Are there any chinks in Alabama's armor? (Anybody? Anybody?...)

The consistently awesome Senator Blutarsky -- showing more conscientiousness on his supposed vacation than I do on a normal day -- has left behind some goodies for his readers, today's being a series of polls soliciting opinions on how many wins to expect for each team in the SEC (starting with the West Division). His exercise prompted me to sit down with a copy of this year's SEC schedule and go through it, game by game, to get an idea of where everyone would end up in the standings.

When the smoke cleared, I realized that, among other questionable judgments, I had Alabama ending up at 12-0.

It's obviously not all that far-fetched as conclusions go -- Nick Saban's obviously got them operating at maximum efficiency and then some, to the point that the Tide are basically the consensus #1 across the punditocracy's unofficial preseason rankings. Still, the law of averages dictates that it's going to be extremely difficult for any team, even one as good as the Tide, to rumble through a third straight regular season unscathed. For starters, they're only returning two starters on defense after having handed over a staggering amount of talent in the first three rounds of the NFL draft; there's also that matter of six SEC foes getting a bye the week before they face Bama (about which the always-meek Tide diehards have hardly uttered a word of complaint).

So if the Tide do have to get upended by someone, who's it most likely to be? Take a look at the rundown of the most likely contenders, then cast your vote at the bottom.



PENN STATE (Tuscaloosa, Sept. 11)
Points in favor of an upset: Name-brand team with one of the nation's top returning RBs (Evan Royster) as well as a big, experienced line to put in front of him, which will be a major test for Bama's gutted front seven.
Points against: PSU's situation on defense is almost as shaky as Bama's -- their entire starting LB corps from last year is gone -- and none of their QBs are anywhere near as accomplished as Greg McElroy. Bama has had very little trouble in these marquee early-season games over the past couple seasons.
Prognosis: Not great. Saban is cash money in games like this, and it's hard to picture a Big Ten team coming out victorious at Bryant-Denny.

ARKANSAS (Fayetteville, Sept. 25)
Points in favor of an upset: Maybe the most potent offense Bama will face all year, with all but one offensive starter returning. Ryan Mallett gives Arkansas a chance in every game they play. The game's in Fayetteville.
Points against: Alabama will be coming off an almost certain blowout win at Duke, while Arkansas will be returning home from a date at Georgia. Mallett played like cold stale ass against the Tide last year (12-of-35 for 160 yards, one TD, and a pick in a 35-7 loss); the Arkansas defense, meanwhile, has sucked out loud since Petrino got there.
Prognosis: Poor. Arkansas could be good this year, but "good enough to beat the defending national champs" sits squarely in the I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it file.

FLORIDA (Tuscaloosa, Oct. 2)
Points in favor of an upset: It's Florida, a team that will no doubt be looking for revenge after having gotten cornholed in the SEC title game last December. They've got a terrific offensive line and three of the fastest RBs in the country, all of whom will be poised to strike at the Bama defense right where they're most vulnerable.
Points against: Trading Tebow for a junior making only his fifth career start robs the Gators of any air of invincibility. No more Charlie Strong, either.
Prognosis: Decent, but it's still hard to see Alabama not coming out on top at home; the loss of Tebow, Strong, Riley Cooper, Aaron Hernandez, and Brandon James equals, if not exceeds, any glaring losses on the Bama side.

SOUTH CAROLINA (Columbia, Oct. 9)
Points in favor of an upset: The 'Cocks return more starters than any other team in the conference, including four of five on the O-line and maybe the most promising RB corps they've had in years. As a rule, beware night games in Columbia.
Points against: Carolina winning a meaningful game period, much less against the defending champs, is kind of a surreal picture. It certainly isn't going to happen without a stellar game from the quarterback, but Spurrier has sounded like he's one sideways glance away from strangling Stephen Garcia all summer long. As a rule, positive signs about the Gamecock O-line have been meaningless.
Prognosis: Am I crazy if I say "not that bad"? Carolina will be coming off a bye, and as mediocre as they've been at many points in Spurrier's tenure, they've claimed a top-10 scalp in two of the last three seasons (and come achingly close in many other such opportunities). Given Carolina's M.O., it'd be just like them to knock off Bama to get to 3-2 or 4-1, win a few more games to come within striking distance of the top 10 and get everyone excited, then pull their usual collapse down the stretch.

OLE MISS (Tuscaloosa, Oct. 16)
Points in favor of an upset: Whenever people start pooh-poohing a Houston Nutt team, that's when you should worry. Has one of the few front sevens that will give Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson any kind of challenge all year. Potential for Alabama to be looking ahead to the Tennessee game.
Points against: Landing Jeremiah Masoli looks like basically the only chance they have of putting up any kind of offense this year. Very green secondary will be a big fat bullseye for McElroy. The game's in Tuscaloosa.
Prognosis: Poor. Nutt is always a threat to pull a stunner of an upset, but he's just got too much talent to replace this year.

TENNESSEE (Knoxville, Oct. 23)
Points in favor of an upset: If ever there was a year to overlook the Vols, it's this one. Tauren Poole will be a real threat against the Alabama defensive front. The game's in Knoxville.
Points against: Other than Poole, UT's offense may be so horrendous this year that Alabama's defensive inexperience may not even matter. And even Poole will only be able to do so much behind the ragtag O-line Tennessee will have to field.
Prognosis: Sub-poor. Saban has yet to lose to the Vols as Bama's coach, and that includes his first year in Tuscaloosa, when his guys barely made bowl eligibility and Tennessee won the East; it's not gonna happen this year.



LSU (Baton Rouge, Nov. 6)
Points in favor of an upset: This game has rocketed to the top of the list of games the Tigers get geeked up for each year, as evidenced by achingly close games against demonstrably superior Bama squads in each of the past two seasons. The defense should continue to improve under John Chavis. It's hard to bet against LSU in a night game at home.
Points against: LSU is tied with Vandy for the fewest returning starters in the SEC, and that's not good coming off a year when they were mediocre or worse in nearly every statistical category. The offense, in particular, could be a mess.
Prognosis: Should be good -- and might be, by the time this game is played -- but I don't think it is. LSU got to nine wins last season in spite of being statistically awful; when a team with this much raw athletic talent relies that much on luck to win games, they're wasting a lot of that talent, and I don't see a whole lot to convince me that's going to change substantially in 2010.

