Utah as Champion

[sevencyclist]

Should Utah be crowned as NCAA football champion? How about one loss USC, Texas, Oklahoma/Florida?

Discuss.

[Steelhead]

Texas beat OU on neutral ground by 10 points and yet OU is in the championship game. Explain that to me. :crap: And Texas losing to Tech was a fluke against a savage home field crowd. Not whining about that one, we lost fair and square but come one... Texas Tech?!?

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . is working so hard to have this economic stimulus package ready when he is sworn in, when there are FAR more pressing problems in this country--like this one! :rolleyes: ;)

BBD

[KJMUNC]

Texas beat OU on neutral ground by 10 points and yet OU is in the championship game. Explain that to me. :crap: And Texas losing to Tech was a fluke against a savage home field crowd. Not whining about that one, we lost fair and square but come one... Texas Tech?!?

The Cotton Bowl isn't exactly a neutral field, but that's a whole other argument....the rules in the Big 12 were obviously flawed when it came to dealing with a three way tie, but you can't re-write them depending on which way the wind blows. Mac Brown has now both benefitted and suffered from this BCS mess, so maybe he'll play more of a role in trying to fix it.

As for Utah.....strength of schedule says it all. I agree they are one of the top teams in the country and if they had the hardest schedule they'd get my vote. Yeah they beat some ranked teams, but outside of a clearly waning Alabama team, they beat teams ranked outside of the top 10 which is a total mixed bag (Ball St anyone?)

I'd put Florida or OU up against any other team in the country and lay odds that they win, so I think we have the two best teams playing tomorrow night.

[michael white]

I've already ranted enough about this, apologies to all those I've offended. I will definitely be wearing a Utah National Champions t-shirt as soon as I find one. Under the current system the reg season is the only playoff we have.
A perfect schedule is just that, and it used to be respected as such. This business of penalizing a school based on a variety of factors, mostly for moneymaking reasons, takes the sport out of sport and it is total bull****. Why even have a league, why even keep score, if you don't intend to respect the outcome? Can you imagine if all the Tour de France results were juggled according to tradition, past performance, no. of fans, "strength of schedule" etc? Nauseating.


Did you read about the Utah AG and his possible class-action suit? Unfortunately, that sort of thing seems to be the only way to change things.


But I have watched OU play and Fla play, and they are definitely winners too. Should be a good game if OU can somehow play a little D. Bradford is a clutch qb who only gets better under pressure.

[Ozz]

Why not just do co-champions like they did in 1991 with the University of Washington and Miami? Both teams were 12-0-0

History also shows that being undefeated carries more weight such as in 1984 when Brigham Young won their national title. UW beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl that year, but Brigham Young was undefeated against teams such as Lollypop Lane Country Day School.......but undefeated is undefeated....so BYU got the nod
:beer:

[michael white]

TCU is top ten. Utah beat somewhere between four and six ranked teams, depending on how your counting. Most people don't watch them so don't have a clue either 1: how good they are; or 2: the strength of schedule. Bama was ranked no 1 in the SI power rating when Utah beat them, and it was a viciously effective game in which the Tide did not compete in any way on O or D. Bama's only drive was off a turnover; they did not have a single offensive drive the entire game. If you watched that game you would know they could do that to anyone, they were far more impressive than Fla was against the Tide. So don't get me started. :(

The Cotton Bowl isn't exactly a neutral field, but that's a whole other argument....the rules in the Big 12 were obviously flawed when it came to dealing with a three way tie, but you can't re-write them depending on which way the wind blows. Mac Brown has now both benefitted and suffered from this BCS mess, so maybe he'll play more of a role in trying to fix it.

As for Utah.....strength of schedule says it all. I agree they are one of the top teams in the country and if they had the hardest schedule they'd get my vote. Yeah they beat some ranked teams, but outside of a clearly waning Alabama team, they beat teams ranked outside of the top 10 which is a total mixed bag (Ball St anyone?)

I'd put Florida or OU up against any other team in the country and lay odds that they win, so I think we have the two best teams playing tomorrow night.

