No. 6 Stanford Cardinal Are Best One-Loss Team in the Nation

Although they continue to win, the No. 6 Stanford Cardinal seem to be stuck in the BCS standings.

Stanford is clearly the best one-loss team in the country, but the BCS still seems to think No. 5 LSU is better, even after LSU’s ugly win against Ole Miss. 

It is often said that the BCS is a “beauty contest” which makes it even more unfathomable that LSU (10-1, 6-1 SEC) is ranked ahead of Stanford (10-1, 7-1 Pac-10) because the Tigers are nowhere near as attractive as the Cardinal.

Despite playing at home against struggling Tennessee and Ole Miss, the Tigers only managed to beat Tennessee by two, 16-14, and Ole Miss by seven, 43-36.  It can also be argued that the win against Tennessee was pure luck, as Les Miles’ poor clock management should have cost his team the game. But a crucial penalty on the Volunteers gave the Tigers a second chance.

LSU used that chance to score a last-second touchdown.

The Tigers also barely beat Ole Miss, a team that had only previously beaten Tulane, Fresno State, Kentucky and Louisiana-Lafayette.

Not exactly an impressive résumé.

These games were both at home, a place where LSU is supposed to have a tremendous advantage and a place where a top five team should dominate conference bottom-dwellers.

Yes, SEC fans will argue that these close wins show the team’s character and reflect the fact that the SEC is a competitive conference and is more dominant from top to bottom than any other conference in the country.

This is where the SEC bias comes in.

While there are some talented teams in the SEC, homers tend to think a few good teams at the top makes the entire conference great.

Believe it or not, the SEC is good at the top, but not good throughout.

While they do not get the respect they deserve because they are in the “lowly” Pac-10 and are not playing in the “mighty” Southeastern Conference, the Stanford Cardinal, who have the nation’s best player, are the nation’s best one-loss team.

In the beauty contest that is the BCS, the Cardinal have been everything the Tigers have not been. The Cardinal have been beautiful and have shown that they truly belong.

LSU’s two close wins were against awful teams at home. In the only two games that the Cardinal have been tested, not including the loss to No. 1 Oregon,  they faced a talented USC team and a very underrated Arizona State.

Yes, USC has struggled at times this year, but they are still better than either Ole Miss or Tennessee.

Arizona State has a poor record and Stanford-haters will look to that and ask how the Cardinal only beat them by four, but that game was on the road and ASU is actually a good football team.

Ask any ASU or Pac-10 fan and they will tell you that ASU’s record could be drastically different if it weren’t for a point here and a point there.

Stanford is coming off a blowout of Cal, who just a week ago gave the No. 1 Ducks all they could handle, and will finish up their season at home against the Oregon State Beavers.

Unfortunately, it seems as if there is nothing the Cardinal can do to increase their BCS ranking because no matter how “pretty” they may be, the fact is they are not in the SEC.

While Stanford is ranked sixth in the country and deserves to go to a BCS Bowl, odds are they will miss the BCS and finish behind a team they are better than.