MISSISSIPPI STATE (Tuscaloosa, Nov. 13)
Points in favor of an upset: Dan Mullen clearly has this team pointed in the right direction; they were quite competitive against LSU, Florida, and Ole Miss last year. The defense could be pretty good, particularly against the pass.
Points against: The gap in talent between the two teams remains substantial. Mullen is still struggling to implement his system with the players he's got.
Prognosis: Bad. I know, it wasn't that long ago that Alabama was getting punked by State on the regular, but Bama has clearly come a long way since then; MSU still has a long way to go.

AUBURN (Tuscaloosa, Nov. 26)
Points in favor of an upset: With Gus Malzahn masterminding the playbook, Auburn's offense could be even better than last season's, while Bama's will almost certainly be worse -- not good considering how easy Auburn made it look in jumping out to a 14-0 lead in Auburn last year.
Points against: Auburn's defense wasn't anything special itself, particularly against the run. As surprising as Auburn was last year, the thought of Gene Chizik knocking off Nick Saban in T-Town remains surreal.
Prognosis: Honestly? Not that bad. I think Auburn's one of the most underrated teams in the country at the moment. Should Alabama roll into this game 11-0, though, it becomes that much harder for me to picture Auburn knocking them off.

Your turn:

poll by twiigs.com

Feel free to expound on your choice(s) in the comments.

Once again, it's time to get loathsome.

Back at the beginning of 2007 I did a fairly self-explanatory series titled "The 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football." (Yes, an idea blatantly ripped from the Buffalo Beast's beloved annual feature. I only ever said I was hilarious and insightful, I never said I was original.) At the time I guess I figured it was something that could be whipped out every few years or so, and looking back over that now, the start of a new decade seems like a perfect time to open up nominations and lay into the people doing their level best to suck all our enjoyment out of the greatest sport of all time.

Obviously, I'm already putting a list together of the people who belong in there, but any list like this should be a participatory exercise, so I want y'all's suggestions as well -- anyone who by word or deed has been a blot on the landscape of college football. The parameters for inclusion here are pretty broad; it can be an asshole coach, prima donna player, smug broadcaster/columnist, or incompetent administrator of some sort; it can even be a douchebag blogger or celebrity hanger-on who somehow keeps being invited to show up at games or in the broadcast booth despite adding nothing to the proceedings. Anyone who, by their mere association, has taken away just a little bit of your enjoyment of our favorite fall pursuit.

Keep in mind, though, that we're talking about the most loathsome people, so we want to try to keep our primary focus on the most macro offenses. A coach who loudly proclaimed his own brilliance and superiority while driving a program into the ground? Worthy of inclusion. The dicklick whose season tickets are directly behind yours and who grouses incessantly about every single play call, even the ones that end up scoring? Probably not quite on the level I'm talking about. Likewise, when making the case for a particularly loathsome individual, try to focus on the things that would arouse the ire of the broadest possible spectrum of CFB fans. A defensive back who forced your favorite player to fumble in the most critical game of the season? Ehh, that kid was just doing what he was supposed to do. If that defensive back later beat up his girlfriend, left early for the NFL while trashing his team on the way out, and left his old program on NCAA probation because of cash payments he was taking while he was enrolled there, OK, now we're talking.

Put your nomination(s) in the comments thread, along with any supporting information you feel might bolster their case as a particularly loathsome boil on the ass of college football; I'll be accepting nominations right up until, oh, let's say Saturday the 23rd (i.e. one week from tomorrow). And I'll try to get the full list put up by the end of the month. I can't promise you your nomination will end up making the final cut, but they'll at least get a hearing.

Now let the rage begin!

Thought exercise.

While I work on a playoff-related post, and while Georgia continues to hunt down a defensive coordinator, I've got a thought experiment I'd like to try out on y'all, particularly if you're of the Dawg persuasion. This was inspired by the recent news (since put to rest) that highly respected Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster was officially in the mix for Georgia's DC job, and more specifically the reaction of one of my friends to the news. I'll explain the point of this in a subsequent post later on this week, but for now I just want y'all to ponder one question.

It's December 2, we've just fired Willie Martinez, we're casting about for a new DC, and there's a guy who's been bandied about as a prospect for the job. He's coached in the SEC for the vast majority of his career, including the last 10 years straight. In his first defensive-coordinator job, his team didn't win a game all season long. At the second program where he served as DC, his team won two conference titles in seven years, but they lost to LSU four times, Auburn twice, Tennessee twice, and Ole Miss three times; he's even managed to lose to Mississippi State. (Just for good measure, he's also lost to Georgia twice.) In one season, his defense gave up 30 or more points in five different games, including a bowl-game loss to a Big 10 team; he's 2-3 against the Big 10 and a so-so 7-5 against the ACC. Every year he's talked about for a number of head-coaching openings at DI-A programs, but he never seems to get any of them. And the last game he coached for his current program was a three-TD loss to an SEC rival in which his team gave up more than 30 points.

I don't want you to guess the identity of this coach. All I want you to do is answer the question, Do you want this guy to be our next defensive coordinator?

Audience participation time.

Two opportunities for you football fans out there to prove you're smarter than me:

First, join the Big Ass Pick'Em Group, my college pick'em league on Yahoo. We pick each week's top-25 games against the spread, and the person with the most correct picks at the end of the season wins. Sadly, they don't have official point spreads for I-AA games, so you will not get the chance to predict whether Florida can actually cover 73 on Charleston Southern. But you'll be able to pick nearly all of the non-embarrassing games. Go to this link and enter group ID# 13556 and password "gingerninja."

If the NFL is more your bag, or even an additional bag, you can also join the official Hey Jenny Slater survival pool. If you're not familiar with the concept, how it works is you simply pick one team each week that you think will win their game. However, once you pick a team to win, you can't pick that team again for the remainder of the season. Players fall by the wayside each week, and the one left standing is the winner. To join, go here and enter group ID# 10854 and password "jankyspanky."

The winner of each group gets mentioned by name on this blog at the end of the season, which is a prize literally worth its weight in gold. Sign up, e-mail the usual address if you have any questions, and good luck.

The expectations game, part II: Too high, too low, or just right?

When last I tried to gauge the fan base's expectations of the Georgia Bulldogs going into the 2009 season, the consensus seemed to be that nine wins and a bowl invite, possibly of the January variety, were entirely reasonable goals to shoot for. Now we have our first "official" judgment of Georgia's prospects: Last Friday the coaches collectively ranked Georgia #13 in their preseason poll.

