BCS Rankings Week 15: Arkansas Razorbacks and Teams That Deserved Better

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but college football's postseason selection process is severely flawed.

Then again, you probably already knew that, huh?

Indeed, it's not exactly a secret that the BCS has its problems. The idea of narrowing everything down to No. 1 and No. 2 is simple enough, but there's a lot of red tape and a lot of loopholes when it comes to figuring everything else out. When the dust settles, plenty of teams get left out in the cold.

When this happens, some teams get what they deserve. However, there are others who deserve better.

Now that the dust has settled on the 2011 season, I think there are five squads in particular that deserved better from the BCS.

TCU Horned Frogs (No. 18)

The Horned Frogs got off to a sluggish start this season, but they rebounded in a big way. Gary Patterson's club won its final seven games, which included a big win at then-No. 5 Boise State.

The Horned Frogs also won the Mountain West. Had they finished No. 16 in the final BCS standings, they would have earned an automatic BCS bid.

As it turned out, TCU stayed stuck at No. 18 in the new rankings. Instead of a BCS bowl, the Horned Frogs will have to settle for the Poinsettia Bowl.

My problem with this is that there are no non-BCS teams in any of the five BCS bowls, and TCU filled every requirement except being ranked in the top 16. Through no real fault of their own, the Horned Frogs got screwed.

Baylor Bears (No. 12)

Take a look back at Baylor's schedule, and you'll notice that its three losses really aren't all that bad. Losses at Kansas State, at Texas A&M and at Oklahoma State are nothing to freak out about.

I guess you can credit the BCS computers for caring, as they have the Bears at No. 11 overall, well above where the two human polls have them. As it is, the Bears could have been selected as an at-large team, which was certainly possible seeing as how Robert Griffin III would have drawn a lot of eyes.

For example, Baylor could gave gone to the Sugar Bowl. Instead, the Sugar Bowl chose to fill its spots with Michigan and Virginia Tech, two teams that would probably be totally overmatched against Baylor.

Why did Baylor get shafted? Probably because you don't think of Baylor when you think of college football. In other words, Bears don't sell.

Boise State Broncos (No. 7)

Boise State is another team that could have been selected as an at-large team to go to a BCS bowl game.

But nope. Despite the fact the Broncos had a fine season and are a big-name program, they got rejected and will have to settle for the Maaco Bowl.

I haven't been very quick to defend Boise State this season, but the Broncos could have easily been chosen to go to the Sugar Bowl. In fact, I'll wager that they would have made a fine match for Michigan, and that it would have been a great game to watch.

My guess is that Va Tech got chosen because Virginia isn't that far from New Orleans. Boise is, and that means it would be a tough ticket to sell to Boise State's fanbase.

It's all about money, for good or ill.

Arkansas Razorbacks (No. 6)

There are a lot of rules that go into the BCS selections, but one of the simplest is that you can't have three teams from one conference represented in the five BCS bowls.

Well, you can if two non-champions from a BCS conference playing for the title, in which case the third would be allowed to play in its conference's affiliated BCS bowl. Let us hope that something like that never happens.

At any rate, the point here is that Arkansas' efforts this season pretty much went for naught. The Hogs finished as the No. 6 team in the country, but they are going to have to settle for the Cotton Bowl. Not a huge travesty, but the Cotton Bowl isn't exactly the Sugar Bowl.

This is nobody's fault. The voters and the computers did what they could, but the rules had the final say.

Oklahoma State Cowboys (No. 2)

Yup, I'm going here.

Listen, I have nothing against Alabama. The Crimson Tide are a truly great football team, and they had a truly great season. My only gripe with them is that they weren't really tested on the road this season, and that they didn't even play for the SEC Championship, much less win it.

Oklahoma State, on the other hand, won the Big 12 and had to play a handful of tough games on the road. The Pokes happened to lose one of these, but I think they more than made up for it with their destruction of Oklahoma in the Bedlam game.

So why did Oklahoma State not make it? I can't say for sure, but the easy answer is that the Pokes got screwed because the voters have a clear SEC bias.

I actually think that's a reasonable explanation.

Week 15 BCS Rankings

Rank	Team	BCS Average
1	LSU	1.000
2	Alabama	.9419
3	Oklahoma State	.9333
4	Stanford	.8476
5	Oregon	.7901
6	Arkansas	.7687
7	Boise State	.7408
8	Kansas State	.6827
9	South Carolina	.6553
10	Wisconsin	.6374
11	Virginia Tech	.5190
12	Baylor	.4977
13	Michigan	.4794
14	Oklahoma	.5603
15	Clemson	.4218
16	Georgia	.4119
17	Michigan State	.3883
18	TCU	.3869
19	Houston	.3504
20	Nebraska	.2606
21	Southern Miss	.1918
22	Penn State	.1305
23	West Virginia	.1233
24	Texas	.0876
25	Auburn	.0584