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• Season Ending Top 25 and Notes

  January 25, 2011

  My Top 25 and Notes

  1. Auburn 14-0

  2. TCU 13-0 (didn’t lose a game. No way can I put a team that didn’t even have an opportunity to play for the Title over a team that had a shot and lost.)

  3. Ohio State 12-1 (beat 7 bowl bound teams in regular season along with an impressive bowl win on SEC soil against Arkansas. I also think last year’s Oregon team may be better than this season’s version and we know what the score of the Rose Bowl was.)

  4. Oregon 12-1 (beat only 4 bowl bound teams in regular season. Beat Stanford)*

  5. Stanford 12-1 (also beat only 4 bowl bound teams)*

  6. LSU 11-2 (I don’t really understand how you have Alabama higher than LSU. Both have essentially identical SOS, Alabama has one more loss and LSU beat Alabama)

  7. Alabama 10-3 (Two best wins (Arkansas and Michigan St. soundly) are better than Oklahoma’s close wins over Oklahoma St. and Nebraska. Plus, I think Alabama would win by two scores.)

  8. Oklahoma 12-2 (Big 12 Champ and only lost two games against a pretty good schedule. Did what they were supposed to do and then some against UCONN.)

  9. Arkansas 10-3 (3 quality wins against South Carolina, LSU and Mississippi State coupled with two close losses against top 7 team. Did get blown out by Auburn, but last I checked, Auburn has the glass ball.)

  10. Boise State 12-1 (They knew how tiny their margin of error was because of the weakness of the WAC and it bit them in the butt. They lost a game and didn’t deserve a BCS spot.)**

  11. Wisconsin 11-2 (Played a very mediocre scheduled yet they finished with two blemishes. Better team than Oklahoma State, but barely.)

  12. Oklahoma State 11-2 ( Their two losses came against the Big 12 Title Game teams and I believe that two losses in the Big 12 is better than one loss in the WAC)

  13. Nevada 12-1 (Big win against Boise State but after that there’s nothing to get excited about. Virginia Tech is probably the better team, but the transitive property shows that Nevada is the better team because they beat a Boise State team who knocked off Virginia Tech.)

  14. Michigan State 11-2 (Played in a tougher conference than the ACC, one less loss, Wisconsin and Notre Dame is a better overall combination of wins than Florida State and NC State, and they didn’t lose to James Madison. Both teams played horribly in their respective bowl games but I’d rather lose in daylight compared to primetime.)

  15. Virginia Tech 11-3 (I give them a little bit more credit than Nebraska because they did win their conference. I also frown on putting teams in the top 15 that lost a bowl game against a team that had six previous losses.)

  16. Nebraska 10-4 (Beat Missouri and played in conference championship game. Also, a loss against a top 10 NFL pick at QB is much better than a loss against five loss Iowa, who also happened to be without their two leading rushers.)

  17. Missouri 10-3 (Beat Oklahoma (something Florida State failed to accomplish) and losing two games in the Big 12 is much more respectable compared to three losses in the lowly ACC)

  18. Florida State 10-4 (They were the ACC runner-up, but I give them the nod over Texas A&M because they won their bowl game against an above average South Carolina program.)

  19. Texas A&M 9-4 (Played a nearly identical schedule (as far as SOS in concerned) compared to South Carolina. Strong wins over Oklahoma and Nebraska and four losses to teams inside the top 17 (including a three and seven point loss to OK State and Arkansas respectively) sounds much better than South Carolina blowout losses to Auburn and Arkansas, mixed in with a loss to a bad Kentucky team.)

  20. South Carolina 9-5 (Had one more win than Iowa against a significantly difficult schedule. Also, I could never put a team in the top 20 that lost to Minnesota.)

  21. Iowa 8-5 (They did lose five games (two to Ohio State and Iowa which can be excused) but they beat Missouri and Michigan State. Mississippi State’s two best wins came against Florida and Georgia. Nothing stellar about that.)

  22. Mississippi State 9-4 (Yes, they played a nearly perfect game against Michigan, but it was Michigan. They may have the best set of losses in the country (four losses against teams in the top nine) but as was mentioned above, they don’t have any quality wins. Take any of their four losses and change it to a win and this is a top 15ish team easily.

  23. NC State 9-4 (Both Maryland and NC State finished at 9-4. NC State did lose to Maryland in the regular season finale but NC State has two quality wins (Florida State and West Virginia) over opponents that Maryland played against and lost. However, Maryland did have a perfect game against an East Carolina team that ended up defeating NC State. The tiebreaker for me was the fact that NC State played a tougher schedule and their two extra ACC games were against North Carolina and Georgia Tech, whereas Maryland’s extra games were against the worst (Duke who lost by only five points) and third worst (Virginia) teams in the ACC.

