Northern Illinois in the BCS? Don't blame the computers, OR the pollsters

A few days ago we defended the "BCS Computers" against accusations that they were going to erroneously put Kent State in the BCS.

Instead, it's Northern Illinois in the BCS, and on the BCS Selection show the announcers have a big problem with it and seem to be struggling for someone to blame.

While they made it clear they don't blame Northern Illinois (how kind of them!) they ask the genius question, do you blame the voters or computers more?

Of course, they would NEVER ask this question if Northern Illinois were ranked higher in the computers, because the answer would be obvious: blame the computers. In this case the voters have them at #16 in both relevant polls, and the computers at #19, but the question still has to be asked...just to make sure there isn't some way we can manage to blame the computers.

The conclusion was that the voters shouldn't have Northern Illinois as high as #16. "They're saying they think Northern Illinois could beat Michigan, or UCLA, or some of these other teams..."

No, they're not. That's not what the rankings necessarily mean. Otherwise you wouldn't find Notre Dame at the top—it would be Alabama. And Oregon would probably be #2.

But teams are often ranked—properly—based on their body of work. Who they beat, and who beat them. And on that score, Northern Illinois is a legit #16. At 12-1, we have them #15. They lost to Iowa by a point in their first game of the season—the kind of loss AQ schools are excused for routinely—then won 12 straight games in a MAC conference that's at least as good as the AQ Big East this year.

Then they lamented about the teams that could have gone to a BCS bowl instead: Oklahoma, or Clemson. But those team are ranked higher than Northern Illinois in both polls. If the pollsters had their druthers Oklahoma would be in the BCS (or one of the SEC teams ranked ahead of them).

And if Northern Illinois hadn't made the BCS, no one would be making a big deal about their ranking in the polls. No matter where Northern Illinois needed to be to qualify, if they made it, you can argue they should have been one spot lower. But take away the BCS bowl issue, and no one really cares if NIU is #16 or #30, or if Michigan is ahead of them or behind them.

As we said before, there are only two possible places to assign blame: to the BCS for making the rule that let Northern Illinois qualify, or B) the Big East for sucking so bad that the MAC was able to slip into a BCS bowl.

For the former, the BCS shut out the smaller conferences completely at first, and when they added a 5th BCS bowl it was only fair that they make some provision where a smaller conference could get in. The problem was it didn't provide for the right "victim." Which brings us to point #2: the Big East.

Since the Big East was the league whose poor play put NIU in the Orange Bowl, shouldn't they—rather than the Big Twelve—give up a slot? The MAC's best teams took on the Big East's best and won, Toledo beating Cincinnati and Kent State beating Rutgers. Two other MAC teams beat Big East teams. They earned their spot a lot more than the Big East did theirs.

So here's who to blame: the BCS. But not for giving smaller conferences a fighting chance to be in the mix. That was proper. No, they deserve blame for not making the rules work to kick out the conference whose team doesn't make the top 16.

We should have FSU vs. Northern Illinois, that's not the problem. But Florida vs. Oklahoma should have happened, not Florida vs. Louisville.

Comments

[Max Power]

I find the Big East to be one of the most fascinating phenomena in the BCS era. As of 2014, Temple --which was booted out of the Big East in 2005-- will be the only team in the Big East that was a member before that. In some sense, it's a dream come true for all the previously spurned and put-upon teams from the Mountain West, C-USA, WAC, MAC and Sun Belt. Every time another major football school gets poached from the Big East by another conference, it opens up another slot for a non-BCS school to get an automatic bid. And then it raises some challenging questions for the BCS - why is it that Conference USA was and is not qualified for an Automatic Bid, when the Big East which will soon consist of *_NINE_* (9) former C-USA teams (plus a few others) will qualify. Not sure how that could be explained logically.