Some whining Longhorns fans asked us to start this thread so anti-BCS talk wouldn't dominate their thread. Here ya go. wink

Break out the cheese.

California Whine

I do think the system is flawed, but it is SUPPOSED to guarantee the nation the # 1 vs. # 2 and nothing more. Seems Auburn should be the one with the heartburn this year. Texas knows all too well how it feels to be in Cal's shoes, but we're still damn happy to be in the Rose Bowl, no matter how chilly Pasadena is in January.

Cyd, what a great idea for a thread. wink


m/

From chief chardonnay Unfortunately, my U.S. Representative, an AU alum, is too busy introducing bills to dissolve the NCAA as a whole as a result of Alabama/Tennessee/NCAA love-hate triangle. But, I would say that we should go back to the old system. Since the advent of the SEC Championship game in 1992, three teams previous to Auburn had gone undefeated and EACH won the national championship. The system is f**ked.

a Republican bitching about Texas--isn't that like their holy land?

Not so fast. This has bi-partisan support, this one coming out of DC. I agree that something needs to be done. I agree NONE of the ballots should be secret at any time during the BCS process.

Furthermore, what would be so horrible about having just ONE more College Football game every year to decide the true National Champions? I would certainly give up those "Classic" games in the dead August heat for the ultimate championship game. I would love to see the College Super Bowl played every year between the two Bowl winners out of the Top 4 (and just think of the $$$).

Barbara Boxer Wants Answers

Dear God, please don't let this turn into a P&R thread, but thank you for letting the BCS screw Cal this year and letting Satan's team play Michigan in the Rose Bowl. And please fix the BCS. wink

But who would the top 4 be? Would everybody accept Utah as the 4th team, or would we be back to the Cal/Texas controversy again?

Top 4, no "charity" slots.

Surely we can come up with a semi-consensus "top 4 teams" in this country. #1 vs. #4 and #2 vs. #3...winners play for National Championship. Sure, #'s 5 and 6 will bitch and moan, this is America after all.

Atlanta and Ft. Worth papers are using state open records laws to try to force the coaches' poll voters to release their ballots.

It's a creative approach. In Florida, the state open records act is very far-reaching, and it wouldn't surprise me if state university coaches were forced to release their votes. It wouldn't apply to Coker since Miami is a private university, but Bowden at F$U would be covered.

I think the openness would be a good thing.

I think if it's an open process all season long, the voters in the two polls without a consience will at least bow to the peer pressure of the nation's microscope. :confused: Maybe?

You just beat me to it on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram freedom of information request, but I hadn't heard about the actions by the Atlanta paper.

Well, for the sake of debate, I'm going to play devil's advocate and defend the BCS. If we start off by looking at the old bowl system, then certainly the BCS is better. Under the old system of bowl-conference alignments, this year we would have USC going to the Rose, Auburn to the Sugar, and Oklahoma to the Orange. The possibility of 3 (or more) undefeated teams at the end of the season would have been a probability. Therefore the polls would have decided the national champion(s).

Now, comparing it to a playoff system. Well, some of you have already made suggestions and then pointed out the shortcomings above. If a playoff system of 4 were used, who would be the 4th team? Utah? Texas? California? And wouldn't Virginia Tech and Michigan have some complaint since they were the champions of a major conference while Texas and California weren't? And what about Boise State? Even if the top 4 teams were included, an undefeated team would still be left out. Therefore, we'd have to go to a playoff bracket of 8. Even then, no one from the Big Ten or ACC are ranked in the top 8 of the polls. So then where do you go, a system of 16? There's no way imaginable that the college presidents, who are opposed to adding even one more game to the college football schedule are going to agree to a 4 round extension of the season.

Lastly, one could argue the weakness of a playoff system. What if a team like Georgia at 9-2 was included in a playoff and went on to win it? Then teams like USC and Oklahoma who won their conferences, were undeated in the regular season, and finished with only one loss would be runner-ups to a team with 2 losses. Often a playoff system does not crown the best team of the year , but only the best team during the playoff period. (refer to NC State and the 1983 basketball title. they certainly were not the best team in basketball that year, they were just the cinderella team that played exceptional at the end of the season). By not having a playoff system in football, you in turn make the regular season an 11 week playoff.

