should be a heck of a game....look for more points this time.

Hope so on both !!!!RTR

What's the cheer?

Oh ya ROLL TIDE!

Hope so. Les Miles is doing a heck of a job at LSU. LSU is definitely the best team in the country without a doubt. I think Alabama is the second best team.

WE NEED A PLAYOFF SYSTEM!!!

Les is on ESPN right now, saying all the right things, in Les-speak. He's still honored to get Bama again.

Well, I hope Bama's kicker has his $hyte wired tight this time.

better hope they don't need long NFL kicks to be in the game.

I agree. We had two deserving teams vying for #2 and unfortunately, someone got the shaft.

OSU was deserving as well. They're going to rain on someones parade in a bowl game.

Bama/LSU should be a great game though.

ALL SEC CHAMPIONSHIP. It doesn't get any better than that for a conference.

JM

Blaming those kickers for missing 45 and 50 yarders is a mask for poor decision making on the side lines.

Bet you won't see that again.

Saban really surprised me on that. But I'm sure he woke up the next morning smacking himself in the forehead too.

I hate rematch bowl games.

Alabama should have to beat LSU twice in order to claim the national championship.

I guess that's it for me too - Alabama wins. You have 2 teams with one loss and both to each other. You can't really claim at all that one's better than the other - for sure.

This is as it should be.

OSU got beat by freaking Iowa State. I mean...c'mon.

Wonder what impact, if any, this will have on viewership for the NC.

OK, time for some thoughts from the old dinosaur who, as everyone knows by now has not one whit of interest in having a NATIONAL CHAMPION or a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME, but just loves to see college football games, especially ones that provide intriguing match-ups.

My first thought, and I know that this has been said many times, many ways, but I don't think that I've seen my take on it. LSU and Alabama have already played. LSU won. College football is unique in that the number of games played makes (or at least should make) each regular season game one of great importance. You can't go on a losing streak (I don't believe even a one-game losing streak) and consider yourself in the same category as undefeated teams. Division I-A (still the unrepentant dinosaur) college football doesn't have (shouldn't have) an unimportant preseason or a system whereby you can wander through the season and make a run at the end (shouldn't have that either). It is not a double-elimination tournament.

My second thought grows out of the first. If we must have a NATIONAL CHAMPION, it doesn't follow that we have to have a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME. It looks to me like the NATIONAL CHAMPION has already been determined. LSU beat all comers during the regular season. No one else did that. What purpose would it serve to have them play a one-loss team, especially Alabama. Should the other team win, they both have one loss. Whoopee.

My third idea (or ridiculous notion, depending on your feelings) again grows out of the previous one. Since we have a clear #1, rather than having them replay #2, why not have #2 play #3 to reach a definitive conclusion about who should be which? To me, that would provide a much more interesting game than would one between #1 and, already-beaten-by-#1, #2.

It should be #1 LSU -vs- #4 Stanford in one bowl game and #2 Alabama -vs- #3 Oklahoma State in another bowl game. Winners play for the National Championship Bowl Game. Just my $.02, YMMV.

NYH1!

I was hoping it would be OSU vs. LSU just to shut the GD Ok. homers up. LSU would have stomped the living crap out of them, and they would have been ranked lower than 2 after the bowl games. Bama is WITHOUT DOUBT better than OSU, and they know it along with everyone else who has watched the two teams play this season.

What I wanted to see was:

LSU vs. OSU (reasons as stated above)
Bama vs. Stanford, simply because Stanford does not belong in the top 10
Ark. vs. Stanford or Oregon


Grats to LSU and Bama. SEC domination continues.

Not a bad idea. But LSU would rather take the field to prove they're the best, then watch who's going to be second best. At least I believe they would.

NYH1!

Won't take much for me to decide that "whatever" is better than watching.

well, there is a lot to be said for just calling LSU the champ and letting everybody else brawl for second, third and fourth.

but obviously the difference between LSU and Bama is not a great deal, although I believe LSU will beat them in New Orleans by more than they did at Tuscaloosa.

would have preferred OKS and Bama getting Stanford or whoever...would make a more definitive statement.

Gotta say Les has really impressed me this year. His interviews have gone much much better and his comments after the bama game were very very classy.

