Which has a greater chance of happening?
- Thread starter QuaoarsKing
- Start date
to win the national championship in football, Ole Miss is going to have to be perfect for 14 games. They do not have the luxury of being able to lose a game and still win it.
to win the national championship in basketball, you have to be 2-for-2 in three weekends. It takes a talented team to do it, which we will have. The first weekend should be easy, followed by a better second weekend, then it should be a battle of the best at the Final Four.
Too many things can happen over 18 weeks of a football season. It is extremely difficult to play perfect football for 14 games, especially when at least 4 of those games are against top competition. Ole Miss is an ACL tear away from being an average team. If Varnado goes down, it stings, but does not make us an average team.
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That being said, if Division I had a 16-team, 4 week playoff, Ole Miss would have as good of shot as anyone to win it.
to win the national championship in basketball, you have to be 2-for-2 in three weekends. It takes a talented team to do it, which we will have. The first weekend should be easy, followed by a better second weekend, then it should be a battle of the best at the Final Four.
Too many things can happen over 18 weeks of a football season. It is extremely difficult to play perfect football for 14 games, especially when at least 4 of those games are against top competition. Ole Miss is an ACL tear away from being an average team. If Varnado goes down, it stings, but does not make us an average team.
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That being said, if Division I had a 16-team, 4 week playoff, Ole Miss would have as good of shot as anyone to win it.
Ole Miss has a very easy schedule and it could keep them out of a title game ala Auburn in (03?) it doesn't matter who we play, as long as we get into the tournament, we have a chance to win the title.
They actually had a tougher schedule than one of the teams that played for the title that year. They were kept out of it because they were ranked something like #22 in the preseason polls and spent the first half of the season even working into the top 10. UM will probably start somewhere between #5 and #12 in the polls. If they somehow go 13-0, there's no doubt they'd play for the national title.
and too little into OU's overall history/following. NO WAY IN HELL Ole Miss or any other lower level SEC team leapfrogs OU (given identical records). Alabama/UF/UT/UG/LSU maybe (maybe even Auburn if they've been impressive over the year). Again, no way in hell the other 6 would leapfrog OU. (Just my opinion, of course.)
Behind Florida and maybe USC, they're possibly the most hyped team in the country right now. And I can promise you that poll voters won't give a **** about how bad they were from 1971 to 2007 (overall, not that they didn't have some good seasons in there) when they cast their votes. If UM somehow goes 13-0 and beats top 10 teams Florida, Alabama and LSU (preseason rankings), they'll definitely be in the title game no matter what.</p>
perfectly, UM wouldn't make the national championship game at 13-0. Their non conference schedule was too weak and several one loss teams would be ahead of them in BCS points.
If, by some miracle, Ole Miss made it to 13-0 that would mean we beat 3 preseason top 10 teams to get there. I dont think there is any other conference that can even say they have 4 top ten teams preseason. So if this were to happen there is no way we would get leaped by anything other than 2 other perfect teams. No 1 loss team would stand a chance.
goldenwavedawg said:
Then what you read is wrong. The only way that would happen is if two teams that start the year ahead of us went undefeated, and even then it would still be highly possible for us to leapfrog someone, assuming of course that in this hypothetical we'd probably have to beat an undefeated or 1 loss Florida team in the last week of the season.
I don't really think people realize how little SOS factors into college football. Again, take a look at Texas Tech last year. Their OOC schedule was arguably weaker than the one we have this year, at best it's comparable, and they leapfrogged an undefeated Penn State team to get to No. 2 in the BCS after beating Texas. Had they gone undefeated, they'd have been in the BCS title game last year.
If you read an article that said something like that, it's someone who is uninformed. There is so much that goes into reaching the BCS title game. One thing is when you lose, another is if people ahead of you in the polls lose, and another is where you start in the polls.
Auburn in 2004 didn't make the BCS title game because they started the year in the lower half of the polls. USC was pre-season No. 1, and OU was pre-season No. 2. Go back and look at the 2004 polls week by week. The No. 1 and No. 2 teams never changed because neither team lost all year. Auburn got left out because they started the year lower in the polls. Had they started out No. 2 in the polls and had OU leapfrogged them, then you might be able to make the argument that schedule strength cost them the shot at the title.
For that matter, right now there are only 3 major conferences that get a really high level of respect, the Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC, with the SEC getting the most respect. When undefeated teams are considered throughout the polls, the teams from those 3 conferences almost always get preference over the teams from the Big 10, ACC, and Big East. And when 1 loss teams are considered, those 3 conferences get the most preference. SOS is such a small factor. I can list multiple instances where a weak SOS has helped a team or a good SOS has hurt a team, and you will find very few instances where a good SOS has helped a team in college football. All of this is assuming you are in a BCS league and one of the most respected BCS leagues as I mention. Obviously teams from the lesser BCS leagues and the non-BCS leagues have to do more with their schedule to try to prove themselves. Just by being an SEC, Big 12, or Pac-10 team, you get respect for winning no matter who you play out of conference.
Emanonion said:
And again, often the biggest factor in the polls outside of where you start pre-season (which won't be a problem for us) is the 'what have you done for me lately?' factor. If we were to go 12-1 or 13-0 with an SEC title, we'd do so by playing and beating LSU and Florida in 2 of the last 3 weeks. That would be a HUGE momentum stretch for the poll voters that would likely allow us to leap frog a team or two if needed.
Let me clarify that I don't expect us to be in that spot. I'm predicting 9-3 or 10-2, but if we were hypothetically in that spot, we would be leap frogging teams due to who we beat at the end of the year. We wouldn't be getting leap frogged for our schedule.
Again, see my Texas Tech example from last year. They jumped from No. 7 to No. 2 in the BCS, passing an undefeated Penn State team based off the momentum of beating No. 1 Texas. That's the way the polls and BCS work. They are most influenced by what you've done of late.
Here's the thing though. Let's say Oklahoma/Texas, USC and Ole Miss are all undefeated after the conference championship games. I can almost guarantee you that you guys would be the odd man out. Would you deserve a shot at the title after running through your schedule? Absolutely. However, the voters in every other part of the country would make sure an SEC team didn't play for the title again. They'd vote you #3 or worse, and stand behind the "well, the teams I put ahead of them are undefeated as well" excuse.
(we would be ranked fourth probably) we would make the title game.
This is a stupid argument either way.
This is a stupid argument either way.
A stupid argument in many ways, not the least of which is the fact that only once since the inception of the BCS have 3 BCS conference teams gone undefeated in the same season. For that matter, Ohio State in 2006 was the last BCS team to have an undefeated regular season. The last two years there hasn't even been 1 undefeated BCS team after the regular season, much less 3.
The odds of 2004 happening again are very long. The odds that 2004 happens again with us being one of the three teams involved are even longer than that.
The odds of 2004 happening again are very long. The odds that 2004 happens again with us being one of the three teams involved are even longer than that.
