Memo to Voters: Oregon Beat USC

Besides for the NFL, no sport is more popular then college football, and unfortunately for fans, no other sport is more flawed then college football.

Many of us sports fans start thinking up excuses to miss work or school come March because we cannot wait to have the NCAA Basketball tournament get underway. Imagine what it would be like should college football have the same.

Many football fans agree that a playoff is much needed in college football.  The FBS Division is the only division in college football that doesn't have one.  What makes this system even more flawed is the factors that go into determining college football rankings.

On Halloween night, the nation got to see Oregon hand USC and Pete Carroll its worst loss in years, beating the Trojans 47-20.  This was USC's second loss and dropped them to 6-2 on the year.

This win was impressive for Oregon, moving them up to eighth in the BCS rankings but on the other hand, USC still remained in the top 15.

One week later, USC barely got by unranked ASU, 14-6 and Oregon suffered its first conference loss to Stanford, 51-42.

So here we are, one week later and we are presented with the exact reason why the college football rankings have become a joke.

With their win, USC moved to 7-2 on the year and jumped back up to #9 in the BCS standings.  At the same time, Oregon's loss dropped them to 7-2 but moved them back to #13 in the BCS standings.

After you combine all the factors in the BCS, the only ranking to get it right was the computers who have USC ranked #11 and Oregon #10.  So what's the problem?  Human voting.

With the game on Halloween only one week old, human voters had already forgotten what had happened in Eugene and moved USC right back up the polls.

If you look blindly at these teams you would see the following:

Team A and B have the same record

Team A lost to the #6 team in the nation and a team that is 6-2. Both losses were on the road.

Team B lost to the #10 team in the nation and to a 3-6 team. Both losses were on the road

Team A has a stronger strength of schedule

Team A beat Team B head to head by 27 points.

I am sure based on the article you guessed right that Oregon is team A.

At the end of the day, what's worse then not having a playoff is having voters who look at the name on the jersey and have that play into their rankings.

Its time for the NCAA to take a look at the ranking system and bowl system and really see if they are doing what's best for football.  Until then we will continue to see rankings that make no sense and leave all of us college football fans feeling empty come mid January.

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