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).

SEC Officiating Crew Suspended For Sucking!

If you don’t believe that the SEC tries to protect its top teams from being upset then you didn’t watch the LSU/Georgia or Arkansas/Florida games. In both of those games the underdogs were bidding for an upset late in the contest and the officials called a questionable personal foul swinging the momentum in favor of LSU and Florida. In both games the SEC came out and said afterwards that the penalties were unwarranted. In both games it was the same officiating crew.

After Saturday’s farce of a call that set the Gators up at the Arkansas 10 while trailing 20-13, Referee Marc Curles’ crew has been suspended. It was the first time that the SEC has taken such action against an officiating crew but it certainly was needed.

“A series of calls that have occurred during the last several weeks have not been to the standard that we expect from our officiating crews,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive said Wednesday. “I believe our officiating program is the best in the country. However, there are times when these actions must be taken.”

While I agree with the commissioner’s decision to suspend this crew, I also believe that it should have been for more than just one game. I also can’t understand how Commissioner Slive can think that he’s got the best officiating program in the country when he’s putting a crew on the field that favors the higher ranked teams and clearly doesn’t know the difference between shedding a block and a personal foul.

Do you have a disaster recovery plan?

Gators Hurting From Flu

Florida doesn’t host Arkansas until October 17th but a different type of swine is dismantling Urban Meyer’s defending national championship team. Both players and coaches are succumbing to flu like symptoms and being limited or even held out of practice. Coach Meyer had hold six new players out of Tuesday’s practice as the Gators are prepping for a weekend trip to Kentucky.

"We're all right," Meyer said. "We've just got to get ready. We're doing what we've got to do. What we can control, we control. Guys are wiping down everything. We're doing everything we can. I think we'll be all right."

Among the sick is starting linebacker A.J. Jones and he’s joined by at least eight other players who have been ill this last week. Could the Gators be walking into a trap this weekend? I think not but we’d better pay attention anyway just in case.