition, which is no fault of their own, to win and win big to help raise their credibility.  The league has two teams that have proven themselves to be top 25 caliber:  WVU and South Florida(you can pat yourselves on the back).

Georgia started ranked 3rd in the polls for SEC teams.  When you think about Florida being overranked due to their title from last year, they should have been tops in the East.  However, their own misfortune led them to not be included in the conference championship game.  Should Georgia make the BCS title game(could happen should Missouri and West Virginia lose), the BCS would be classified as a failure once again for having another Nebraska situation.  Same thing applies to Kansas.

Twilight Zone point:  Where did some of these SEC teams come from?  Vanderbilt and Mississippi State came from nowhere and caused all sorts of mayhem.  Georgia squeaks by Vanderbilt, who is one of two SEC teams not bowl eligible.  They squeak by Alabama, who lost to a freaking Sun Belt team and is backing into a bowl game(assuming they get one, which is not guaranteed), yet they soundly beat Florida.  Georgia started off by losing to an overachieving at the time South Carolina, started mauling everyone and then laid a complete egg against Tennessee.  The same Tennessee who got utterly destroyed by both Florida and Alabama.  WTF is going on in this league?  As a result of losing head-to-head the weaker Tennessee team wins the SEC East and plays in the conference title game.

Kansas is not a football school and was never considered to be any form of threat.  Kansas had a cupcake schedule playing OOC games of FIU, Toledo, SE Louisiana(I-AA) and Central Michigan.  Two MAC, one Sun Belt and one I-AA team.  After going 4-0 against that tough competition, they had 1 vote in the AP Poll, which was 4 behind Appalachian State, which is the prime example in showing how weird this season has been.

Twilight Zone point:  Kansas beat Colorado, a team barely bowl eligible that somehow beat Oklahoma, a national title contender for most of the season.  Colorado also beat Texas Tech, the team who gave Oklahoma their 2nd loss, yet got owned by a Kansas State who is not going bowling and an Iowa State team who lost to a I-AA school.  Kansas beat Kansas State and steamrolled Iowa State.  Kansas State beat up Texas.  Need I go on?

Hawaii starts ranked 23rd and plays not one, but two I-AA schools.  While they beat the crap out of them, it shows how weak their OOC schedule was, which they are in control of scheduling.  Add in UNLV and Washington and you get a Grade A crappy schedule.  They barely got by San Jose State, a non-bowl eligible team and was even closer to losing to Nevada, a team who needs a win to be bowl eligible.  They play Washington next week, who beat Boise State, the team Hawaii beat this past week.  Ironically enough, Boise State barely got by Nevada as well, but flattened San Jose State.  By the way, Washington is in the basement of the PAC-10.

Twilight Zone point:  Using the logic of "win and move up, lose and move down", these guys should be #1 or #2 as they are the last of the unbeaten teams.  However, they are barely in the top 12 of the BCS despite coming in ranked 23rd.  Boise State last year had a better climb.  Hawaii is proof that you can't just win to move up.  You have to have at least some quality teams either in your conference or in your OOC schedule.  While Hawaii should end up in the BCS, it took until the 2nd to last week to climb from 23rd in the AP to start the year to 12th in the BCS.

[BrahmanBulliever]

I realize I was being overly simplistic but if you go back and look Hawaii did move up at least every other week in the AP (since that was your example). Even with a soft schedule if they remained undefeated they would make it to the #1 spot eventually, their uninspiring play has just slowed how fast they move up. Which I think you'd agree with.

I will concede that the season is an aberation in that every top 10 team has an extra loss this year on average than in the past 5 years.