And lastly, lets consider this: what if we had two national champions (co-national champions) or even tri-national champions. Would the world come to an end? Would it be so bad that even more young men could share that experience. If no clear national champion were crowned, then I would say, "so what?" Its a college sport for goodness sake. These are young men playing for fun and love of the sport, not for money. Unfortuantely, we have such a hyper-competitive nation that everything has to be ranked, rated, and compared and we lose perspective of what its all about. So I just don't see that it is a must to have a definitive national champion crowned in every sport.

I'm sure that no one has anything to reply. wink

First off I start off by saying that they should make the votes public.

Now when it comes to 'undefeated' teams and 'if' you have a playoff system who would be the top 4 or the top 6...well you should start somewhere. Yes go to a 4 playoff with the winners playing each other for a national championship.

Now who would be the top four of this year.? Well I would have USC-v-Texas and OU-v-AU winners play each other and take all. Now why did Utah, nor Cal, nor Boise Sate make the cut, simple. 1.Conference 2. Strength of schedule...sorry boys if Boise or Utah want to prove themselves they have to start scheduling the Michigan's or the Purdue's, or the FSU's. Sorry Cal, PAC-10 just not there yet.

Well that is the way it happens all the time in sports...Cinderella teams who faced adversity and came back to win everything....and that is the way it should be! If you are the best team in the nation all year long, but could not close out the season as national champs...guess what..? Then you were not the best team in the nation!

Let them play!

As far as whining Texas fans...? Sorry Cyd, no whining from Texas here....might want to check up in Berkley, heard it was going to be a real bitter x-mas.

HOOK'EM HORNS!
"Say it with me....Rose Bowl Baby!"

At least a playoff would give teams a chance to win it on the field. If an undefeated Oklahoma were upset by a 9-2 Georgia team in the championship game, so be it. Oklahoma would've had their shot.

And who's to say the 9-2 Georgia team wouldn't have been truly the better team, anyway? As a quick-and-easy example, when BYU went undefeated in the mid-'80s, did anyone in the country really think they were the nation's best team? As Steve Spurrier once said when criticized for his non-conference opponents, you give me a playoff system that won't punish me for maybe losing a game here or there in the SEC and I'll be lobbying Michigan, Texas, Washington, Penn State and USC to fill those out-of-conference slots each year.

The regular season can never be viewed as an 11-game playoff because some teams are playing in tougher conferences than others.

But Hookesminsd, doesn't a team that went undefeated in the regular season have a more legitimate claim to being the best team of the year than does a team that lost twice? Why should a team like Oklahoma be punished just because they lost at the end of the year (in a proposed playoff system) as opposed to a team that won at the end, but lost twice early on (ie: Georgia in the example above)? That doesn't help crown the overall best team, just the team that was playing well at the end.

And sportsoutdoors, you say a playoff system would allow teams to win it on the field. Well, if Georgia lost 2 games in the regular season, then they've already proven that they can't win it on the field. Why should undefeated teams like Southern Cal and Oklahoma have to be put into a playoff system against teams with two losses like Georgia and Virginia Tech? USC and OU have already proven themselves.

Stregth of schedule favors the BCS title game as well, after all, its included in the computer average. If a playoff system will guarantee teams like Utah and Boise State a spot, why would they ever want to play a harder schedule? They can play an easy schedule and go undefeated. If those teams were in a major conference, do you think they'd be undefeated? They'd probably both have a couple of losses and not be ranked at a point where they are given BCS consideration. If teams know they've got to be in the final two, then they'll have to play a schedule worthy of a national champion.

Hookeminsd, who, exactly, did the big 12 teams schedule in their non-conference slates to prove that it's such a superior conference? The win-loss records of the conference are great because nobody scheduled any tough opponents.

Southern Cal beat the ACC champion
Arizona St (merely 3rd in the Pac-10) beat a co-champion of the Big 10
Let's take a look at the #4 teams in both conferences

Oregon St is 6-5, but their non-conference slate included LSU, Boise St and New Mexico, which beat Texas Tech. Texas Tech might very well have gone 0-3 in their non-conference schedule had they played LSU and Boise St instead of Southern Methodist and Texas Christian.

Or let's look at the Big 12 head-to-head vs the Mountain West

Utah beat Texas A&M
New Mexico beat Texas Tech
Colorado beat Colorado St
Texas A&M beat Wyoming

Just 2-2, and the top team in the Big 12 north barely squeaked by a sub-500 Mountain West team.
Sorry--I don't see anything that proves to me that the Big 12 is so strong that Utah couldn't have gone 10-1 in that league.