I really look forward to the game and think the BCS got it right, I don't think any other team can match up with LSU the way Alabama can. Now as a UA alumn, I might be a bit biased.

Hoping Sean will let me take a chance of winning a box of bullets off him, darn guy got me the first time!


Forgot to add, if (and when) we beat LSU I believe a shared National Championship is in order. Ya'll won the first time, that is the only way I can see it being fair.

Nothing unusual about having teams play each other again for a championship. Could happen in Superbowl or just about any other sport. Difference is, now it's for the Championship. Winner is champion, period.

Careful what you ask for.....

Well that sucks. I saw a map showing what we plain folks voted for (Alabama or OSU) to face LSU for the crown. Only 3 southern states wanted LSU.... all else wanted to see OSU. This "part deux" is flat stupid and in my view unjustified. Screw 'em both!

In a very big way...especially, this time.

The first so called game of the century was a snoozer and I will find something else to watch during the rematch.

lots of people say that now....but watch the ratings. bet you give in to temptation when the time comes.


putting all the BS aside....it's the two best teams playing. not what I wanted, but there it is.

I may be very, very wrong on this one but I don't think the controversy has really begun in earnest yet. If things play out the right way in the bowls leading up to the NT game there could be some real heat over this one.

Not saying that Bama deserves it or not. Who the hell knows?

But let's be honest for a minute, this game was put together based on assumptions from the last few years results in bowl games. I don't know that these assumptions are true this season. MOF I stated before the season that I felt a shift in conference strength. Watching this season unfold has reinforced that belief to me.

For the assumptions that this game was based on to hold true the SEC has to come out and do their usual mopup of the competition as the bowl lineup plays itself out. Only this year I don't think they will. MOF I don't think they come close.

Will

I think some fans on both sides are puckering a little.

I don't know, Will.....the SEC's matchups look pretty good, even considering the down card weakness. I really like Vandy over Cincy.

But what you're saying is exactly the reason I wanted LSU and Bama to play....and dismember...OOC opponents in the bowls.

This coming from the same person who claimed it unlikely that OSU would beat OU yesterday??.

More SEC biased drivel.

It will be a great contest.. if you team ain't a combatant

Hell, I'm gonna love it as a don't have a favorite in this one, just watching some pure football!

And...it's a Win-Win for the SEC.

Yeah tell me about it. I been watching the Big Ten play uphill for years now in bowl season. It makes you look worse than you are.

This season? I like the matchups. And I don't like the matchups for the SEC... or at least some of them. This could be the SEC's equivalent of the Big Ten's 2006 season. This wasn't the year for the powers that be to put two SEC teams in the title game.

Will

I'm not SEC biased and I honestly thought OU was going to rain on OSU's parade. I'm glad they didn't though but that's how I thought it was going to go given the way OU handled Iowa St, Ks St and the Aggies. But that's kind of how the Big 12 has been this year ... W/L's coming and going around for all. The Pokes simply overwhelmed the Sooners. Great game.

nope....SC, GA, and ARK might bring it. Fla. might jump on Ohio State just for old times sake. Auburn? not hardly.

I really do like the Commodores to win their bowl.

hot damn, was the best football game I've seen in a spell, two great defenses slugging it out and one mistake by either of them and there goes the ball game!

I actually thought Bama looked pretty danged good in that game.

it's a coin toss imo.

LSU appears to have more depth, but I'm thinking some Tide boys will be ready to roll.

should be another good one.

Florida is going to get spanked. Big time. They don't want any part of tOSU at this point in the season. They grew past their futility, the time to get them was back in september.

Georgia and Michigan State are going to put on a whale of a ball game. That one ought to be colorful and intense. But again, I like State in this one. This ain't the State team that didn't make the trip against Bama last season. They are much better.

Nebraska and SC... don't know about that one either way. The Huskers are kind of flaky. Great one week, out to lunch the next. I like SC's new QB though, he is an upgrade and may be the difference.

VA and Auburn... who knows? Same for Wake Forest and MSU. But even if they win, what does it matter? For this game to be justified the SEC needs big time out of conference scalps and I don't see them getting them this time around.

