Football Clarity

The BCS bowls are now set and things fell almost the way that was expected. Ironically, because of two upsets in the championship games, the BCS is controversy free this year. Georgia upsetting LSU and Florida St. upsetting Virginia Tech propelled Ohio St. up to #4 in the BCS standings and Notre Dame to #6 in the standings. Notre Dame lives by the same rules as the non-BCS conferences in that they become BCS eligible when their BCS ranking is #12 or better and they get an automatic berth if the ranking is #6 or better. Utah got to the Fiesta Bowl last year because of this rule. As such, Notre Dame automatically qualified and the other at large berth went to Ohio St. by virtue of the fact that the top 4 BCS teams are guaranteed a BCS bowl berth. Texas pulled this little trick on Cal last year and now Ohio St. did it to Oregon, who is ranked #5 in the BCS standings. So our big four bowl games are as follows:

Fiesta: Ohio St. vs Notre Dame
Orange: Florida St. vs Penn St.
Sugar: Georgia vs West Virginia
Rose: USC vs Texas

Ohio St. and Notre Dame will be a good match up. I lean towards Ohio St. in this match up, just because of their defense. Notre Dame still isn’t quite up to stopping good teams from scoring and if Ohio St. stops Brady Quinn at all, they should be able to get ahead.

The Orange is being renamed the geezer bowl as you have the two oldest (and most winningest coaches) playing against each other: Bowden is 76 while Paterno is 79. Florida St. will have a nice home crowd, but Penn St. is a much better team. Penn St. should cruise to a win and depending on what happens in the Rose Bowl, could finish the season ranked #2.

Georgia and West Virginia is probably going to be a closer match up than LSU W. Virginia would have been, but I’m still going to take the SEC team over the Big East team, especially since the Sugar Bowl will be played in Atlanta this year, giving Georgia a huge home field advantage.

USC vs. Texas is probably the hardest game to pick. On paper the two teams are almost identical in stats. Texas has more of a defense but USC gets a home field advantage playing in the Rose Bowl. At the moment I am leaning a little towards Texas because of the defense, although Texas’ lack of a big name running back is a cause for concern. It should be a good game though.

On the NFL side of things, people are quite happy around here. The Bengals defeated the Steelers in Pittsburgh and now have a two game advantage in the division. If they defeat the rival Browns next week, Cincinnati gains the tiebreaker with Pittsburgh and effectively will take a three game lead in the division with three games to play. That will all but lock up the #3 seed in the playoffs and leave a chance to gain the #2 seed and a first round bye. However, they will need help for that. Denver currently has the #2 seed by virtue of a better record against AFC opponents since both teams are now 9-3. The Bengals need Denver to drop another game for them to move up, which is unlikely in the face of Denver’s schedule for the rest of the season. Meanwhile, Indianapolis moved one step closer to securing home field advantage while San Diego moved into the #6 spot ahead of Kansas City and Pittsburgh. Jacksonville is in firm control of the #5 seed and will have the luxury of flying to New England for that first week of the playoffs.

On the NFC side, there was only a slight jostling. Seattle still holds the #1 seed, and will wrap up the division title if they defeat Philadelphia tonight. Chicago still holds its tenuous grip on the #2 seed despite the offense getting progressively worse. Any slip by Chicago will allow Carolina to move up from the #3 seed into the #2 spot. Also lurking nearby are the NY Giants who got into the driver’s seat of the NFC East and the #4 seed by beating Dallas. Tampa Bay and Dallas are the current #5 and #6 seeds with Atlanta and Minnesota lurking nearby. I expect some changing of the seedings before the playoffs, but the division winners are all but set in my mind. Some nasty fighting will occur for the two wild card spots before the end of the season though.