Yes, I realize the Big 12 had a good head-to-head vs the Pac-10, but all the Big 12 teams involved had winning in-conference records and none of the Pac-10 teams did. What do you think would happen if USC, Cal, Arizona St, and Oregon St played a bunch of games against Big 12 north teams or Baylor?

Maybe the Big 12 really is as good as its reputation, but the objective evidence is weak because they played so few quality non-conference opponents.

Under a season-ending playoff scenario, all teams would be evaluated to determine the top however many in the country. USC and OU would probably be the top 2 seeds in the playoff, meaning they get to play the 2 lowest seeds (and what should be the easiest road to the championship game). It would probably be very similar to a basketball selection and playoff scheme. Let's say USC and OU play the lowest seeds and don't win their games to advance to the next round in the playoffs. Who cares? The "best team in the country" is totally different than the "national champion". If you can't win the games in a playoff situation, then tough S**T. That's life. Great, even good, teams bring it each week. If not, you go home and enjoy the holidays early.

The argument of "why should a team like OU be punished just b/c they lost at the end of the year...as opposed to a team that won at the end, but lost twice early on" is complete BS. Georgia would obviously have a much lower seed than a no-loss OU team. If Georgia won the national title in the playoff system, then more power to them. Again, they would be the "national champion", not necessarily the "best team in the country".

And another thing, USC vs. OU this year won't necessarily decide the best team either...what if OU has a great game and USC stinks it up big time (or vice versa). Have we really determined who is the better team then? It's all about what you do at the time you are supposed to do it...

This would never happen, but wouldn't a swiss tournament format for the whole season be fun? The way it works is this. Everybody plays a random opponent (or maybe the closest opponent) in the first round. Winners go on to play teams that won their first round matches, losers play teams that lost their first matches. Then teams that are 2-0 play other 2-0 teams, 1-1 teams play other 1-1 teams, etc. Teams would find their own level, so any team that went undefeated would have had to play a murderer's row of other undefeated teams. You could get a clear national champion out of 1024 teams with just 10 games using this format.

Aggie99: Well, if you don't care if the national champion is the best team, then why have a playoff system? The winner of #1 vs. #2 in a bowl will more than suffice.

Well, if teams can't "bring it" during the regular season, why should they get a chance to bring it during a playoff?

HotlantaTarHeel, I'm glad you don't run the NCAA basketball selection committee. If it was up to you, only undefeated teams would get into March Madness (undefeated means bringing it, right?)...I guess in your mind OU, USC, Utah, Auburn, and Boise State are the ones justified as being in a football playoff this year, since they were the only ones to bring it during the regular season. This would ensure that a no-loss team always wins the national championship in your world. That's pretty restrictive, don't you think?

My whole point is you can rarely tell who the best team is in any sport. You can find a champion to win a title, but what defines "best"? Playoff or no playoff, we get a national champion. However, what's more sound about a playoff situation is the teams play for it on the field. There is nothing awarded by humans who are known to have consistent gross errors of judgment.

Understood Aggie. My point is that the current BCS set-up is basically a playoff system of 2 teams. If expanded to a 4, 8, or whatever sized playoff bracket, then you would still need a BCS type system to decide who those 4, 8, or 16 teams would be. You are then right back where you started, relying on polls and computers to decide who gets in or doesn't. And the 5th, 9th, or 17th placed team will cry foul. So the real debate is the merits of having more teams or not. I'm saying if teams cannot win their own conference or have a few regular season losses, then why include them? And no team is given the national title, they still have to win it on the field, by winning all of their regular season games followed by the BCS title bowl.

It may be a playoff system of the top teams; however, I'm convinced Auburn is one of the two top teams and arbitrary computer/coaches/sports writers polls have determined we aren't.

Under the old bowl system, # 3 Auburn would still have a chance to win the national championship by beating probably California or Texas in Sugar Bowl. If OU lost and USC lost, then naturally # 3 Auburn would win. Now, what is the point in even having the Sugar Bowl? We have nothing to play for or to win so it's just a game against a good VT team for the sake of having the game. If the BCS works so well, then let's have NO...that's right NO bowl games except for the one between #1 and #2...the others are just silly.