Does thirteenth in the nation sound reasonable for a team destined to win nine games and play in a bowl? It's tough to say, because translating wins and losses into an appropriate poll ranking (or vice versa) is no less a judgment call than anything else. Basically, I think your judgment of the preseason ranking -- whether you see it as too high, too low, or basically accurate -- kind of depends on where you think Richt has the program positioned at the moment. If you're not convinced that Georgia is strong enough to weather the losses of Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno without paying for it to at least some degree in the standings -- consider that #13 is just three spots below where last year's national-title-touted team finished the season -- you might think the preseason ranking is a bit high. If, on the other hand, you think Richt has built the program into one that's strong and consistent enough to where even the "floor" for wins is relatively high, #13 probably seems fair, maybe even a tad low to those of you who with a more optimistic world view than mine.

Personally, I think #13 is about where we ought to be: We're having to replace Stafford and Moreno, which is not a small task by any measure, but at the same time our new guys will be playing behind one of the best and most experienced offensive lines in the country, while on defense, we may have underachieved considerably last year but we bring back nearly everybody of importance, and by all reports they've had their wake-up call and are charging into 2009 committed to making up for last season's disappointments. Flip "offense" and "defense" in that description and what you've got is strikingly similar to how people would've described our squad around this time in 2007 -- a team that was also ranked #13 in the preseason (and, as we all remember, went on to considerably bigger and better things).

So with all that in mind, I've got two questions for y'all to continue the process of analyzing fan expectations for this season. First:

poll by twiigs.com

And second, a question that's similar to the first one, but not quite the same:

poll by twiigs.com

Go ahead and vote, and feel free to explain your responses in further detail in the comments. Next up: which specific games y'all actually expect to win in 2009.

How good is good enough in '09?

The term means different things to different people, but "rebuilding year" is a pretty commonly accepted definition for the state of Georgia's football team in 2009. The silver lining to such a situation, of course, is that we aren't burdened with the kind of hype and high expectations that, as last year's campaign proved, are extremely difficult to live up to. The flip side to that, though, is that we don't really go into this season with a set of clearly defined goals. With any team, even the most talented ones, you don't know what the team is capable of until you've actually played the entire season; with this team, though, we're still somewhat uncertain as to what they should be capable of. On the one hand we're having to figure out how to bounce back from the departure of guys like Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno, but on the other hand, we've got Phil Steele saying we can still be a dark-horse national-title contender.

Without getting into too much detail about any one game on this year's slate -- we've got the rest of the offseason for that -- we've got only one game it looks like we should definitely win and only one game we're probably destined to lose. Between those, we've got three games we're at least fairly certain to be favored to win, two in which we'll probably be underdogs, and five (five of the first six games, in fact, by my count) that are complete toss-ups at this point. So if the absolute, end-of-the-world worst-case scenario is thus 4-8 and the best-case is 11-1 (plus, what the hell, a 12th win in a bowl game), that averages out to an eight-win season. There are a lot of similarities, though, between this season and 2005, in which we rolled out a physically gifted but largely untested QB who'd been patiently waiting his turn behind a superstar -- and yet we still won 10 games and an SEC title, despite having to replace far more defensive talent than the '09 squad will have to. Even in 2006, when we were also breaking in new QBs and managed to lose to Vanderbilt and Kentucky, we still managed to swing nine wins. So maybe 8-4 or 8-5 is still pegging things a little low.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that going 9-3 in the regular season, then notching a 10th win in a bowl game, would be huge for this team. Despite a supposed rebuilding situation, we would have matched the record (and likely the approximate bowl destination) of the previous year's team, which had been touted for the national title, and I can't think of a better case for "We don't rebuild, we reload" than that. That would also give Mark Richt a career tally of 92-25 and a seventh 10-win season in nine years; all of those factors together would serve to cement Georgia as a pretty elite program. And as history has shown us, it's certainly achievable.

But that's just my take on the subject -- what's yours? I've put together this poll to get a very basic sketch of what Georgia fans' (and non-fans') expectations are of this year's team; once the responses to this poll take shape, I'll put up some more polls to get into the specifics of which teams you think we should beat, which bowl we should go to, and that sort of thing. But for right now, I just want you to run this year's schedule through your individual brain computers and spit out what seems like a reasonable and satisfactory outcome to you. This isn't meant to be a prediction of what you think's going to happen; all I'm looking for is your baseline below which you'll be a disappointed fan, and at or above which you'll call this season worthwhile.

poll by twiigs.com

Again, more specific questions (and responses) will follow eventually, but in the meantime you're welcome to expound on your poll responses in the comments.

They see me rollin', they hatin'.

It has recently been brought to my attention that it might be time for a new picture in the ol' blog sidebar, not to mention a new Facebook profile picture. OK, then.

I'm giving you, lucky reader, the chance to choose which picture I use for each of these. Examine the photos below and then vote in the poll at the bottom. Pick your two favorite photos when you vote; the top vote-getter becomes the Facebook photo, runner-up goes in the sidebar. Voting closes Monday morning.

Here we go:


1. Me at New Year's 2007 (currently in the blog sidebar).


2. Me as a Lego minifig (currently my Facebook photo).


3. Me next to a 1:1-scale Volvo XC90 made out of Legos, at Legoland.


4. Douchebag with finger guns (Holly Anderson, Las Vegas, 2009).


5. Douchebag with cigar and martini (Spencer Hall, Las Vegas, 2009).

Now vote!

poll by twiigs.com

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Would you buy a Snuggie, an Awethumb, or a wedding photo from this man?

· Actual conversation my dad and I had a couple days before Christmas, as a commercial for the "Snuggie" was coming on TV:

ME: Ah, yes, the "Snuggie" -- the blanket for the people who are incapable of operating blankets.

DAD: (sheepishly) I ordered one for your mom for Christmas.

ME: Oh. Well, uh, good for her, I guess.

With more than one person pointing out just how much the Snuggie looks like a robe that might be worn for druid rituals, it's probably only a matter of time before someone came up with this: the "Fuggly."



· The "Fuggly," at least is a fictional product. This, however, is completely real, and it's the gayest thing since sliced gay.