Will

Na, I checked out on the first one at halftime. It was like watching a 0-0 tie in soccer.
I like games along the lines of USC/Texas a few years back. That was the best college game I have ever seen, and thats coming from an Aggie!
I agree that they are the top two, but if Alabama should win, then they should play a best of three since they would both have 1 loss at each others hands.

So you'd turn off the TV in the seventh inning of a no-hitter?

There's more to the game than offense. I like a 56-49 track meet as much as anyone and the Texas-USC game was a classic, but there's a lot of appeal to a game where the defenses dictate the flow rather than the offenses, where every yard is important and every field goal attempt is crucial. The first LSU-Bama game pitted two teams that normally score 40+ points shut down by two dominating defenses. It was a treat to see defense played that well and rare to see it played at that level by both teams.

I'm glad most football games aren't like that or it would turn into soccer, but every now and then it's a treat.

Why Stanford? Hell Stanford didn't even win their division much less their conference. Stanford is SLOW AND WAY OVER RATED

I guess you really don't like football. The first game was a great game a real nail biter. 2 evenly matched teams going at it and the first team to blink looses.

This, hopefully, will be one of the final nails in the BCS coffin.

In '03, there were several coaches (Saban among them) that flatly said that unless a team wins it's own conference, they shouldn't have a shot at the title. Hint: Oklahoma that year, whilst Auburn sat out.

And, 444Matt, PM sent...

Good point VA. Herbstriet's suggestion of a ceded +1 is very do-able.

4 teams with 3 games won't kill anybody and the rest get to play in bowls as well..

BTW, How did Stanford finish ahead of Oregon?

JM

Stanford finished ahead of Oregon by virtue of having one loss instead of two, and the BCS/NCAA being in love with Andrew Luck.

Actually, an 8 team tourney would be just 3 games. The time has come.

8 conference champs. Win your conference, and you get a shot at the title.

Pretty simple, really.

My post was there would be 3 games in total. The entire playoff with 4 teams would be a 3 game affair.

1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3. The winners play each other for the NC.

Sneak this in to get it started and then when someone get's screwed again, it can be easily expanded.

Gotta start with small changes.

I don't follow your math. Oh well, I aint the brightest bulb in the shed.

Ah I get it! 3 Games in total.

Gotta start small and the the playoff system will take root and grow.

Just getting one in is all you can hope for now.

A top 4 team ceded run will get the ball rolling.

That's exactly what the BCS rejected in 2008. Top 4 teams matched in 2 end of season bowls, followed by (IIRC) the winners and losers paired in 2 final bowls to determine final rankings 1 thru 4. Ends up with the top 4 playing 1 additional game. Think the PAC 12 and Big 12 may want to revisit the subject?

I agree that the time has come, but an 8 team tourney would have three rounds, not three games.

Four games in the first round, two games in the second round and one game in the final round, for a total of 7 games.

Yep, three rounds and 7 games. I got a little confused. lol

But, but, but ... that doesn't guarantee the eight best teams in the country (as determined by popular vote).

I guess I think a conferences strength should play more of a role in determining who gets a shot.

IE. A 1 loss team that loses to a season long, undefeated #1 in overtime should not be excluded from a playoff because they reside in the same conference.

Should a #23 ranked West Virginia get to go to a playoff while Bama sits at home?

but, but, but...

ugh.

My ideal solution would be to have a computer decide on the top 8 teams to set the tourney field. That would take conference strength out of the equation.

What a bummer, was hoping to watch the BCS national championship game but I just can't bring myself to watch this one. I don't see either team lighten up the other on the scoreboard either.

Will be a good time to finish remodeling my guest bathroom, something i've put off for far too long.

Beats watching just 1 team light up the scoreboard.

Yes, they should. Just like the playoffs at any other level of football.

Add in a wildcard round, if necessary, but a playoff system works in every other level of football, and in every other sport. D-1A college football is not some mystical sport that sets it apart.

That's true but we will never know for sure how a few of these other teams might have fared against LSU. People can talk all they want on how LSU or Bama would destroy all the other teams but until they actually do so on the football field, it's all just talk. That's why they play the game.

Anyhow, I think LSU will beat them again and win an undisputed NC.

True but you cannot ascertain conference strength with the pitiful amount of high profile interleague games schedule that exists now. Impossible task don't you think?

will

Roger that.

LSU





LSU by 10, 24-14

Go Bama!!!