That's true, Hotlanta. The 66th (or is it 65th??) basketball team always feels like they got shafted each year. With a football playoff, there would still be a few teams that felt they were shafted, and there is no way to prevent this. However, an 8-team playoff would at least match up the no-loss teams and a handful of the other one-loss teams...winning your conference doesn't mean you necessarily get in to the playoff. It's impossible to believe that a committee could NOT select the top 8 teams in the country for a particular year...get rid of any BCS-type system. You can still have the rest of the meaningless bowls if desired, but they have no bearing on the selection of the 8 playoff teams.

No, with their two losses, Georgia might have proven who had the tougher schedule and who had the easier schedule. It's tough to say. What if Georgia's schedule in this fictional season we're tossing around had shaped up to include games at a 5-1 LSU, at an 8-1 Auburn and at a 4-0 Tennessee but Oklahoma and USC not only didn't have challenging schedules that year but also played the only mild challenges in their own stadiums? USC and Oklahoma perhaps hadn't really proven themselves.

Not necessarily true. Remember 1983. Auburn defeated an ungodly number of ranked teams during the regular season and its only loss was at the beginning of the season to Texas, the team ranked No. 2 going into the bowls. But one of the networks (CBS, I believe) did a great job of promoting the Orange Bowl as \"the national championship game\" and, as a result, Miami jumped from No. 5 to No. 1, leapfrogging No. 3 Auburn after Nos. 1 and 2 lost.

Not necessarily. You have angry teams at the end of each basketball season who think they were unfairly left out of the Big Dance vs. some other team that made it in. However, no one actually believes that one of the teams tossed around as the country's best team gets left out of the tourney.

And I'd argue we need to, as in basketball, let a committee decide who's had a tougher road rather than a computer. Have you noticed where the computers have Harvard ranked and, more importantly, who they have ranked behind them?

First of all, this isn't entirely true. Did you somehow miss last season? It's conceivable that a very sloppy close game between USC and Oklahoma combined with a 77-0 blowout of Virginia
Tech by Auburn would allow Auburn to get voted co-national champion.

Even if it were true, you presuppose that the ONLY reason to play a football game is to determine the #1 team in the country. Well, there's about 100 Div. 1 teams that we knew would not be #1 in the country on Day 1 of the season--so I guess there was no point in them playing football at all? I must say that if your team shares your opinion that playing for (probably) #2 status is pointless, they are going to get blown away by Virginia Tech. There's a few million dollars on the line as well, you know.

I think his point is that these guys made it through the SEC without a blemish but have an incredibly slim chance at getting even a split title. If you told most people prior to the season that an SEC school would make it to Christmas without a loss, they would've asked, "Who will they be playing for the national title?"

If Auburn does win and does so by even a more substantial margin than I would expect, say 31-14, the result will be "congratulations, you're No. 2." If they lose, then they know everyone will say, "See? They shouldn't have been playing in the Orange." I can definitely see how it would be tougher for Auburn players to get motivated for this game vs. getting motivated for the Orange Bowl. The few million dollars on the line probably doesn't mean a whole lot to your average football player. A championship does.

Well, using an 8-team playoff system they wouldn't have any motivation to win the SEC championship game. Look at the lackluster play of a lot of top teams in NCAA basketball conference championships.

[ December 15, 2004, 04:19 PM: Message edited by: JC ]

OK, I believe the current system is better than the old way, but it's not perfect. (Having USC, OU and Auburn all in different bowls with a National Champion/Co-Champions/Tri-Champions possibility stinks.)

I still would like to see implementation of my BCS Top 4 scenario based on and OPEN system (even if the formula is tweaked again). If we pretend to have a formula that provides us the real #1 and #2, surely we can add #3 and #4 (which would at least address Auburn's situation this year). Frankly, I don't give a rats patooty that Utah and Boise State are undefeated and would not be in my playoff scenario.

And who really thinks it would be a common occurrence to have a TWO-loss team make the top 4, even with today's criteria? And to say the conference championship or regular season is diminished is ludicrous. You've got to have one-loss or better season to make the top 4. All games would be VERY important. We've got disparity in Conference Championship games. Either all or not, step up to the plate.

In all other sports we ACCEPT that a non-conference champion can be the National or "World" Champions, why not football? My scenario only requires ONE extra game and I know to win a state championship in Texas High School Football you've got to play a 15 or 16 game season (depending on your Division/Class) to win it all.

And another thing...the Bowls are going to have to give a little more flexibility on the tie-ins. Let all the tie-ins fall to the non-playoff bowls. This is no worse than (for instance) this year's Rose Bowl Commisioners bitching that their natural tie-in got screwed and they don't look forward to hosting the team that earned their appearance. The Pac 10 Non-Champion vs. Quasi-Big 10 Champion, who the f**k cares that this game will not be played this year? Come on!