That still leaves the question, though:

poll by twiigs.com

· One place you won't be able to buy Awethumb -- or anything else, for that matter, before too long -- is Circuit City, which has filed for Chapter 11 after being crushed under the weight of the economic collapse. As bad as I feel for the thousands of employees who are about to lose their jobs, there's a part of me that's gleeful that Circuit Shitty is being wiped off the map, and here's why: About a decade ago, around the time I was graduating from college, my parents bought me a 27" TV/VCR combo from Circuit City so I'd have a decent TV when I headed off to Lynchburg for my first post-college job. For whatever reason, they went ahead and bought the super-heavy-duty warranty protection that would absolve us for the responsibility of paying for any kind of repairs for three years, no matter whose fault it was -- and I figured this would come in handy shortly after I moved to the L-Boogie, when my cat went tearing ass through the apartment and succeeded in yanking the cable-TV cable out of the back of the television, socket and all. But when we took the TV to Circuit City, their response was, "Oh, the damage was caused by an animal, this warranty doesn't cover that." So congratulations, Circuit City: You fucked with the bull, and you got the horns.

· If I lived in South Carolina, I might not even be able to utter that last sentence if this anti-profanity bill, proposed by State Sen. Robert Ford, were to be passed. To which I respond: Kiss my ass, fuckstick. (Hat tip: Spencer.)



· Let's hope nobody ever takes Sen. Ford on a visit to England, because the mere sight of places like "Butt Hole Road" or "Titty Ho" might be enough to give him an aneurysm. (Actually, that may be a reason to take him there, now that I think about it.) But I'm a little disappointed that the story restricted itself to the British Isles, thus depriving all of us of a little bit of history on places like Pussy, France, or Fucking, Austria. (One thing I think is hilarious in the latter's Wikipedia entry is the sentence "The village is . . . half an hour by car from the town of Petting, in Bavaria." Which means it only takes you 30 minutes to go from Petting to Fucking.)

· The 20 All-Time Greatest Photo Bombs. Scroll through the entire list and see if you're not giggling like a six-year-old halfway through. I'd love to know the story behind this one. Then again, maybe not.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Those who stay will be mildly amused.

· Let's face it, people: Statistically, 95 percent of you out there are probably disappointed to some degree with the bowl bid your team did or didn't get. So what better way to salve that disappointment than by participating in further competitive endeavors requiring you to predict the outcomes of bowls far more prestigious than yours?

Yup, Hey Jenny Slater is sponsoring an official Yahoo! College Bowl Pick'Em group, and you're all invited. (Except you. Yeah, you. You know who you are.) To join up, go to this link and enter group ID number 25595 and the password "croomtastic." And ta-da, you're part of an exclusive group consisting only of the millions of people who have nothing better to do! You pick each bowl and assign a confidence number from 1 to 34, you accumulate points with each game picked correctly, whoever has the most points after the BCS National Championship Game is played wins absolutely nothing. Sign up today!

· While you're ruminating on the bowl matchups, you can also take a look at every ballot submitted in the last coaches' poll here and see exactly where each coach ranked each team. The only voter not to include Georgia anywhere in his top 25? Oregon State's Mike Riley. Weirdly enough, though, Mark Richt didn't include the Beavers in his ballot, either. Maybe Richt and Riley hated each other as children; your guess is as good as mine. Other balloting follies can be read about and mocked openly at Simon on Sports.



· A commenter to my Christmas-list post pointed out that the link to my Amazon wish list was incorrect, so here's a new link that should do the trick. I'm not one to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on material goods, but if you were really my friend, you'd buy me stuff. Just saying.

· Josh has a highly insightful guide as to what you should do and not do when conjuring up a Facebook status update. I think J-dog is being a little dismissive of MySpace, though. It's not just "for preteens and Pedobears"; it's also for bored housewives who want to drive their daughters' middle-school nemeses to suicide. Durrr!

· Video 'splosion! First, bumper cars with real cars, otherwise known as one of the main reasons I don't live (or drive) up North:



And here's a highly overcaffeinated (and profane) TV producer using some highly inappropriate (and, from the looks of things, highly on-air) language toward MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, my new future TV newsanchor girlfriend now that Melissa Theuriau done had to go get herself murried and whatnot.



Whooooaaa, you f%$# with Contessa Brewer, you bring down the full force of the entire Hey Jenny Slater p.l.c. global conglomerate down upon you. Check yourself, bitch.

The Old School Plus One revisits 2003.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION


1. Southern California (11-1) — Pac-10 champion
2. LSU (12-1) — SEC champion
3. Oklahoma (12-1)
4. Michigan (10-2) — Big 10 champion
5. Texas (10-2)
6. Tennessee (10-2)
7. Ohio State (10-2)
8. Kansas State (11-3) — Big 12 champion
8. Florida State (10-2) — ACC champion
10. Miami (10-2) — Big East champion
11. Georgia (10-3)
12. Purdue (9-3)
13. Iowa (9-3)
14. Miami (Ohio) (11-1) — MAC champion
15. Washington State (9-3)
18. Boise State (12-1) — WAC champion
19. Texas Christian (11-1)



For the first time since the BCS was implemented, we finish the regular season with no undefeated teams. Oklahoma comes the closest, blazing through 12 regular-season games with an average victory margin of five touchdowns, but craps their pants in epic fashion in the Big 12 title game and loses to then 13th-ranked Kansas State, 35-7. That boots them back into a trio of one-loss teams that includes Southern California, who lost to California in a triple-OT thriller on September 27 but replaces the Sooners in the #1 spot; and LSU, who lost to Florida at home two weeks later but pummeled Georgia in the SEC championship game to rise to #2. Everyone else has at least two losses save for a trio of dominant mid-majors, the best of which (Miami-Ohio) is still stuck in the mid-teens.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #1 Southern California (11-1) vs. #4 Michigan (10-2)
Same as the actual 2003 game.

Sugar: #2 LSU (12-1) vs. #3 Oklahoma (12-1)
Sensing an opportunity to be the "play-in" for the national-title game, the Sugar jumps on the Sooners despite the Big 12 championship fiasco to re-create the actual BCS national-title game from that season.

Fiesta: #10 Kansas State (11-3) vs. #6 Ohio State (10-2)
Another matchup that’s the same as the actual ’03 game, engineered primarily out of necessity since the Fiesta doesn’t want a rematch of a regular-season Big 12 conference game (KSU played both Oklahoma and Texas that year).