[Tobias]

The only way I see this movement getting traction is if Oklahoma beats Florida in a poorly played low scoring game. If both teams play a good game, the winner will take it all; particularly if it’s Florida because it negates Texas head-to-head claim.

Oklahoma has the most powerful offense in football and a Heisman winner.

Florida’s schedule included six teams that went on to “win” bowl games, has a Heisman winner, and the highest margin of victory (even higher than Oklahoma’s due to better defense).

No disrespect to Utah at all, but if they played at the same level, Urban Meyer wouldn’t have gone from Utah to Florida. And it’s got to be more than about money.

[sevencyclist]

I wonder what if Utah schedules a "scrimmage" with the winner of Oklahoma/Florida, and charges tickest and TV networks to broadcast the game 2 weeks from now. Are there any rules against college students from getting together with each other and throw some football? :banana:

[Blue Jays]

Is this about Johnny Utah the football player? The one who later became a FBI agent?
Not certain whether he rides or not, yet I suppose he does because he's pretty fit.

[sevencyclist]

No disrespect to Utah at all, but if they played at the same level, Urban Meyer wouldn’t have gone from Utah to Florida. And it’s got to be more than about money.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/football/ncaa/12/03/urban.meyer/index.html

Apparently he quadrupled his salary by going from Utah to Florida.

[michael white]

yeah, and Saban makes 4 times what Whittingham makes, too. Shoot, I'd switch jobs for a fraction of that. . . those schools down there just NEED their teams to win . . .

Look: there's lots of talent in certain conferences, that's not a question. But. . . I grew up in Columbia, MO, and have unfortunately rooted for the Tigers all my life. This is the same as Dante's Hell. You might remember the Tigers had a good game last year against KU, and a good game this year against Neb. That's about it. But for a solid year since last year, all the talk in the midwest was about MU the inevitable national champs, Daniel for the Heisman, etc. And they had the rankings, and well into the year Daniel was almost a prohibitive favorite for the award. It's true that MU had some of the best talent in the game with multiple first rounders, it was like bringing a shotgun to every knife fight . . . Maclin, Coffman, Weatherspoon, and Daniel, before he decided it would be fun to start throwing 3 ints for every td. The problem was that when the going got tough, the D realized that tackling gives owwies, and they sure couldn't have that, so the Tigers became one of the most disgusting squads to win a Big 12 Championship (North) that ever existed.

As for Florida, remember that this is the team that was losing to this supposedly waning Bama up to the 4th quarter in their game. So if Bama was waning, does Fla even deserve to be in the BCS?

of course they do, they are damn good. So is OU, even though they have been lit up like a Christmas tree by a bunch of good teams, and I can hear the Gators licking their chops.

I guess my point was that there are lots of good teams, lots of talented teams, but so much of it is hype and impression that the hierarchy of cfb is in my view extremely suspect.

And one more thing: obviously I watch ball. I played ball. I know the big 12, have watched it since, jeez, since they had defenses??

Utah would've knifed through the Big 12 like a friggin barracuda, trust me. Maybe they lose some, you think--personally, I doubt it--but we will never know. That's why they deserve to be no. 1.

[RPS]

A perfect schedule is just that, and it used to be respected as such. This business of penalizing a school based on a variety of factors, mostly for moneymaking reasons, takes the sport out of sport and it is total bull****. Why even have a league, why even keep score, if you don't intend to respect the outcome? Can you imagine if all the Tour de France results were juggled according to tradition, past performance, no. of fans, "strength of schedule" etc? Nauseating.Interesting you bring up de Tour, because the winner there can win the title without winning a single stage. I rider without a single stage win can take the title over riders with multiple stage wins.

For de Tour it’s about who is cumulatively strongest/fastest regardless of whether they excelled on every single outing.

[michael white]

no, it's very simple, it's not up to journalists or pundits, or past performance, or anything else; they have a clock which runs all the time when the riders are riding, and what it says is not really up to interpretation.

[StephenCL]

As for Utah.....strength of schedule says it all. I agree they are one of the top teams in the country and if they had the hardest schedule they'd get my vote. Yeah they beat some ranked teams, but outside of a clearly waning Alabama team, they beat teams ranked outside of the top 10 which is a total mixed bag (Ball St anyone?)