The top two bowls will have to forgo tie-ins when they are scheduled to be the playoff bowls on a rotational basis unless there's a natural fit (such as #1 USC vs. #4 Texas in the Rose and #3 Auburn vs. #2 OU in the Orange this year). Winners play for the Championship.

We accept previous losses earlier in the season in other sports, only to come back and beat the same team in the playoffs for the championship, why not college football? You can certainly do it in NCAA basketball, all the Pro leagues, and High School sports (at least here in Texas). We don't question it, but we do in College Football. :confused:

My main reason for having ONLY the Top 4 is because the big "excuse" by College Presidents is the concern of too many games and the toll on the "student-athlete". This should shut those people up.

I would like to see a pure National Champion determined in College Football as opposed to the annual "Mythical National Champion(S)".

[ December 15, 2004, 09:35 PM: Message edited by: HornFan ]

My #1 beef with the BCS is the people. I would get rid of the polls altogether and let computer rankings determine who gets into a playoff. The only reason USC has the #1 ranking right now is because they started there.

Hey, golfer 21...who oversees and configures the computers that determine those rankings? That's right...PEOPLE.

You can't fully take out the human element, but I agree that getting rid of the polls would drastically reduce human error.

But even then, sometimes the computers are screwy too...because of human bias, you get things like Arizona State being blown out by USC and Cal...then, they lose to lowly Arizona and they end with a computer ranking of 11 (and that includes one computer not even ranking them). :confused:

One important difference: In football, it's a single game and not a multi-team tournament for the conference championship. You're preparing for one team — a team you know at least a week or two in advance which one it will be.

That depends on which computer ranking you're going by. I doubt many people believe, as one of the computer rankings claims, that Harvard has a better football team than Arkansas, Stanford, Alabama, NC State, Clemson, South Carolina and Pitt.

I think this statement has some merit. If there were no preseason polls and the first vote were taken after the second week that all teams had begun play, do yall think the final rankings would be the same?

I completely understand that the preseason polls have a HUGE impact on where teams are at the end of the season; however, the thought going into this season was that OU and USC were the 2 best teams in the country. Even if Auburn had started much closer to the top (rather than about #18), would it still have had a chance to take one of the top places from either OU or USC? USC was #1 the whole season, and OU never dropped below #2.

You're assuming that they could lose the SEC championship game and still remain in the top 8. That's not guaranteed. Also, if they did stay in the top 8, they would certainly drop in ranking and therefore have a tougher first-round game in the theoretical playoffs. Assuming the higher ranked teams get to host the first round games, losing the conference championship game could mean going on the road against a top-4 team. That should be their motivation.

That's not due to human bias at all. First of all, the computers the BCS uses don't use victory margin, so the fact that the losses to USC and Cal were blowouts doesn't matter. So what the computers see is a team that's 8-3, with two of the 3 losses to very highly ranked teams. Arizona State's profile is rather similar to A&M, which is also ranked fairly highly by the computers. Arizona State ends up with the higher ranking because A&M has three losses to very good teams in addition to its ludicrous loss to Baylor, and Arizona State has a big out-of-conference win over Iowa.

The real trouble with the computer rankings is they are too opaque. The reason College Basketball uses the RPI is that even though it's a terrible ranking, it's relatively easy to understand whereas the computer models are so complex that it's difficult to determine exactly how the outcome of a particular game will affect the ranking. Plus, some of them use strength of schedule in a stupid way which causes your ranking to drop when you beat a bad team and rise when you lose to a good team...this is an especially problematic when victory margin is not used. As I have said elsewhere, I'd rather see only conference champions in a playoff because the criteria for selecting conference champions are clear and objective, even if the tiebreakers are sometimes goofy. I also don't know how carefully the BCS people have really looked at the rankings available to make sure their assumptions are the most logical ones to use. There are ways of evaluating the effectiveness of computer rankings (predictive power, internal consistency), and I haven't seen any evidence that they've put any work into determining which ones are actually best.

While I agree that the start position in the polls has a big impact on final position, it's worth noting that the College Football Ranking Comparison which averages 100 computer rankings actually picks USC as #1--they just happen to use a lot of rankings that aren't in the BCS.

