What a week to end the season! Football had been really bringing me down lately, but this weekend--minus 30 minutes of watching Grand Valley State wipe the floor w/ Carson-Newman--was wall-to-wall excitement (& it was esp. helped by Georgia Tech overcoming failure & finally pulling out an ACC championship).
Despite my initial reaction, I think Texas does deserve to be in the national championship game, but I think TCU just deserves it more. The Longhorns did everything they were told in order to get into the BCS Championship game & that should be rewarded (unlike last year). I just wonder how well they will do when they play another great defense in Alabama (esp. given that Alabama also has a great offense (it was nice to see Greg McElroy have a good game)).
I was also interested in the whole "Tim Tebow cries!" thing going memetic after the SEC Championship Game (even participating some, myself). A friend of mine pointed out on Facebook that it's rather cruel to mock someone for crying, esp. when we complain about how emotionless pro athletes often are. That's very true, but I think the collective wraith of the Internet re Tebow has, also, to do w/ the sort of "isn't it fun to talk like this?!" moment. Part of the problem w/ Tebow this season was that, frankly, he wasn't playing as well at QB on the field. At the same time, there was constant talk in the media about how great he was both on & off the field, despite the evidence to the contrary. I've always felt that Tim Tebow was a great quarterback first & then also an interesting person. When the QB aspect dropped off, though, I started to get sick of the rest of him. That said, I don't blame this on Tebow. I think Steve Addazio is a terrible offensive coordinator & have loudly informed the television of this a number of times (& I'm sure he's appropriately upset about it). I think his play calling is a lot more vanilla & the offense seems less energetic than it did when Dan Mullen was calling the plays (which raises the question: can you fire an offensive coordinator who got you to 12-1?). That said, none of this should detract from the fact that Alabama just straight won that game.
Anyway, the whole day was pretty fantastic (actually, the whole weekend: the Civil War was quite a game, too). I think my rankings are going to be pretty close to the computers, but I will move a few people around. I think Florida dropping to #6 makes sense, as, frankly, I think all the unbeatens are better (see, it is fun to finally talk like this). Also, I'm surprised that they are the only one-loss team in all of Division IA. WTF? That's pretty weird, right?
Despite being a graduate student here, I am going to stick w/ the computer on putting Penn State at the lowest of the two loss teams. I'm glad we had a good season, but, come-on, we didn't beat anyone good & we got blown out by the two ranked teams we played. Embarrassing. I'm getting behind the students I had a few years ago who wrote a proposal paper in my technical writing class about adding Pittsburgh to the schedule. PSU needs to do something to enhance it's schedule so we don't go from creampuffs to creamed.
Top 5
- Alabama
- Texas
- TCU
- Cincinnati
- Boise State
Other 7
- Florida
- Oregon
- Georgia Tech
- Iowa
- Central Michigan
- BYU
- Ohio State
Computer Top 25
- Alabama 13-0 (712.148484848485)
- Texas 13-0 (668.657342657343)
- Cincinnati 12-0 (586.906818181818)
- Boise State 13-0 (539.141433566434)
- Texas Christian 12-0 (512.659090909091)
- Florida 12-1 (508.093921463152)
- Oregon 10-2 (423.224431818182)
- Ohio State 10-2 (385.617992424242)
- Georgia Tech 11-2 (382.893725345168)
- Central Michigan 11-2 (344.366967455621)
- Iowa 10-2 (334.809504132231)
- Brigham Young 10-2 (326.915151515152)
- Penn State 10-2 (295.702178030303)
- Pittsburgh 9-3 (291.9275)
- Wisconsin 9-3 (272.232130681818)
- Miami (Florida) 9-3 (266.337784090909)
- Virginia Tech 9-3 (265.842045454545)
- Louisiana State 9-3 (265.551136363636)
- Houston 10-3 (249.276654115116)
- Oklahoma State 9-3 (236.936931818182)
- Temple 9-3 (234.773295454545)
- West Virginia 9-3 (230.624431818182)
- Troy 9-3 (229.348295454545)
- Nebraska 9-4 (218.946422807961)
- Stanford 8-4 (216.701666666667)