Not a big Utah fan at all, but I think you should check your facts on this..they were ranked 6th in the BCS poll because of their schedule. They beat Michigan at Michigan, Oregon State at Home (who was the only team to beat USC). They also beat TCU who's only loss was to Oklahoma. And they Thumped Alabama who was the best team in the country for 5 weeks and was undefeated in regular season play.

Bottom line, Utah was the only undefeated college football team in the country. They beat some of the best teams in the country and they cleaned Alabama's clock.

No offense but this has nothing to do with strength of schedule...this has eveything to do with keeping the big money in the BCS conferences.

Utah is the National Champs in my books.

[rwsaunders]

The Osmonds are the only number one team to have ever come from Utah. :cool:

[Steelhead]

The Cotton Bowl isn't exactly a neutral field, but that's a whole other argument....the rules in the Big 12 were obviously flawed when it came to dealing with a three way tie, but you can't re-write them depending on which way the wind blows. Mac Brown has now both benefitted and suffered from this BCS mess, so maybe he'll play more of a role in trying to fix it.

As for Utah.....strength of schedule says it all. I agree they are one of the top teams in the country and if they had the hardest schedule they'd get my vote. Yeah they beat some ranked teams, but outside of a clearly waning Alabama team, they beat teams ranked outside of the top 10 which is a total mixed bag (Ball St anyone?)

I'd put Florida or OU up against any other team in the country and lay odds that they win, so I think we have the two best teams playing tomorrow night.

That field is closer to Norman than it is to Heaven, uh I mean Austin. :) And plenty of Sooner fans come to and live in the DFW area. I can't think of an any more neutral location that would hold all those fans, bbq and beer.

[RPS]

Not a big Utah fan at all, but I think you should check your facts on this..they were ranked 6th in the BCS poll because of their schedule. They beat Michigan at Michigan, Oregon State at Home (who was the only team to beat USC).Not trying to be argumentative, but how does beating a team that finished 3-9 by a score of 25-23 make them a powerhouse?

[Tobias]

Football is not like math or science – but if it were, we would never want to assume that if A is better than B, and B is better than C, then A must be better than C. This kind of comparative reasoning is fundamentally flawed. It just doesn’t work. It can’t work.

Much has been made about Utah’s win over Alabama being more convincing than Florida’s. And I’ll agree; it was. However, if we are going to draw conclusions from this type of reasoning, then we’d have to conclude that Penn State is about a zillion times better than Utah, right? Penn State and Utah both had Oregon State as a common opponent; and Utah won by 3 points (31-28) and Penn State won by 31 (45-14).

Cherry picking a few data points out of massive amounts of data to confirm one’s desired position is ludicrous. It is flawed reasoning and it doesn’t work.

If it worked we wouldn’t often have inconclusive results for a round robin between multiple teams. Whether it’s Oklahoma vs. Texas vs. Texas Tech or between USC vs. Penn State vs. Oregon State; trying to base who is superior based on cherry-picked data points is absurd.

[michael white]

Football is not like math or science –

Cherry picking a few data points out of massive amounts of data to confirm one’s desired position is ludicrous. It is flawed reasoning and it doesn’t work.

If it worked we wouldn’t often have inconclusive results for a round robin between multiple teams. Whether it’s Oklahoma vs. Texas vs. Texas Tech or between USC vs. Penn State vs. Oregon State; trying to base who is superior based on cherry-picked data points is absurd.\\\


couldn't agree more! trying to use some sort of data filter to speculate on how a bunch of 21 year olds would perform hypothetically against those other 21 year olds is pissing in the wind.

and I agree that inviting the Sooner faithful to come get rowdy in DFW is pretty much a match made in heaven.

[michael white]

Great quote:

What Brian Johnson (Utah qb) said when the Utes were dead in the water against Oregon State, down eight points with less than two minutes to play, and he saw disappointed fans streaming out of Rice-Eccles Stadium into the dark of night?

"They're going to miss a great show."