Orange: #8 Florida State (10-2) vs. #5 Texas (10-2)
Why this and not FSU vs. Miami, the Big East champion from that year? With no requirement to take anyone’s conference champion other than the ACC’s — remember, the Big East doesn’t have a specific tie-in with any of the top bowls — the Orange Bowl decides to invite fifth-ranked Texas (with a pumped-up, eager-to-travel fan base that hasn’t been to a BCS-level bowl in seven years) over #9 Miami, which would be a rematch of a regular-season game (and which would result in FSU-UM being played three times in the span of a single year). This would most likely bump the Hurricanes down to the Gator Bowl.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Since most of these games were played in real life, it’s not too hard to predict — USC takes care of Michigan; LSU beats Oklahoma; and Ohio State takes out Kansas State. In the last bowl, I think Texas would’ve beaten Florida State in a close game.

So now we get the USC-LSU national-title matchup everyone had been clamoring for from the beginning. Who wins? Well, I’ve got my own ideas about how that game would’ve unfolded — I think LSU’s top-ranked defense would’ve given them a slight edge there — but either way, I don’t think anyone could say that the eventual winner wouldn’t have been a deserving national champion.



ANALYSIS: In a way, parts of this scenario are a little superfluous, because if the bowl bids had shaken out the way I’ve projected them, only two games (the Sugar and Rose bowls) would’ve mattered in terms of deciding the national-title pairing. But in that sense, at worst it would’ve only recreated what a BCS plus-one system would’ve done anyway. And anything that would’ve somehow given us a definitive LSU-Southern Cal matchup, I think, has to be seen as a good thing.

This is pretty much the kind of scenario that the Old School Plus One was tailor-made for: three teams at the top, all with the same record, and instead of just plucking two teams out of that group based on rankings and arbitrary computer data, we actually play a few games to determine which two get to spar for the national championship. The consensus #1, Southern California, isn't left out of the national-title picture like they were in 2003, but they don't get a free ride, either, having to get past a 10-win Michigan team before they can get their ticket punched to the Big One. And perhaps best of all, we can finally put to rest the endless back-and-forth between LSU and USC fans over who was really the national champion that year.

more at twiigs.com...

The Old School Plus One revisits 2002.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Miami (12-0) — Big East champion
2. Ohio State (13-0) — Big Ten co-champion
3. Iowa (11-1) — Big Ten co-champion
4. Georgia (12-1) — SEC champion
5. Southern California (10-2)
6. Kansas State (10-2)
7. Washington State (10-2) — Pac-10 champion
8. Oklahoma (11-2) — Big 12 champion
9. Texas (10-2)
10. Penn State (9-3)
11. Michigan (9-3)
12. Notre Dame (10-2)
16. Florida State (9-4) — ACC champion

The defending-national-champion Hurricanes maintain a hammerlock on the #1 spot for the entirety of the regular season, but a substantial herd of undefeated challengers spend the better part of two months jockeying for the right to challenge them. That is, until the Saturday Night Massacre of November 2, when no fewer than four undefeated top-10 teams (Virginia Tech, Georgia, Notre Dame, and North Carolina State) get bonked — all but one of them, the Dawgs, doing so at the hands of an unranked opponent. And the very next week, season-long #2 Oklahoma gets clapped up by unranked Texas A&M. The last remaining undefeated team other than Miami when the smoke clears and the blood gets scrubbed off the sidewalk? Ohio State, who replaces the Sooners at the #2 spot, whacks Michigan to claim half of the Big Ten title, and sits around waiting patiently for their invite to the big one.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #7 Washington State (10-2) vs. #3 Iowa (11-1)
The Rose takes Big Ten co-champion Iowa instead of second-ranked Ohio State to avoid a rematch of a regular-season game.



Fiesta: #8 Oklahoma (11-2) vs. #5 Southern California (10-2)
USC won a share of the Pac-10 championship that year, but lost to WSU head-to-head.

Orange: #16 Florida State (9-4) vs. #2 Ohio State (13-0)
The Orange wants to avoid an FSU-Miami rematch, as well as a bunch of Hurricane fans who don’t need to spend money on hotel rooms, so it takes the second-ranked Buckeyes.

Sugar: #4 Georgia (12-1) vs. #1 Miami (12-0)
The Sugar Bowl gets the top-ranked Hurricanes and what might be the best game of the entire bowl season. Not that I’m biased or anything.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Iowa beats Washington State in the Rose Bowl. Oklahoma squeaks past Southern Cal in the Fiesta. Chris Rix sleeps through a final exam and the Seminoles get pwnz0rd by the Buckeyes, not that Sexy Rixy would’ve made a lick of difference. And the Bulldogs, sad to say, lose a hard-fought battle to the top-ranked Hurricanes.

With #1 and #2 surviving the bowl round unscathed, they meet in the national-title game, and we get the same double-OT thriller we actually got in January 2003 — and, under this system, the Buckeyes claim their second national title in five years.



ANALYSIS: As with the 1999 scenario, this year’s has the disadvantage of making the last two undefeated teams in the country each play a game before finally squaring off in the official national championship. But you can’t say there wouldn’t have been some great games along the way, particularly Oklahoma-USC and Georgia-Miami; there’s another good matchup in the Rose Bowl, which would’ve gotten the traditional Big 10-Pac-10 game it complained vociferously about not getting in 2002.

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The Old School Plus One revisits 2001.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Miami (11-0) -- Big East champion
2. Oregon (10-1) -- Pac-10 champion
3. Colorado (10-2) -- Big 12 champion
4. Nebraska (11-1)
5. Florida (9-2)
6. Maryland (10-1) -- ACC champion
7. Illinois (10-1) -- Big 10 champion
8. Tennessee (10-2)
9. Texas (10-2)
10. Oklahoma (10-2)
11. Stanford (9-2)
12. LSU (9-3) -- SEC champion
19. Brigham Young (12-1) -- Mountain West champion



The Hurricanes and Gators swapped #1 and #2 rankings a couple times before Florida lost to Auburn in a shocker on October 13; at that point the 'Canes grabbed the top spot for good. Nebraska, who climbed into the #2 chair nine days later, never beat anyone by less than a double-digit lead and looked like the obvious national-title opponent for Miami until they faced Colorado at Folsom Field in the last game of the regular season. The Buffs raced out to a 35-3 lead and proceeded to pound the Cornhuskers 62-36, the highest point total ever dropped on a Nebraska team, if memory serves; this not only knocked the 'Huskers from the ranks of the undefeated but the Big 12 title game as well (which, incidentally, was later won by Colorado). With only one undefeated team remaining in D-IA, the race was on between a sizable group of one-loss teams to see who would get the chance to knock off the 'Canes.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #2 Oregon (10-1) vs. #7 Illinois (10-1)
This was the first year that the Rose Bowl joined the BCS-national-title rotation, so correspondingly it’s the first year that the old-school-plus-one matchup differs from the real-life pairing. Both teams, incidentally, were outright conference champions.

