I do believe they are going to play up whoever they have contracts with. As they basically have some sort of contract with every conference including the SEC, at one point or another everyone gets pushed by them. During the regular season CBS is going to get the top SEC game every week and ESPN will usually get the next level SEC game for one of thier networks at night. ABC/ESPN has regional games with just about anybody else in the country (excluding ND home games). It makes since for them to push games other than the games not on their network. Cyncism again – it’s about the money.

With 119 Div 1-A teams in the country – there is really no way to say any one team is better than another definitavly. This season alone you could say LSU/USC/UGA/Mizzu was the best team at the end of the year. Before the bowls you could say OU/VT as well. Most college football fans would love to some playoff I believe.

Regarding how the end of the regular season shook out, do you believe it was handled the right way (within the system itself). I actually believe they got the right 2 teams in the game, but had to turn themselves inside out to do it. They basically re-seeded the top 10. The well established precedent is for teams to move up when the teams ahead of them lose. Based on the way the polls were the week before the conference championship games tradition and precedent says the BCSCG should have been OSU v UGA. However, LSU jumped from 7 to 2 to play in the game. The merits for this jump could only be based on what happened during championship weeek. LSU beat UT 21-14 while receiving gift interceptions from Eric Ainge. It wasn’t a particulary impressive victory but it game them the conference championship. VT jumped similarly after their less than impressive victory over BC. OU jumped up as well based on their very good win over Mizzu. If any of those teams deserved a big jump at that point OU would have been the team. OSU and UGA were both idle and sitting at #3 and #4 respectively during this time and the point differential between the two was very small. For some reason OSU was able to jump from 3 to 1 while UGA fell from 4 to 5. If you had reversed the results of OSU and UGA and the rankings I wonder what would have happened? I defy anybody to tell me that ND wouldn’t have played in BCSCG if the had been in UGA’s position. The point of bringing up ND is that the main reason that I heard to keep UGA out was that they didn’t win their conference. ND doesn’t have a conference and that couldn’t be used against them. If the SEC worked under the same rules as the Big 10 UGA would have finshed as Co-champs with LSU and UT at 6-2 in conference. If that were the case I doubt LSU would have made their unprecedented jump. Now, if the Big 12 also played under the Big 10 rules, OU and MU would have won the conference and the problem would have been who should play in the BCSCG – MU/OSU or should UGA take one of the spots.

The reason there is no rule for conference championships is that the conferences work under different rules.

The reason we won’t have a playoff is based on how the pie is split. The BCS conferences get a disproportianate share of the pie (which they deserve becasue they are the one who built up the sport). So about 60 schools get the bulk of the money and the other 59 do not. If they went to a playoff the money would then have to be spit evenly. The BCS are not going to give up the deals they have.

What should happen is there should only be 60 teams in Div 1A, and they should be divided into five 12 team conferences. Have an 11 game season with each team playing 9 games in conference (really like that about the Pac10) and 2 out of conference games. Each conference determines their winner by CCG. Then you set up a 6 team playoff with the 5 conference champs and one at large. Then you seed from a neutral group (I would suggest a panel of retired coaches) and the top 2 get a bye. It will never happen but we can dream.

Dang, I am tired of typing – sorry for the novel

That said, if the fan’s opinions are routed so deeply in their perception that they can’t see the truth, isn’t it possible that sports commentator’s perceptions (right or wrong) can influence how they tell a story – thereby introducing bias?

Maybe the ‘media pundits’ are so defensive about the charges of their promotion of those conferences that they have contracts with because their is more than just a grain of truth to them. Do I believe that ABC/ESPN executives sit around scheming conspiracies against the SEC? No, but I do believe that a part of their job is to promote the games that they are showing across their various media properties and that the majority of the games
that they show are Big 10, Pac 10 and Big 12 games. Further, because of the time zone differences on the west coast(where I live, btw) and the Big 10 programming area, it is only natural that there is going to be more coverage of Big 10 games and Big 10 programs than other schools. This is common sense, not a conspiracy, but it is also REALITY and not PERCEPTION.

Most of the gripes are not about USC and the Pac 10, or the Big 12, but about the Big 10, a conference whose commissioner has stood in the way of a playoff system and who has stood on his high horse claiming moral and academic superiority of the Big 10 over the SEC.

