College Football Pretend Playoffs: The Seedings

The way it looks now it will literally take an act of congress to get a college football playoff and with a little more than a week remaining until Texas and Alabama face off in the BCS Championship Game we’re still left wondering what if. What if teams like Cincinnati and TCU were given opportunities to play for all the marbles? Would they get trampled over by a champion from a BCS or would they actually have a punchers chance at providing a March Madness like shocking moment? Unfortunately we’ll never know and instead we have a series of bowl games that look like this;

Rose Bowl – Ohio State/Oregon

Sugar Bowl – Florida/Cincinnati

Fiesta Bowl – Boise State/TCU

Orange Bowl – Iowa/Georgia Tech

BCS Championship – Texas/Alabama

Honestly, unless you’re a fan of one of those teams which game are you just nuts about watching? The Texas/Bama game should be fun for a championship but we’ve got to deal with Boise State/TCU before we get there. Really?

I’ve always argued that you could use the current BCS formula to select the top eight teams for a playoff and things would be much more exciting during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. How about this for the first round?

Rose Bowl - #4 TCU/#5 Florida

Sugar Bowl - #1 Alabama/#8 Ohio State

Fiesta Bowl - #2 Texas/#7 Oregon

Orange Bowl - #3 Cincinnati/#6 Boise State

Come on, you can’t tell me that doesn’t look like a better BCS Bowl lineup. Can you imagine the ratings for these match-ups? Advertising revenue would be through the roof with excitement and anticipation off the chart. The next round would move to the home sites of the two remaining top seeded teams and then finally a BCS Championship game that rotates sites as normal. It would be a lot of fun but we’ll never see it. So in the meantime we’re going to use imagination and computer simulation over the next week to play through our pretend playoffs.

Final Regular Season BlogPoll Ballot

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	2
2	Cincinnati	2
3	Texas	2
4	TCU	1
5	Boise State	1
6	Florida	4
7	Oregon
8	Ohio State
9	Penn State
10	Georgia Tech	2
11	Virginia Tech	1
12	LSU	1
13	Brigham Young	1
14	Oregon State	3
15	Miami (Florida)	2
16	Stanford	4
17	Arizona
18	Nebraska	1
19	Pittsburgh	4
20	West Virginia	3
21	Utah	4
22	Oklahoma State
23	Wisconsin
24	Central Michigan
25	East Carolina
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Houston (#16), California (#18), Southern Cal (#21), Clemson (#24).

CBS Sports BlogPoll Ballot Week 13

Rank	Team
1	Texas
2	Florida
3	Alabama
4	Cincinnati
5	TCU
6	Boise State
7	Oregon
8	Ohio State
9	Penn State
10	Virginia Tech
11	Oregon State
12	Georgia Tech
13	LSU
14	Brigham Young
15	Pittsburgh
16	Houston
17	Miami (Florida)
18	California
19	Nebraska
20	Stanford
21	Southern Cal
22	Oklahoma State
23	West Virginia
24	Clemson
25	Utah

Writing On The Wall For Charlie Weis

While there’s been no official word out of South Bend regarding the job status of Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis it seems to be understood that Saturday will be his final regular season game, if not his final game period, on the sidelines. Weis himself said that he couldn’t make an argument against being fired after a 33-30 loss to Connecticut.

On Tuesday Irish athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, said that Weis would not stay in California to recruit following the game against Stanford but will return to South Bend with the team. Hmmmm, why wouldn’t an AD want his coach out on the recruiting trail? I can think on only one reason.

CBS Sports BlogPoll Ballot: Week 11

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	1
2	Texas	1
3	Florida
4	Cincinnati
5	TCU	4
6	Boise State	1
7	Pittsburgh
8	Georgia Tech	2
9	Ohio State	1
10	Oregon	1
11	LSU	3
12	Penn State	5
13	Oklahoma State	2
14	Virginia Tech	4
15	Iowa	7
16	Stanford
17	Wisconsin	7
18	Clemson	5
19	Brigham Young	1
20	Oregon State
21	Utah	5
22	Southern Cal	10
23	Rutgers
24	Houston	11
25	Nebraska
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Miami (Florida) (#14), Arizona (#19), South Florida (#21), West Virginia (#25).

CBS Sports BlogPoll Ballot Week 8: I’m Joining The Resistance!

Raise Your Hand If You Want To Be In The Resistance

I’m keeping Alabama at #1 this week and dropping Florida to #3 just because I don’t agree with what the SEC is doing. Both teams struggled against lesser opponents on Saturday, Bama at home against Tennessee and Florida on the road at Mississippi State. The difference was that the Tide won with the assistance of Terrence Cody blocking two field goals. Florida won with the assistance of an officiating crew who once again gave the Gators a favorable call which was also once again the wrong call. Its clearly obvious by now to everyone who isn’t a Tebow worshiper that the SEC is protecting their “cash cow” and is working to script the season, much like a WWE event, so that we see a Bama vs. Florida SEC Championship game. I’m not buying the hype nor am I adding to it. Florida is a good team and could be the best in the country but I don’t want ESPN and CBS telling me that. I want to see them go out and earn that type of respect on the field without the assistance of a biased officiating crew. Until that happens you can count me in the group of people standing against the ridiculous nonsense we’ve seen the last two weeks from the SEC. We are the resistance and we call ourselves the Anti-Tebows. Lookout Georgia, you’re next in line to get hosed by SEC officials!

I've got 12 teams on the move this week on my ballot. Arizona and Notre Dame are new this week as I said goodbye to Texas Tech and South Florida.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Texas	1
3	Florida	1
4	Cincinnati
5	Boise State
6	Iowa
7	Southern Cal
8	LSU
9	Georgia Tech
10	Penn State
11	Oregon	4
12	Virginia Tech
13	Oklahoma State
14	Mississippi
15	Ohio State	1
16	TCU	2
17	Utah	2
18	Pittsburgh	2
19	Miami (Florida)	8
20	Houston	1
21	South Carolina	2
22	West Virginia	2
23	Arizona
24	Notre Dame
25	Brigham Young	8
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Texas Tech (#22), South Florida (#25).