Orange: #6 Maryland (10-1) vs. #4 Nebraska (11-1)
Sugar: #12 LSU (9-3) vs. #1 Miami (11-0)
Fiesta: #3 Colorado (10-2) vs. #5 Florida (9-2)
Here’s where things get a little tricky, because for the first time the #1 team in the country comes from a conference that doesn’t have an automatic bowl tie-in; the bowls also have to try and avoid rematches of two regular-season games (LSU-Florida and Colorado-Nebraska). For the purposes of this scenario, we’ll say that both the Fiesta and the Orange balk at taking the Hurricanes (the former worries that ‘Cane fans won’t travel all the way to Arizona, while the latter thinks they won’t spend enough money that close to home), so the top-ranked team gets snapped up by the Sugar and pitted against the SEC champions. That frees up the Fiesta to invite Florida and the Orange to invite Nebraska, which heads off both potential rematches.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Oregon beats Illinois in the Rose Bowl. Nebraska gets up off the mat and beats Maryland in the Orange, but it’s hardly a blowout. LSU gets shellacked by Miami in the Sugar Bowl; Florida lays a beating on Colorado similar to the one they laid on Maryland in real life.

My guess is that, between the Gators’ big win over the Buffs and the lingering memory of Nebraska’s regular-season-ending flop against the same team, Florida would hop over Nebraska in the rankings, but wouldn’t gain enough to displace Oregon in the #2 spot, so the national-championship game is Hurricanes-Ducks. While the old-school-plus-one system does create the national-title matchup a lot of people thought there should’ve been in the first place, though, the outcome isn’t all that different from the real-life Miami-Nebraska blowout — the ‘Canes still win by three TDs.

ANALYSIS: Again, the bowl lineups are just guesswork here, because I don’t know how the bowls would’ve balanced their desire to get the #1 team in the country with their desire to get a team that travels better than Miami. But I think just about any way you arrange the teams, a Miami-Nebraska title game would’ve been avoided, and Miami-Oregon becomes practically inevitable.

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The Old School Plus One revisits 2000.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Oklahoma (12-0) — Big 12 champion
2. Miami (10-1) — Big East champion
3. Florida State (11-1) — ACC champion
4. Washington (10-1) — Pac-10 champion
5. Oregon State (10-1)
6. Virginia Tech (10-1)
7. Florida (10-2) — SEC champion
8. Oregon (9-2)
9. Nebraska (9-2)
10. Notre Dame (9-2)
11. Kansas State (10-3)
14. Purdue (8-3) — Big 10 champion
17. Michigan (8-3)



Nebraska and Florida State spend the first month of the season ranked #1 and #2, respectively, until FSU beats Maryland 59-7 at the end of September and the voters decide this is enough to flip-flop the Seminoles and Cornhuskers. The Seminoles’ reign at the top, however, lasts exactly one week before Miami beats FSU 27-24 in what predictably becomes known as “Wide Right III.” Miami, who lost to eventual Pac-10 champion Washington in the second week of the season, climbs up into the #2 spot by November and stays there — though as all the world knows by now, this still wasn’t enough to earn them the BCS’s blessing to play Oklahoma for the national title, an honor that still ended up going to the then third-ranked ‘Noles.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #4 Washington (10-1) vs. #14 Purdue (8-3)
Same as the actual 2000 matchup. In contrast to the previous season, this year it’s the Big 10’s turn to be mediocre, while the Pac-10 has three teams in the top 10.

Sugar: #7 Florida (10-2) vs. #2 Miami (10-1)
With the SEC champion locked in, the Sugar jumps on the #2 team in the country and takes the opportunity to restart the UF-UM rivalry.

Fiesta: #1 Oklahoma (12-0) vs. #6 Oregon State (10-1)
Would’ve liked to have gotten Notre Dame, but isn’t too upset about having to settle for the Beavers, whose fans are thrilled to be going to their first major bowl in 36 years (and only their seventh bowl in the program’s history). The Beavs get the nod over their in-state rivals, Oregon, due to a higher ranking and a head-to-head win in the Civil War.

Orange: #3 Florida State (11-1) vs. #10 Notre Dame (9-2)
Offers the Irish a bid before the Fiesta can get a chance, to set up a rematch of the 1995 game.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: The Rose and Sugar stay the same as their real-life matchups, meaning that both Washington and Miami roll over their opponents. In the Fiesta Bowl, the undefeated Sooners do away with the Beavers; the next night, even without offensive coordinator Mark Richt (represent), the Seminoles make short work of the overrated Fighting Irish.



Coming into the bowl season, Oklahoma and Miami were the consensus #1 and #2, respectively, in the nation — something that people forget due to the Miami-FSU controversy — and they both stay in those positions after winning convincingly in their bowl games. In the national-title matchup, Oklahoma probably still would’ve beaten the Hurricanes, but I think Miami would’ve given them a tougher test than FSU did, and would’ve had a reasonable chance of pulling off the upset.

ANALYSIS: The old-school-plus-one system would’ve had the advantage of engineering an Oklahoma-Miami national-title matchup, which I think the majority of fans were clamoring for since a) Miami won the regular-season head-to-head over FSU and b) was ranked above FSU in both polls. Fifth-ranked Virginia Tech would have a reasonable beef that they got left out of the proceedings, but they did lose by 20 to Miami in the regular season.

Honestly, the one issue that even the old-school-plus-one wouldn’t have addressed that year — and an issue that I don’t recall having gotten a lot of attention period in all the debating and punditing that went down in the wake of the BCS invites — is whether Washington might’ve had a legitimate claim to a national-title-game berth. After all, the Huskies came from a conference that wasn’t any weaker than the Big East that year, and of course they beat the Hurricanes early in the season; the Huskies’ only loss came in late September to an Oregon team that finished 10-2 and beat Texas in the Holiday Bowl. I mean, if we’re going to get outraged on the Hurricanes’ behalf because of a head-to-head win being disregarded, there’s some outrage due for the Huskies as well.

