Ballot Check: Big 12 South One-Loss Teams

Texas should not drop below OU or USC for that matter. OU we beat on a neutral field so no one can argue that. USC is there based on name. Tech, Alabama, Penn State and maybe Florida are justifiably ahead of Texas but anyone who has Texas below 5 does not know what the hell they’re talking about. However this November is going to be fun.

How I would rank the B-12 teams at this moment in time on what they have achieved.

1. Tech undefeated beat Texas @ home, destroyed a flawed but good KU team.

2. Texas went 2-1 against the other three. One neutral win, one home win, and one loss on the road. Good blow-out win @ home over a very good but erratic Missouri team. Could switch places with Tech.

3. OSU lost a close game on the road to Texas, beat Missouri on the road.

4. Oklahoma lost a neutral game to Texas. Beat the KU team but @ home and has not been as impressive as OSU.

How I would rank the teams on a neutral field if the game was next Saturday?

1. Oklahoma St. has played its two big games on the road and won one and almost won the other against perhaps the best team of this group.

2. Texas has the best resume but played 2 games at home and has not won a significant road game yet. If they beat KU solidly that would be their best road win.

3. Tech held serve in beating Texas, but they are only half way through their 4 game series (KU, Texas, OU, OSU).

4. OU, least impressive team of the bunch. I could see the top three teams going anywhere from 8-0 to 6-2 before the OSU/Texas game, but the most likely number I see for OU is 5-3. Let an outsized KU team stay with them for 2 1/2 quarters at home, when Tech blew them out by the second quarter in Lawrence.

How I would rank their schedules in conference in terms of home/away, comparing games against each other and the two pretenders from the North (KU and MU) ranked from easiest to hardest…

1. Tech 2 home and 2 road, but the the 2 home are against the South heavyweights and got the weaker pretender in KU.

2. Oklahoma 2 home, 1 neutral, 1 road, got the weaker pretender at home

3. Texas 2 home, 1 neutral, and 2 road games. Got both pretenders, better this year than last year…

4. OSU 1 home game and 3 road games, debatable between Texas and OSU, but I would rather have Texas’ schedule, than this one.

More weighting needs to be given to road and home games on this blog. For all the overall outstanding analysis, this enormous factor rarely gets mentioned.

how people voting in polls can so totally disregard head-to-head play. You see instances every year of teams being 6 and 7 and 7 winning when they played, or teams ranked 13 and 15, and 15 winning when the two met.

Asking some people who vote in polls to LOOK DEEPER than last week’s game is obviously too challenging. Anybody remember the (Mississippi, I believe) voter who had Texas ranked ninth late in the 2004 season? Only person in the country in a major poll that had Horns ranked below about 6.

OU lost to a #4Texas team, and we lost to a #7 Tech team who didn’t even deserve that high of a ranking with the OT win vs. Nebraska along with the close game against TAMU. We shouldn’t have lost to Tech. It’s obvious that we lost some confidence after barely beating Ok State.

 Missouri hadn’t lost in Columbia since OU in ’06. Until one of the the top four wins a game on the road against one of the others, I find it difficult to really feel confident that one is better than the other. What Texas has done has been really impressive, but I think Tech orOk. St. might have been able to accomplish the same if they had the same schedule. I do feel confident OU is weakest of this special group. If Tech won the North (7-1), I would find it very frustrating that Texas would get snubbed, because I would have a very strong suspicion that Texas was the better team (due to the schedule). However, if Texas won the North (7-1) and Ok. St. ended up with the same record, I would think Ok. St. got hosed, because they would have won most of their big games on the road.

I am more of basketball fan, and at least in basketball you get to play every team in the conference. It is is still not "fair’ but it is more balanced. I am KU fan, but I always feel a little bad (not too bad) for the South teams because you tend to have more quality teams than the North. If Missouri and KSU or Iowa St. ever got back to where they have been in the past (in terms of basketball) it would even out. Even if you get hosed like Texas in the South by having to play more good teams than KU does in the North, you get the opportunity to play in the B 12 tournament and then in the NCAA if you are good enough. You never get that opportunity in CFB which limits my enjoyment.

Also, as much grief as the basketball seeding committee gets, compared to the CFB poll voters, I think they tend to do a much better job. The computers do a much better job than the human voters as the season progresses, because they are not limited by a groupthink of what happened last week. I would just go with the computers for 2/3’s of the vote and drop Billingsly (or whatever the consistent outlier program is). It is still very flawed system. It is trying to make chickensalad out of chickensh$%.

In 1978, USC went 11-1 and Alabama went 11-1. ‘Bama got the national championship even though USC went into Birmingham and beat Bama 24-14. Bama was never in the game, because they couldn’t stop USC’s pass offense, which I predicted before the game (I was 10). I could see giving it to Alabama if the game was at the Rose Bowl or in California, but not when they dominated the Crimson Tide in ‘Bama, I never unstood the vote. I have never given any meaning to the MNC since that date, it is media contrived BS selling you something that it really isn’t. We as fans deserve much of the blame for watching the games and the bowls. If we boycotted all the bowls for one season we would have a play-off system overnight, but we don’t so we have this garbage. We get what we deserve.

So, don’t be surprised if OU gets the title game match-up if Tech, OU, and Texas all end up at 7-1. I doubt OU can do it, so you have that insurance.