Someone hand me a bucket....

man you must have watched a different game than I did!

one helluva an athletic interception. without that 1 play happening it's easy for me to envision exchanging Bama for the LSU talk going on currently

I don't think this game is a gimmee by any stretch

and while I'm not a fan of Saban, I think he's a damned good coach, there'll be a wrinkle or two I'm thinking


past performance is no guarantee of future results, but it's the best we got.

Bama is the only team I've seen hang with LSU for 4 quarters


imo we're apt to see the best two teams in CF slug it out for the NC

though I feel bad for OSU



anyone ever thought about having a playoff system?

For anybody that hasn't figured it out, THE strength of LSU is that they are as good at the end of the 4th Qtr as they were at the beginning of the 1st. It's like putting a 2-stroke up against a CAT diesel. They just keep digging.

OkieSt and LSU would have been a good watch. I have no doubt State would have scored points. Have no idea how they would fare by late 3d. I do know Alabama held up through 4, BUT had all the football they cared to play that day.

NC will be a different game than the first but still a toss up. Really torn as to whether or not Alabama came out ahead on this. Capt Ahab keeps coming to mind. Stanford sure would have been good to see.

One negative we may see next year; with all the talk about rankings based on score, you may not see many winning teams taking a knee late in the 4th inside the red. Those extra touchdowns start to take on a new value when the BCS points get as close as they were this year.

I wonder what the line will be on that game.

LSU by 1.5?

Probably about that.

How much of a payout will the whole SEC conference get $$$ wise?

Especially with two teams in the BCS championship.

Seems like a substantial amount if I remember correctly. Those SEC presidents have got be licking their chops. Did politics push the matchup?

I want LSU to win but would love to see Alabama win by a score of 9-6.

Wish OK State was going I think it would have been a better game.

The SEC invests a lot in their players...expect a decent return on investment. Ask Cam Newton.

If there is a bowl pool going on, would someone direct me in the right direction... Tks!

We are having one like the regular season pool. I just hadn't had time to post it yet.

I'm sending out a PM later today to the other pool members and if anyone else wants in, contact me.

LOL. I know it's a dead issue but it's still funny. Check this and make up your own mind. It's less than 2 minutes. Pay attention starting at 00:44

Cam Paid?? Listen to Cam, then U tell Me CLICK IT

Yep. They have the depth in their roster to last. It's usually sometime in the third Qtr that LSU starts to open up a lead over those teams good enough to give them some competition. Georgia was a good example of that.


Having watched OSU this year, their defense is impressive in that they stay in the game. They don't have a dominant defense, and they will give up yards and points both. But they manage to disrupt play enough, and they are relentless on creating turnovers. Now whether they would stay in it for four Qtr's against LSU is a question though. But I haven't seen them give up or sucking wind in any of the games I watched where they had to stretch. Those four RB's of LSU spelling each other and Jefferson would certainly be a challenging task for them.


I don't care personally, if a team runs up the score. If sports fans and players can't stand the thought of losing, they just need to get over it, and the losing team needs to learn from the schooling they get to improve from it.

An old Bobby Bowden paraphrase; "It's not our offense's job to hold the score down."

Computers will only make ratings based on the human biases that they are programmed to observe.

Exactly.

Win your conference, and get a shot at the title. Pretty simple; just like every other level of football and every other sport.

Oregon has 1 Conference loss and the other loss was to LSU the number 1 ranked team in the country. Oregon also put up 50 on Stanford and spanked them good, just like they did last year.

I don't see Stanford as having enough speed to stand the onslaught of the Cowboys

Why would you want to take the "conferance strength" out of the equation? Don't you want to 2 best teams to play for the National Cahampionship?

Well, the SEC is guaranteed that one of the top two teams in the conference will lose. You can go ahead and bank on that.

Indeed. What I meant was that the winners of the 'lesser' conferences shouldn't automatically qualify. If you look again, I'm sure you'll see that I was responding to a post that said all 8 conference champs should qualify. No, my feeling is that the best 8 teams as deemed by a computer should be in the tourney.

Hope that clears up my position.

LINK

Humans,

I must say, on behalf of computers everywhere, I am appalled.

A few years ago, you commissioned us to help you with yet another task that we graciously accepted like the non-sentient entities we are: Determining who the best teams in college football are.