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The Old School Plus One revisits 1999.

Before we start digging into the 1999 season, it probably bears pointing out that my first crack at putting the Old School Plus One into action has already created a fair bit of controversy — although that seems to have more to do with the winners I picked (i.e. not Tennessee or Florida State, the two teams that played in the actual national-title game that year) than the plan itself. So just for the sake of argument, Vol fans, let’s say that Tennessee did beat Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl and went on to the national-title game. That means the Vols have beaten both a loaded, 10-1 Buckeye team and either Florida State or the 12-1 Arizona Wildcats to claim the national championship — which means that you’ll no longer hear any more harrumphing about the Vols not really being that good, even from douchebags like me.

And isn’t that pretty much worth it right there? Yes? No? Maybe? Whatever — on to 1999.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Florida State (11-0) — ACC champion
2. Virginia Tech (11-0) — Big East champion
3. Nebraska (11-1) — Big 12 champion
4. Wisconsin (9-2) — Big 10 champion
5. Alabama (10-2) — SEC champion
6. Tennessee (9-2)
7. Kansas State (10-1)
8. Michigan (9-2)
9. Michigan State (9-2)
10. Florida (9-3)
11. Marshall (12-0) — MAC champion
22. Stanford (8-3) — Pac-10 champion


Remember when this guy wasn't an asswipe?

Florida State is the AP’s wire-to-wire #1, while Virginia Tech has to work their way up from a preseason #13 to the number-two spot going into the bowls. Because of a less-than-imposing schedule, though — the Hokies’ best opponent in terms of wins and losses is a Miami team that will finish the season 9-4 — the undefeated Hokies are still viewed with skepticism by a substantial portion (though by no means a majority) of CFB’s fans and pundits. For the most part, those doubters would rather see Nebraska pitted against FSU in the national-title game; Nebraska sustained their one loss of the year against 18th-ranked Texas in a shocker in Lincoln on October 23, but got their revenge by crushing the Longhorns 22-6 in the Big 12 title game.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #4 Wisconsin (9-2) vs. #21 Stanford (8-3)
Same as the actual 1999 game. (Kind of a down year for the Pac-10, wasn’t it?)

Fiesta: #3 Nebraska (11-1) vs. #5 Tennessee
With no ranked Pac-10 teams available, the Fiesta reaches across the country for an at-large SEC team guaranteed to sell tons of tickets and put plenty of fans in the seats.



Orange: #1 Florida State (11-0) vs. #2 Virginia Tech (11-0)
With the undefeated ACC champion already locked in, the Orange jumps on the only other 11-0 team in the country, Virginia Tech, to secure the same matchup that ended up playing in the actual ’99 title game.

Sugar: #6 Alabama (10-2) vs. #8 Michigan (9-2)
Just as the actual Orange Bowl did in ’99, the Sugar matches the SEC champion with a heritage-rich and strong-traveling Big Ten team.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: What we’ve basically ended up with here is the same four matchups we got from the BCS in the actual 1999 bowl season, only the Orange and Sugar have effectively swapped games. So it’s not hard to predict what happens: Wisconsin beats Stanford 17-9; Nebraska whacks Tennessee in Tempe, 31-21; Florida State knocks off the Hokies 46-29; and Alabama loses to Michigan on a missed PAT in overtime, 35-34.

Florida State maintains their #1 ranking, and Nebraska moves up into the spot vacated by the fallen Hokies, so the national-title game matches the Seminoles vs. the Cornhuskers in a rematch of the 1992 and ’93 national-title Orange Bowls — and for the third time, the Seminoles come out on top in a thriller.

ANALYSIS: Once again, Kansas State fans will grouse that their team didn’t get a shot at the title, or even a major bowl invite, but once again, their case is undermined by a lackluster postseason performance (a squeaker 24-20 victory over unranked, 6-5 Washington in the Holiday Bowl). The bigger issue here is that Florida State is forced to play another game even after knocking off the only other undefeated team in the country, but again, you have that sizable contingent of folks who wanted the Cornhuskers, not the Hokies, to be the Seminoles’ date for the national-title game. As someone who felt all along that Virginia Tech was worthy of their Sugar Bowl berth that year, I personally don’t think FSU had much left to prove after beating the Hokies, but would it really have been the end of the world if the ‘Noles had had to play another game? After all, if Nebraska ended up beating FSU, the Cornhuskers would’ve had a fairly airtight case for deserving the crystal football themselves. In the end, it all comes down to one rule: If you want the title, you gotta win whatever game is put in front of you.

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Solving the playoff predicament:The Old School Plus One.

I know y'all may be tired of the college-football playoff debate, and I'm sure that at some point in the recent past I promised I wasn't going to hash it out anymore -- but a few weeks ago, shortly after the major-conference commissioners gave the thumbs-down to the idea of a four-team playoff, Tony Barnhart floated the idea of a simple plus-one system that would place 10 teams in five elite-level bowl games (the current Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta BCS bowls, plus a newcomer) and then, after those five games have been played and the rankings have re-sorted themselves, take the #1 and #2 teams in the BCS rankings and pit them against each other in an "official" national-title game. Barnhart readily admits this isn't a new idea -- he says Vince Dooley was talking about it way back in the Bowl Coalition days -- and honestly, when the BCS first announced the implementation of a fifth game starting with the 2006 season, I thought this is what it was going to entail (rather than just being an extra game to squeeze in two more teams).

Barnhart's off to a nice start here, but I've still got a big problem with it -- namely, that the BCS formula, with its tidal wave of decimal points and obscure computer rankings, is apparently still involved. I've made no bones about my distaste for this system, to the point where I'd be perfectly happy if we just went back to the old days when bowls could invite whomever the hell they wanted, no computer rankings, decimal points, selection orders, automatic berths for any team ranked at a certain level or higher, or any of that. However, I think there's a way to have something that traditional and still throw a bone to the folks who think, and not without reason, that some kind of playoff is the only gentlemanly and proper way to pick a single national champion.

I call it the "Old School Plus One." Once all the regular-season and conference-championship games have been played, the bowls get to make the same mad dash for teams that they did in the pre-Coalition days. They can maintain any conference tie-ins they find desirable, but beyond that it's every bowl for itself. And with the BCS system obliterated, no bowl is forced to take any team -- from either a major conference or one of the "mid-majors" -- just because it's achieved a certain ranking. And nobody has to take turns as far as inviting "at-large" teams, either. This means that two bowls could conceivably offer invites to the same team, so it'd be up to that team to decide which one it wanted to go to.


