BCS Mess-Up - Welcome to the Tostitos Useless Bowl
I don't really have a problem with the BCS and the bowl set up, but... Some teams in the top 10, I feel, are only there because their schedule is weak. And playing 2 teams like this doesn't prove anything to anyone. And we all want validation don't we?
Specifically Boise State, TCU and Cincinnati.
Thank goodness Cincinnati played Florida in the Orange Bowl on Jan 3rd. That was actually a test to see if they belonged in the top 10.
But why did the BCS set TCU against Boise State in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl?
There will be NO test there since both of those teams didn't belong in the top 10 in the first place.
Let’s take a look at TCU, Boise State, Arkansas and Iowa. I used USAToday's Sagarin ratings for strength of schedule to see who had it tougher.
Boise State had 9 games where they really didn't have to play hard to win. 9 opponents had a team ranking over 80. And Fresno State, Bowling Green and Nevada are questionable as tough games too, really only Oregon was a tough game.
TCU played 7 teams ranked over 80 and Virginia and BYU are pretty light opponents too. So TCU only really played a 3 game schedule: Clemson, Air Force and Utah.
Arkansas on the other hand only played 2 cupcakes but I'll throw Troy in there and make it 3 easy games. This still leaves a very tough 8 game schedule.
Iowa played 4 easy teams, Northern Iowa, Arkansas State, Michigan and Indiana. Michigan isn't really an easy game but for the sake of argument I will leave them in.
TCU is ranked 4 and Boise State is 9, and had dramatically less work to do to get that rank. But Arkansas at 16 and Iowa at 18 played much harder schedules causing losses and injuries and their ranking suffered.
Bottom line is everyone wants to see TCU and Boise State play a team that has been verified by their schedule and thus each of those team's ability and rank will become verified. But it didn't happen.
Playing TCU against Boise State was a huge BCS mistake. The BCS could have had 2 great games by playing these teams against verified programs. Instead it has 1 average game.
There will be no verification of either team and next year we gotta hear the same crap from them.