Ask yourself 2 questions and answer them honestly:

1) Does the ABC/ESPN/Disney network have a financial interest in the success of the Big Ten as a football conference?
2) Did ESPN actively promote a Ohio State vs. Michigan rematch for the 2006 BCS Championship game, only to see the winner of that game get dominated by Florida?

The bottom line is that the SEC has spanked the Big 10 champion in the NC game 2 straight years and ESPN/ABC has egg all over their face. All of this spin by ‘pundits’ that their is no bias is only an attempt to cover up the shame of the last few years of shoving the supposed superiority of the Big 10 down the throats of an unwilling public.

Good luck to OSU – there’s always next year!

And considering the game is on Fox, did Fox and ABC/ESPN/Disney officials huddle in a secluded backroom in Topeka while on a conference call with voters across the nation to broker the LSU-Ohio State championship game?

If ABC/ESPN/Disney were the puppetmasters you believe they are, it stands to reason they would have done whatever they needed to do to find a way to get USC into the championship game. You want bottom line, here it is: SC has massive national appeal with respect to advertising dollars potential and proven ratings power; far more than either Ohio State and LSU. Ohio State and LSU are both high-profile programs with great tradition and followings, but they’re not in the same glamour/prestige/”bring in the money” neighborhood USC lives in. And there are as many voters who loathe ESPN as there are ones who like the network. Point being, there’s a huge group of voters in every region of the nation that will never . . . never . . . bow to the perceived desires of ESPN.

For me, all of this, or most of this, would be moot if there were an eight team playoff.

My personal opinion is that they didn’t win the SEC so that ends it. However, conference championships is not a requirement, has never been a requirement and it has been considered as a rule almost every year and rejected. On top of that they have actually put forth 2 teams into the game in past years who didn’t win their conferences. Nebraska lost badly in a late season game that kept them out of the Big 12 cg but they were pushed through to the BCSCG. Oklahoma lost very badly in the b12 cg to KSU and still were put through to the BCSCG. On the other hand UGA won 6 or 7 straight games.

Is there anybody out there who would believe, that if ND had UGA’s record and exact success and was sitting at #4 when that final poll was taken they wouldn’t have moved up to #2 instead of falling to #5?

If UGA had worked under B10 or Pac10 rules they would have finished tied for the conference championship at 6-2 with LSU and UT.

Has anyone ever seen teams jump or fall in the polls based on the last week of the season. LSU and OU both jumped 5 spots. At the same time OSU and UGA were sitting at #3 and #4 respectively with a very slim point total differnce. Neither team plays and OSU moves up to #1 and UGA fell to #5. OSU had a much better off week don’t you think. How do you think OSU would have reacted if instead of moving up to #1 the actually fell to #4?

ESPN was very effective in swaying voters. On top of that Bob Stoops at OU voted UGA at #10 and OU at #2. Do youthink he had a motive to vote that way? The whole system sucks and Coaches shouldn’t vote. How many games other than their own and those of the teams they are playing do you really believe they see? My guess is very few – they have very time consuming jobs during fooball system.

If you were a coach and were looking to vote for the teams in your poll, where would you look for easy information on the teams you are to vote on?

If you were ESPN who is owned by Disney along with ABC who has their own contracts with conferences, which teams would you push and give extra time to?

Everybody is going to look at the bottom line. They really don’t care about fairness, just what is best for me. Cynical I know but what can you do?

The main point of this article is just stupid. The reason everyone thinks ESPN hates their team is not everyones individual biasas. ESPN is the ultimate front running, bandwagoneer. They rarely admit their mistakes. Example: Mark May was picking Hawaii to beat UGA going away (sticks out in my mind because I thought it was absurd). As soon as the game was over – never admitted he even picked UH – just basically said they should never have been in the game in the first place. If ESPN would at least to try and have some consistancy it would be appreciated.

Also, can they either stop presenting themselves as the experts or stop saying things like “it’ll be closer than the experts think”. Drives me crazy either they are the experts and they are saying “it will be closer than I (we) think” or they are saying “my opinion is valuless”