Pretend Playoffs - Championship Game

Last week we saw Alabama knock off Texas in the BCS championship game and now this week we’re ready to crown the Crimson Tide as our 2009-10 NCAA Football Pretend Playoff Champions. While the BCS agreed with our champion the runner-up was a different story. We had a team from the state of Texas in the championship game but it was the one from Ft. Worth and not Austin. Granted TCU’s real life loss to Boise State hurts our formula here but we still have to finish the process.

In our system TCU reached the championship game by knocking off Florida in the Rose Bowl and then sneaking past the Longhorns in an Austin upset. Bama reached the championship game virtually unchallenged after crushing Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl and then Boise State in the semis. Now we’ve reached the championship game and we find the Tide still driving on cruise control.

Pretend Playoffs Championship	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
TCU Horned Frogs	0	6	3	3	12
Alabama Crimson Tide	17	3	7	6	33

College Football Pretend Playoffs – Semi Finals

Teams Remaining
#4 TCU
#1 Alabama
#2 Texas
#6 Boise State

The four teams to survive our first round of the pretend college football playoffs were #1 Alabama, #2 Texas, #4 TCU and #6 Boise State. The playoffs now move to the home sites of the two remaining top seeded teams which means #6 Boise State will travel to Tuscaloosa to take on the top seeded Crimson Tide while #4 TCU travels to Austin for an instate showdown with the Longhorns. Who doesn’t think that would be fun?

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
#6 Boise State Broncos	0	16	3	0	19
#1 Alabama Crimson Tide	7	17	10	16	50

Boise began their season with a major upset over the eventual Pac 10 champion Oregon Ducks but they'd be no match for the SEC champions at the end of the season. Mark Ingram runs wild through the Broncos' defense in leading Bama to a rout and punching a ticket to Pasadena for the college football championship game.

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
#4 TCU Horned Frogs	7	0	6	0	13
#2 Texas Longhorns	0	7	0	3	10

Austin becomes upset city as the Horned Frogs kick their way to Pasadena to face the Tide. After playing to a draw in the first half TCU kicks two third quarter field goals to stun the Longhorns and the college football world.

Pretend College Football Playoffs Round One

We’re ready to start our pretend college football playoffs and you may find a few surprises in the results. All first round games are played on neutral fields using the BCS Bowl System starting with the Rose Bowl between #4 TCU and #5 Florida.

Rose Bowl	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
#5 Florida Gators	9	3	0	6	18
#4 TCU Horned Frogs	0	10	10	6	26

Florida gets off to a quick start by actually taking a 12-0 lead in the second quarter but then TCU’s Joseph Turner takes over. Finishing with 187 rushing yards and two touchdowns Turner leads the Frogs to a 26-18 upset.

Sugar Bowl	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
#8 Ohio State Buckeyes	0	6	0	3	9
#1 Alabama Crimson Tide	17	7	3	6	33

Ohio State has no answer for Bama’s defense and the Heisman Trophy winner, Mark Ingram, has a banner day rushing for 142 yards and a score. Tide marches on.

Fiesta Bowl	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
#7 Oregon Ducks	0	0	0	7	7
#2 Texas Longhorns	10	7	3	10	30

The Longhorns hold Oregon to 151 total offensive yards while Colt McCoy passes for 230 yards and a score.

Orange Bowl	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Total
#6 Boise State Broncos	7	7	7	17	38
#3 Cincinnati Bearcats	7	14	7	7	35

In another BCS miracle the Boise State Broncos outscore Cincinnati 17-7 in the fourth quarter to end the most exciting game of the first round with a 38-35 upset win over the Bearcats.

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.

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).

CBS Sports BlogPoll Week 10 – Tide At The Top!

Alabama becomes the third team to take the top spot in the CBS Sports Blog Poll. What that means is that they could now be marked for elimination.

BlogPoll Week 10

Rank	Team	PPB	StdDev	Delta
1	Alabama (42)	24.3	0.9	1
2	Texas Tech (21)	23.8	1.0	4
3	Penn State (10)	23.4	1.0	--
4	Florida (1)	21.3	1.4	1
5	Texas	21.1	1.4	4
6	Oklahoma (1)	19.9	1.3	2
7	Southern Cal	19.2	1.2	--
8	Oklahoma State	18.5	1.4	1
9	Utah	16.4	1.8	1
10	Boise State	15.5	2.0	1
11	TCU	14.4	2.0	1
12	Ohio State	13.2	2.3	1
13	Georgia	12.3	3.0	5
14	Missouri	12.2	2.8	--
15	Ball State	9.4	4.1	1
16	LSU	8.8	3.7	3
17	Michigan State	8.2	2.5	5
18	North Carolina	7.4	3.4	3
19	Brigham Young	6.7	4.6	1
20	Georgia Tech	6.4	2.7	6
21	California	5.1	3.4	5
22	West Virginia	3.4	3.0	4
23	Maryland	3.3	2.8	1
24	Florida State	2.0	2.5	6
25	Northwestern	1.9	2.3	1

Also Receiving Votes: Pittsburgh(1.7), Tulsa(1.1), Oregon State(0.9), Cincinnati(0.7), Minnesota(0.6), South Carolina(0.5), Kansas(0.5), Miami (Florida)(0.3), Air Force(0.2), Oregon(0.2), Connecticut(0.1), Iowa(0.1), Wake Forest(0.0), Central Michigan(0.0), Virginia Tech(0.0), Memphis(0.0), Mississippi(0.0),

Total Ballots: 75

Votes by blog here, votes by team here.