Posted on 12/08/2003 2:09:50 PM PST by SoCal Pubbie
NORMAN, Okla. -- If his team wins the rest of its games, Bob Stoops will have No. 1 Oklahoma in the national championship game for the second time in three years. Defending national champion and second-ranked Miami could go undefeated and miss out on the Fiesta Bowl.
So it's not surprising that Stoops and Coker might have different opinions of the Bowl Championship Series system, which determines who plays for the national title. Stoops wouldn't mind seeing changes to the BCS, and Coker likes the system roughly the way it is.
Wait a minute.
The coach whose team has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the BCS wants a playoff? And the coach whose team is on course to be jilted by the system for the second time in three seasons approves of it?
Exactly.
"There needs to be some type of playoff system,'' Stoops said. "Some of it (the BCS) makes sense and is good. Other parts of it don't make sense, and it's bad. They need to eliminate the parts that don't make sense and get it to make sense more.''
Oklahoma (8-0) has a solid lead this week's BCS rankings, which take into account the Associated Press media poll, the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll and six computer rankings. If the Sooners win their final four regular-season games and the Big 12 championship game, they will play in the Fiesta Bowl for the national title.
STOOPS SAID THE TEAMS THAT PLAY FOR THE NATIONAL TITLE SHOULD AT LEAST HAVE WON A CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP. Nebraska made it to the national championship game after not even winning the North Division of the Big 12.
"What'll happen this year, I don't know,'' he said. "I don't even bother to speculate. I don't much care. All I care about is going to play Texas A&M this week. Hopefully, down the road they'll find a way to tweak it or incorporate some type of playoff, but usethe bowls to use it. I think it would be great.''
Stoops suggested possibly an eight-team playoff that would involve seven BCS bowl games, with the championship game being rotated among those bowls. Or perhaps just rotating it among four BCS bowls.
"They need a lot smarter people than me to figure it out,'' he said.
The Hurricanes (8-0) are third in the BCS rankings behind Oklahoma and Ohio State. Even if they win their remaining four games, there's a possibility they could stay there, which would open the system to even harsher criticism.
Still, Coker likes the bowl system. He spent four years as an assistant coach at Tulsa and seven seasons as an assistant at Oklahoma State, learning that bowl games are better for the majority of teams in the country.
"I don't really want to see a 16-team playoff,'' Coker said. "If you have 117 teams, you have 116 losers. When I was with Jimmy (Johnson) at Oklahoma State, we were a good football team. We weren't a great football team. We lost to Nebraska, we lost to Oklahoma and lost late to Missouri. We're going to be in no national championship playoff at all, but we got invited to the Bluebonnet Bowl. It's not even a bowl anymore.
"We go and there's 55,000 people, crowded, packed and we win the game. It's like we won a national championship. Our fans were elated, Jimmy's a great coach and now gets this opportunity at the University of Miami. Assistant coaches get rehired. But if you have one winner, then there are a lot of losers out there. From a coaching standpoint, I like to see a lot of coaches have an opportunity to win and their programs have an opportunity to win.''
Coker said he might favor a one-game playoff that would take two of the four winners of the BCS bowls and let them play for the title.
"But who would select those teams? Me? My wife? Maybe a committee of retired coaches,'' he said. ``There's always going to be those problems.''
Coker admitted he might change his tune if the BCS rankings stay unchanged.
"If we're third in the country (in the BCS) and two teams go and we don't, then oh yeah, we definitely need a playoff,'' he said.
Brent Venables IS the Defensive Coordinator for Oklahoma. He assumed that post at the conclusion of the Big 12 championship game as Mike Stoops departed for Arizona.
I guess everyone wants Oklahoma to apologize for playing poorly in a game that didn't matter a bit. Don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon.
If anyone's whining, it's the USC fans. USC would have been stuck at #3 in the BCS regardless of how OU fared on Saturday. Of the top three teams (and everyone else in Division 1-A for that matter) Oklahoma was the only team to win all the games it HAD to win. The top spot in the BCS was locked up three weeks ago. Their players watch ESPN just like the rest of us and their minds (judging by the way they played, anyway) were already in New Orleans.