  24. Maryland 9-4 (see above)

  25. Tulsa 10-3 (This spot came down to Notre Dame or Tulsa and I went with the Golden Hurricane. Tulsa did beat Notre Dame in South Bend but what really put them over the top was the game against heavily favored Hawaii. Tulsa didn’t just win; they blew away (pun intended) the Rainbow Warriors by four touchdowns. Notre Dame also lost the benefit of the doubt when you account for a bad loss against Michigan as well as an equally questionable three score loss to Navy.)

  Close, but not quite enough

  1. Notre Dame 8-5 (The Irish would have taken the final spot if it wasn’t for Tulsa’s thrashing of Hawaii.)

  2. UCF 11-3 (A very close call as well. It would have been fantastic if we could have seen Tulsa instead of SMU in the Conference USA Title game, but it wasn’t meant to be based on SMU holding the head to head tiebreaker.)

  3. Utah 10-3 (Utah definitely had its chances for an even more successful season but when it came down to it they just couldn’t step their game up. Wins over Pittsburgh, San Diego State and BYU are nice, but blowout losses to TCU, Notre Dame and Boise State will almost always result in a team being on the outside looking in.)

  4. Northern Illinois 11-3 (Played the toughest opponents in the MAC and came within five points of staying undefeated in the conference. Wins against Temple, Toledo and Fresno State had the Huskies in consideration for a spot in the top 25, but the loss to Miami (OH) sealed the deal.

  5. West Virginia 9-4 (You’ve gotta give all the BCS conferences some love, right? West Virginia is probably the best team to come out of the worst BCS conference. A total of 14 points is the difference between a 9-3 and 12-0 season. Wins against Pittsburgh, South Florida, Maryland and Louisville are respectable. However, the poor showing in their bowl game against NC State and losses to Syracuse and UCONN prevent the Mountaineers from getting ranked.

   

   

  *- I understand that most people think the Pac-10 is either the first or second ranked conference. It really doesn’t matter to me. The idea that a conference, containing only four bowl-eligible teams, being considered better than the SEC, Big 12 and maybe even the Big 10, is something I can’t comprehend.

  Oregon’s best win outside of Stanford is Oregon State. Give me a couple seconds to chuckle.

   

  Sure, Oregon State played a very difficult schedule, but even conceding games against TCU, Boise State, Oregon and Stanford they should be 8-4 or at the very least, 7-5. That didn’t happen though because they lost easy games against one of the worst teams in FBS (Washington State) and a very bad UCLA team.

  What is Oregon’s next best win? A 7-6 Washington or Arizona? A bad USC team?

  Since the Pac 10 is awful, I should assume that Oregon played a solid non-conference schedule, right? Wrong. Their “difficult” games included New Mexico, Tennessee and a 2-9 FCS school.

  What about Stanford? Surely their three non-conference games must be against competitive teams. If you believed that last statement, then be prepared to be disappointed. Stanford did play a decent Notre Dame team, but it’s canceled out when you throw in a 6-5 FCS team along with a horrendous Wake Forest team.

  Name some quality Stanford wins? Okay, obviously Virginia Tech is the best win but isn’t that that same Frank Beamer led squad that pooped their pants against James Madison? Sure, they did finish on top of the “mighty” ACC, but the ACC is synonymous with the word “suck”.

  I have Ohio State on top of both teams because I truly feel they could beat either team. I’m not convinced that this year’s Oregon team is better than last year’s team (as I mentioned above) and Ohio State beat Oregon in every way possible in the Rose Bowl last season. And since Stanford is not better than Oregon, it’s much easier to say that OSU could beat Stanford.

   

   

   

  My ranking of the conferences goes:

   

  1. SEC

  2. Big 12

  3. Big 10

  4. Pac 10

  5. ACC

  6. Big East

   

  I contemplated putting the ACC ahead of the Pac 10 because I think the ACC could beat the Pac 10 (assuming you match it up the right way).

  **-The infatuation with Boise State is sickening, in my opinion. Boise State gets to play against JV teams for ¾ of the season whereas AQ have to play against each other. Several things piss me off about the love for Boise State.

  Ohio State was ranked #1 heading into their game at #18 Wisconsin. The loss dropped the Buckeyes nine spots in the AP Poll to #10 and ten spots in the USA Today/ESPN Poll to #11.

  Boise State was ranked #3 heading into their game at #19 Nevada. The loss dropped the Broncos six spots in the AP to #9 and seven spots in the USA Today/ESPN poll to #10.

  How the hell does that make any sense?

   

  I don’t root against Boise State. I agree that an undefeated season should result in a BCS berth for the Broncos, but the idea of a one loss, non-AQ team (in this case Boise) replacing Ohio State or Stanford this season or any other season is preposterous and a fantasy at best.

   

   This was a great season and I expect most of the teams listed above to be in the same area next season.

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