Here's the difference. In college football, the regular season consists of only 11-12 games against a possible 116 different opponents. Why should Texas get another shot at Oklahoma when over 100 other teams, probably a half-dozen of which would have a legitimate chance of beating them, have never had an opportunity to play them?
Besides, it couldn't have happened in major league baseball for most of the history of the game, and there are plenty of people who would still like to see the wild card dropped.

Seriously, SportsoutdoorsGA--do you really think Auburn would have dropped out of the top 8 if they'd lost to Tennessee. They're not going to drop past any 2-loss team, or to a 1-loss team from outside the big conferences. That would keep them in the top 7, at least. They're more likely to stay #3 or 4 than drop out of the top 8. As far as motivation for the Sugar Bowl--it seems like the "no respect" motivator has been useful to other teams.

I say, blast the whole structure of college football apart. Make 8 conferences of 12 teams by geography and force 21 crappy teams down to div I-AA. Each conference plays a round robin, and the 8 conference winners play in a playoff. Each year, teams that win 1 or fewer games in their conference get shipped down to I-AA and are replaced by the teams that dominated I-AA.

[ December 16, 2004, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: JC ]

I am so glad that I have at least some college football to watch and care about and know that there will be a legit national champ crowned at the end of the season. 1-AA anyone? My Montana Grizzlies are going for the national championship tomorrow night on espn. They have a sixteen team playoff system that works great, some automatic bids and then the remaining at large determined by committee.

1-A should put some of these old MEANINGLESS bowl games to use and have them be playoff games. I would really care then and WATCH THEM!!! How exciting would that be. The current system really makes the whole season just a joke. GO GRIZ!!!

Just got my confirmation e-mail from Texas Box Office....going to the Rose Bowl baby....! Now I can personally see TEXAS kick Meat chicken's ass!

HOOK'EM HORNS!

"Can't spell sucks without U-S-C"

The BCS system is just the big football programs' way of keeping as much money as possible. If they really wanted a playoff it would be fairly easy to do within the bowl structure, and it would probably generate some more money. But they'd have to parcel it out to more schools outside the big conferences.

The politicians are pathetic idiots for wasting their time with this "issue" when there are so many problems that need their attention.

And the headline on the Outsports home page (with the tiny C between the B and S) is just brilliant!

[ December 17, 2004, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: Joe in Philly ]

and just when it seemed the whole bcs mess couldn't get any messier........could this be the beginning of the end of the bcs?

let us hope!

I was thinking the same thing--what could they possibly replace the AP poll with?

another half-assed computer geek poll?

this is the end of the BCS--shoot it and put it out of our misery

With AP denying the use of their poll in the BCS formula, it has to reinvent itself. God knows where we go from here, but change is positive.

The AP will still have their poll, so we're back to square one for the chance of co-national champions. (AP Final #1 and Hybrid-BCS Final #1). rah! rah!

The BCS better pull a good one out of it's ass this time around, otherwise they are just pushing a string.

Gee, Cal was impressive last night. Really deserved a spot in the BCS.

Well, the team that annhiliated A&M, was manhandled by Auburn twice. Didn't OU BARELY beat A&M?

I'm starting the campaign now, if Auburn beats VT (which isn't guaranteed by any stretch) by a good margin, the AP has no choice but to vote AU #1.

I don't know about that Aubie. You can only compare different games to the same teams so much. Especially when it comes to bowl games vs. regular season games.

No offense, but whoever wins the OU/USC game is #1 in my mind. But considering the 'rebelious' AP, who knows what will happen.

Illini why are you assuming the either USC or OU is the best team in the nation? The PAC-10's #2 team was embarrassed beyond belief by a second tier Big XII. I'm not convinced that USC should be in the game.

I apologize for being so vocal over this, but the last 3 SEC teams that went undefeated each won the National Championship. Auburn should be in the same situation.

Aubie I agree with you.

I'm not a big fan of this "whining" about bowls. I don't think I'd call what you are doing whining per se, but just use Cal as an example. Auburn has to go out and win (which I think they should do just fine).

Do you think anyone feels sorry for Cal right now?

Cal was outplayed--simple as that

as were all my $#%^ing teams in this year's bowl, except for Louisville

I am sure your luck will change tonight, TD, because the Hokies are gonna roll!!

Dear Auburn Fans,

Congrations and a great big New Year's sugar-coated WDE to ya!

We have one more year to be nice to each other until we start playing each other again.

Love,

The Gator Nation