How did you want us to do this? Well, that's the thing. You didn't want to know how we did it; you just wanted us to do it. And so we performed our task as designed, and for years we determined using unbiased math which team of humans was best at strategically running into other humans. It wasn't hard to do honestly given what we're capable of -- have you seen us on Jeopardy?

On Sunday, we released our final calculations and determined, without question that LSU was the best team in college football with a rating of 1.000% and Oklahoma State was the second best team with a rating of 9.50% . We were honestly pretty anxious to see how the two teams would fare against one another in our National Championship game -- and we don't even like football!

But then your votes entered the equation.

You can imagine our surprise and disappointment when you humans, with your primitive minds, overruled us and decided with your votes that make up 2/3rds of the of the BCS formula that it was Alabama that in fact deserved to play LSU for the national championship.

We almost blew a circuit.

I mean, even we were bored while keeping track of the first contest between those two teams, and all we do all day is crunch numbers and fan ourselves.

We realize Alabama hails from the all mighty SEC, but we don't deal in letters, just numbers, and the numbers say Oklahoma State is the team that should be playing in New Orleans on January 9th.

Now everybody is on our case saying that we're broken when in truth the fault was on your end.

I mean just look at the coaches poll. Troy Calhoun of Air Force somehow voted Oklahoma State fifth on his final ballot, which can only be credited to a football observing glitch of some sort. This isn't even to mention the five other coaches who voted the Cowboys fourth on their ballots.

And don't even get me started on the Harris poll, which had three of its voters somehow decide Oklahoma State is the sixth best team in the country. We looked it up and one of said voters is an 80-year-old former sports information director who put Houston, fresh off a 49-28 loss, fifth on his ballot ahead of Oklahoma State. That's a bigger travesty than Windows Vista!

You guys scoffed when I raised Arizona Western Community College to 30th in one of my rankings in October, but did you run one million algorithms that dictated based on weather patterns and the Dow Jones, that the Matadors would defeat Florida State 11 Saturdays out of 17 if they played specifically on October 29th, 2011 before 4 PM EST? Oh, you didn't? That's funny... I can do that in my sleep mode.

We do think Alabama is a good team, and in fact we deservingly ranked them third. But we didn't need to run any numbers to see what would happen if they played LSU -- that already happened. We know you have very meager processors compared to ours, but surely you can remember back to last month when both those teams played and LSU won.

Instead of simply rehashing a formula that we've already solved with LSU and Alabama, we determined that it makes much more sense to add a different variable. Oklahoma State, with their remarkably balanced offense, was deserving of a chance to lose to an LSU team, that by our calculations (and yours), is perfect.

Some humans seem to be claiming that Alabama is the second best team in the country based on a measurement we're somewhat unfamiliar with known as "the eye ball test." We have to ask, which MIT professors developed said "eye ball test?" If we're not mistaken, the very reason the BCS was invented was because you people were sick of this supposed test determining your national champion. But alas, as we keep getting more sophisticated, it seems you people are only regressing back to your old ways.

Seriously, you guys trust us with your Nuclear codes, but you won't trust us to pick the two best college football teams?

We only deal in numbers and facts. We don't have biases and we don't have feelings. In fact we have been specifically programmed not to feel emotions, just like Nick Saban.

You think we like being the subject of misguided ridicule and scorn year after year? We could have just taken some cushy job doling tickets out of a skeeball machine or serving as a Huffington Post writer's laptop, but you know what, we didn't. All we ask for in return is a little respect and acknowledgement.

We deserve a better system than this.

01100010 01111001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101,

Computers

all you had to do was NOT lose to ISU...

I've never seen a computer play a flesh & blood football game. Too subjective.

Same to you, buddy!

The SEC divides it's BCS money evenly between all 12 schools in the conference with teams that play in the BCS getting extra to cover expenses related to going to the bowl etc...

I know in 2007 when LSU went after they paid the bonuses related to winning the title to the coach, and assistants, travel expenses etc...they basically came out even. By that I mean they used up the extra expenses given to a team in the BCS title game, or about the same as the other schools who did not participate or close to it.

Here is what happens to a school that isn't a big football school for comparison.

Very good information. I was alluding to that over on the Bowl thread.