Sure, the BCS stinks. But all teams knew (or should have known) the rules of the BCS at the beginning of the season. There is no requirement that a team win its conference to play in the national championship game. If there was such a rule, we may have seen a different result in Kansas City. Or maybe not. We'll never know.
This is not DU. When there is a law that we don't like, we don't rush to the Ninth Circuit to have some judge rewrite it or throw it out. We work through the legislature and write a new law. Hopefully that new law will be a playoff system. But, sadly, I think we'll see Mack Brown win a national championship before that happens. ;^)
Yeah, it was only the conference championship, and a chance to accept the laurels that were being already bestowed as the best college team ever.
No wonder they played like crap. It didn't matter a bit.
As far as the "best team ever" stuff, that would have been nice but they don't give you a trophy for that.
Of course it mattered. The fact that they're not only permitted to play for the national championship without winning their conference is a fluke. Either the conference championship means nothing, or the BCS means nothing.
Take your pick.
The SEC had a down year, but don't underestimate LSU like the polls and the rest of the country is doing.
They are very good on defense, with blazing speed. Oklahoma will not beat them throwing the ball, and bettter avoid third and long like the plague.
On offense, they have a senior qb who isn't spectacular, but is smart, patient, and is very good running the offense. They have three very good receivers who all have blazing speed. And they have a freshman back that just ran for 200 yards on my dawgs, who have a good defense.
This matchup is very similar to the '93 Sugar Bowl between Miami-Alabama. Miami came into game ranked #1, with a good offense. Alabama had the nation's best defense.
Nobody outside SEC country even gave a thought to Alabama having a prayer.
But Alabama beat Miami, once again proving a simple truth in football, the team with the better defense wins in big games.
I think this one is going to turn out the same way. LSU is not going to give the sooner qb the time to stand in the pocket and beat them throwing the ball downfield. If the sooners can't run the ball against this front seven, and I don't think they can, they have little hope of beating LSU.
-Jason White, before the big XII championship game
Oops.
That's not the only trophy OU lost.
Carson Palmer Bump
I'm one of the ten. I think OU is the #1 team out there, because the Big 12 game aside, OU has dominated good teams (including BCS contenders), which is something that none of the other BCS teams has managed to do.
That said, I'd be happy with a four-team playoff at this point. I won't be surprised if the BCS falls apart when it's up in 2005 or whatever. It seems to be that about half the teams that make it into the BCS championship game shouldn't be there, and almost every year a team is left out that should be there.
Too many people are pissed off - the only thing holding back a playoff system is the college presidents who see the BCS $$$. Many coaches and ADs at the big schools will tell you they want playoffs, but you ask the presidents and they will give you a bunch of reasons why playoffs can't happen.
I posted in another thread about this, but my local school's president (Texas) said a playoff system would eat into finals among other things. This while the Texas men's basketball team is in New York right now (finals start this week, imagine that), and plenty of other sports play through finals, have longer seasons than football, and are on the road more than football.
I think you're right about that. White wasn't even the most deserving player on his team. Mark Clayton was the Sooners' top performer this season.
So who will it be? Larry or Eli? Or someone else?
This is the same guy who waxed eloquent on a famous leader during his bio shown in the game:
White: "My favorite historical figure is Winston Churchill. Never has a man... done so much." Profound.
I know they wanted to win the game. But I don't think they had the same sense of urgency that they would have in a must-win situation. In which case they may have lost 35-21 instead of 35-7. Or they may have won.
It's too bad that USC got left out. But the Trojans can still win the Rose Bowl, wear their championship rings, and get ready to steamroll the rest of the NCAA in 2004. So it's not all bad.
OU can't run the ball against anyone, and they certainly won't against LSU. If LSU can get pressure on White they'll win. If they don't, they might anyway.
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