So here is the order of picks for the BCS games:
National Championship:
Alabama
Texas
Rose Bowl gets Ohio State and Oregon (Big and Pac 10 champs)
Orange Bowl gets Georgia Tech (ACC champ)
Sugar Bowl gets first replacement pick:
Florida
Fiesta Bowl gets second replacement pick:
TCU
Orange Bowl selects first at-large non-replacement pick:
Iowa
Fiesta Bowl selects second at-large non-replacement pick:
Boise State
The Big East champion, which has an automatic berth, must be selected, so the Sugar Bowl takes Cincinnati with the final selection.
The one pick that I can't figure, the one pick that messes everything up is Iowa being selected by the Orange Bowl. The Big East champion has formerly had ties with the Orange Bowl (from 1998-2005). The Big Ten has never had ties with the Orange Bowl. They had a chance to select the number 3 team in the country, an undefeated Big East conference champion. They picked a second place, 2-loss, lowest-ranked in the BCS standings playing in a BCS game Iowa. In the last 30 years, only 3 Big Ten teams have played in the Orange Bowl a total of 4 times: Penn State (twice), Michigan, and Iowa. I can't figure this one out. Iowa does not a much bigger fan base than the other options (Penn State, Cincy, Boise State, BYU: the only other teams the Orange Bowl could have selected, not saying they were going to select BYU, just saying they were eligible), though it is bigger than all but Penn State and MAYBE BYU. It is a longer distance to travel for local Iowa fans without a large airport to travel from. Plus, this puts the two lowest-ranked teams together that are playing in a BCS game. I could understand a Cincinnati or Penn State pick. But Iowa? This is the only bowl game that I don't think did what was in their best interests, but maybe they thought it was. Either way, this is probably the worst of the BCS games. Though Florida-Cincy might be a bigger blowout, at least it has some intrigue: Tony Pike vs. Tim Tebow in a battle of senior QBs vying for better position in the first round of the draft next year.
The Iowa pick does lend itself, because it was such a stupid pick, to the conspiracy idea.
ReplyDeleteCould be a conspiracy, but I think it was probably more about ticket sales: Iowa sells out, Cincy does not. Boise sold out in Glendale last time, but could they sell out in Miami? TCU is an unknown. I don't blame them. The one I wanted to see was TCU-Florida, but the order of picking made that an impossibility. There's a lot of disinformation out there about the order, so I wanted to clarify how things were picked based on the BCS web site explanation.
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