Sometimes a difficult decision like that isn't such a bad situation to be in.

Then, after all the bowls have been played, the top two teams in the country, as ranked by the AP, face off in the national-title game. That game would be administered by a body independent of any of the existing bowls, so it could be held anywhere in the country; theoretically, the NCAA could handle it like the Super Bowl, with cities, as opposed to bowl organizations, bidding on "hosting rights" years in advance.

There are tons of advantages to this system, and doing away with the infuriating BCS formula is just one of them. Bowls would be freed up to arrange the best and most lucrative matchups, instead of being locked into the BCS's arcane selection process. The bowls could make more money by bidding out their TV rights individually rather than as a "package." And teams that don't win their respective conference championships can still have a shot at the national title -- but they first have to earn that shot by beating someone who did win their conference. The downside -- if you choose to look at it that way -- is that high-ranked "mid-majors" wouldn't get the automatic berths they enjoy today, but the way for them to solve that problem is the same as it is for any other team: play a formidable out-of-conference schedule, win every game you can, and line up a bunch of people to buy tickets. Some of the people who read this site probably have me pegged as a borderline communist, but with the Old School Plus One, I'm lettin' the free market rule, baby.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be showing how this system would've worked in each of the past 10 years since the BCS was implemented in 1998. For the purposes of these simulations, I'll assume that the four bowls that comprise the BCS in real life would retain their conference tie-ins -- i.e. the Rose gets the Big 10 and Pac-10 champions every year, the Fiesta gets the Big 12 champion, and the Sugar takes the champion of the SEC -- but beyond that, anything goes. I'll plot out which teams I think would've gone to which bowls and project who would've won each game; in some cases the games will feature the same matchups that they did in real life, which will make predicting the outcome pretty simple, but other times, when the matchups are purely hypothetical, I'll simply be making my own guesses. From there I'll settle on which teams would've ended up #1 and #2 and therefore ended up in the national-title game -- and you'll have the opportunity to vote on whether you think that outcome is better or worse than what actually transpired that year (and, of course, give more detailed opinions in the comments threads).

Everybody up to speed? Then let's start with 1998, the inaugural year of the BCS system.


Here I'm just throwing a bone to Holly, 'cause she probably isn't gonna like what's coming next.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Tennessee (12-0) -- SEC champion
2. Florida State (11-1) -- ACC champion
3. Ohio State (10-1) -- Big 10 co-champion
4. Kansas State (11-1)
5. Arizona (11-1)
6. UCLA (10-1) -- Pac-10 champion
7. Florida (9-2)
8. Texas A&M (11-2) -- Big 12 champion
9. Wisconsin (10-1) -- Big 10 co-champion
10. Tulane (11-0) -- Conference USA champion
16. Air Force (11-1) -- WAC champion
18. Syracuse (8-3) -- Big East champion

Going into the last week of the regular season, there are three undefeated teams (Tennessee, Kansas State, and UCLA), and the big question is who's going to be left out of the national-title game. But then all hell breaks loose (UCLA gets stunned by unranked Miami in a game postponed from the very beginning of the season; K-State loses the Big 12 title to Texas A&M in double-OT), and the question becomes which of seven one-loss teams will be matched up against still-undefeated Tennessee.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #6 UCLA (10-1) vs. #9 Wisconsin (10-1)
Same as the actual 1998 game; Ohio State, Michigan, and Wisconsin all finished 7-1 in conference play, and Ohio State and Wisconsin didn't play each other, so the Big Ten invokes its rule that in case of a tie for league champion, the Rose Bowl berth will go to the team that last got invited to Pasadena the longest time ago.

Orange: #2 Florida State (11-1) vs. #18 Syracuse (8-4)
I don’t know whether the Orange would’ve actually taken Syracuse in this scenario, but I think they would’ve taken an actual conference champion (even if the Big East was a subpar conference that year) over Kansas State or a Florida-FSU rematch.

Sugar: #1 Tennessee (12-0) vs. #3 Ohio State (10-1)
Grabs a Buckeye squad that brought a ton of fans to see FSU-OSU at the Superdome the previous year.

Fiesta: #8 Texas A&M (11-2) vs. #5 Arizona (11-1)
Has a tough choice between Arizona and tOSU; opts for Arizona because they're closer.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Wisconsin beats UCLA 38-31, and then all hell breaks loose a second time as the top two teams fall on consecutive days — first the Chris Weinke-less Seminoles fall in a shootout to the Donovan McNabb-ful Orangemen, and then Tennessee’s extraordinary and well-documented luck runs out as the Buckeyes, more specifically their defense, boot the Vols from their perch as the nation's last unbeaten team. After that, Arizona’s victory over an offense-challenged TAMU squad in front of what effectively amounts to a home crowd seems almost anticlimactic.

With #4 Kansas State getting embarrassed by Purdue in the Alamo Bowl, Ohio State and Arizona advance to #1 and #2, respectively. And the Buckeyes beat the Wildcats in the title game, 31-20.

ANALYSIS: I don’t think a lot of people would’ve quibbled with Syracuse getting a spot in one of the major bowls, nor with fourth-ranked Kansas State being left out of the party (particularly given that they didn’t end up making much of a case for themselves against Purdue). Probably the biggest thing people are likely to argue with here is the predicted outcomes for these games, but I think the upset projections are valid. Remember, Syracuse came within a point of knocking off the eventual national-champion Vols that year; they beat Michigan by 10 in the Big House; and they absolutely destroyed a 7-2 Miami team 66-13, so I think Donovan McNabb could’ve led them to an upset of the hobbled Seminoles. Meanwhile, Tennessee struggled to outscore that same hobbled FSU team in the actual Fiesta Bowl, so I think a case can be made that Ohio State — who really hadn’t even been played close all year, save for the stunning upset to Michigan State near season’s end — would’ve finally handed them a loss.

And again, this wouldn’t be a case of the national title getting "stolen" by a team that didn’t win its conference, since Ohio State was a Big 10 champion that year.

So I know the Tennessee fans out there are going to hate this outcome, but . . . how about the rest of you?

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Once again, feel free to leave any suggestions, dissents, criticisms, or whatever in the comments thread; I'm looking forward to seeing how this system plays itself out over the next few seasons.