BCS Breakdown, Week 1

 

I think we're probably all in agreement here that the Bowl Championship Series is nothing but a convoluted scam perpetrated on the American public under the pretense that it is the only practical way to fairly determine the best college football team in America. That's an absolute lie. But we're not here to debate that.

The BCS is the reality that aspiring championship teams must deal with, so we might as well put our concerns aside and figure out how this system affects the current edition of the Stanford Cardinal.

Stanford's 2011 schedule was good for a lot of things. The weaker opponents were all stacked at the front, allowing a new head coach to establish his identity and a youngish offensive line to come together before ranked teams started popping up on the schedule. The Cardinal currently sits at 6-0, which is nice, but few analysts have given the team much respect due to the caliber of its competition. This week, as should've been expected, the first BCS poll responded similarly to the Cardinal, ranking the team eighth. Stanford sits behind all other undefeated teams except for Kansas State and Houston.

The question many have asked is simple. Can Stanford realistically expect to jump over six teams to land in the top two by the time the final poll is released in early December? Or, asked in a half-empty kind of way, might the Cardinal finish undefeated and still be left out of the BCS Championship Game?

Each week here I'll try to answer those questions by looking at the competition. All discussion on this thread will assume that the Cardinal wins out, which is no gimme. A one-loss Stanford team will have no shot. (Last year they did. Many of you might have found this site for the first time as a result of a plausible piece I wrote imagining the Cardinal finishing as national champions at 12-1. If you missed that, here it is.)

Anyway, here's a look at the undefeated teams that stand between the Mighty Card and a championship game appearance.

#1 LSU and #2 Alabama
These two teams are ranked one and two, but one or the other will be eliminated when they play each other on November 5th. I'm sure some in SEC country will argue that, for example, a one-loss Alabama team would still deserve a title shot against an undefeated LSU team, but the BCS doesn't work that way. If LSU wins this matchup, they won't necessarily be a lock to reach New Orleans for the championship game. The Tigers play #20 Auburn this Saturday, #9 Arkansas on November 25th, and probably #14 South Carolina in the SEC Championship game. If they run that gauntlet, they'll probably be the unanimous #1 team in the nation.

#3 Oklahoma and #4 Oklahoma State
Another package deal. Like LSU and Alabama, one of these two teams will be eliminated when they face off on December 3rd. If both teams are still undefeated when they get there, the winner will almost certainly claim a spot in the title game, and the loser, says Heidi Klum, will be out.

#5 Boise State
We know Boise's story. They win by fifty points every week, but it doesn't matter. The six teams remaining on their schedule have a combined record of 19-17, so while they're beating up on those cupcakes they'll be leapfrogged, first by Wisconsin and eventually by Stanford. They'll surely finish undefeated and grab a BCS bid of some sort, but they'll need an Armageddon scenario to get to New Orleans.  

#6 Wisconsin
Let me be the first to say that I don't believe in the Wisconsin Badgers. I'm not fundamentally opposed to the idea of a Big-10 team being undefeated and aspiring to win a national championship, but I just can't support them. That being said, the Badgers have been ridiculously impressive thus far, leading the nation in scoring at 50.2 points per game while yielding only 9.7 points a game defensively, good for third best in the country. The only decent team they've played so far has been Nebraska, but those scoring numbers would be impressive even if they were playing local high school teams. Wisconsin has a road test this weekend at #16 Michigan State, and they'll probably have to play either Nebraska or Michigan State again in the conference championship game, but none of that looks too scary. Of all the teams listed here, Wisconsin has the best chance of finishing undefeated. In fact, it'll be a huge surprise if they don't.

#7 Clemson
Seriously? Clemson? They beat Wofford by eight points. Wofford. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

The Outlook
Right now, things are looking rosy for the Mighty Card. If they manage to win the last six games on their schedule and then win the Pac-12 Championship game, it looks like they'll probably be headed to the Rose Bowl. Worse things have happened.