C'mon Southern Miss!

[jalbre6]

Me and the rest of the Longhorn Nation need some help, man!



What do we need to do here? I'll buy a ticket to your ty bowl game in New Orleans against UNT! I'll even keep Larry Eustachy away from coeds while I'm there!


Brett, gimme some karma!

[jalbre6]

snipped from http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/s...roadtobcs/1202

Battle for No. 4
Just as controversial as the battle for the top two spots could be the battle for the final at-large spot into the Bowl Championship Series between California and Texas. Because Utah will finish in the top 6 of the standings, there is only one spot available for a team that did not win its conference le, and that will go to the highest-ranked team that is not a champion. If none of the three undefeateds lose on Saturday, that race is clearly between the Golden Bears and Longhorns.

Right now, Cal is way ahead of Texas in the polls, and Texas is even further ahead of Cal in the computers. If this weekend's games cause any change to those computer ratings, it would be very slightly in favor of the Bears, but more than likely the ratings for both teams will stay the same on Sunday.

If the computers do indeed hold steady, as few as three voters moving Texas ahead of Cal could give the BCS spot to the Longhorns. If exactly two AP voters and one coach switch their order in UT's favor, there will be a tie for No. 4 in the BCS. If two coaches and one AP voter make that same change, Texas would move in front. Ballots of coaches hold slightly more weight in the BCS formula because there are fewer total voters. (A tie, by the way, would allow the bowl with first selection to have its choice between the teams. Given that the Rose Bowl is likely to have first choice, Cal would win in the event of a tie).

Other than lose on Saturday, the worst thing the Bears could do is not look dominant against Southern Miss and give voters any reason to doubt their strength. A narrow victory could be fatal for Rose Bowl dreams. But even if Cal wins impressively, it won't be safe to assume the Bears have squelched any chance of the Longhorns making up ground in the polls.

Because this is the final week of the season, and relatively few teams are still playing, many coaches and writers might have had more time than ever to truly evaluate each team. It's possible that upon reviewing the résumés more closely, a few voters could decide to move some teams around. It's also possible that a few coaches had been letting someone else fill out their ballots up until this point and, upon taking those ballots back into their own hands, might decide to switch the order someone else created.

Having small shifts of points between top teams from the second-to-last poll to the last is fairly common, even when neither team is in action on the final day of the season. If Cal wins big, and Texas still makes up ground in the polls, some will suggest a conspiracy was in effect, but that wouldn't necessarily be the case. And if the movement takes place in the coaches' poll, the leading conspiracy theory will be brotherly love.

You see, Texas coach Mack Brown and Cal coach Jeff Tedford both vote in the coaches' poll, as does Brown's older brother Watson, the coach at UAB. And even though there are many other voters in that poll, the Brown brothers would be guilty until proven innocent in the minds of many angry fans. And because the American Football Coaches Association refuses to let USA Today reveal how each coach voted, innocence would never be proven.

[jalbre6]

more, from http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/column...van&id=1934513

The two men charged with making the case for their teams -- Bob Rose at California and John Bianco at Texas -- agree on one thing: An argument to decide which team deserves a BCS bid shouldn't come down to their teams.

But it does, thanks to the surprising success of Utah, and regardless of the merits of the Big East champion. The BCS formula considers the teams virtually indistinguishable from one another. Cal leads Texas by .0013, which makes hairsplitting look like a landslide.

The Golden Bears have one game remaining, at Southern Mississippi on Saturday, and that game is fraught with much more meaning than it would have had on Sept. 16, the date on which it was supposed to be played before the threat of Hurricane Ivan postponed it.


Aaron Rodgers and Cal are hoping to hold off Texas for the final BCS at-large bid.
Because of the BCS Standings, the game is more meaningful than it would have been a week ago, or two weeks ago. Texas has made a late charge on Cal, narrowing the margin it trails the Bears in the polls and lengthening the advantage it enjoys in the computer rankings.

How far is it from Berkeley to Hattiesburg? A couple of thousand miles, a couple of decades, a trip across the border from blue state to red, and all with more than $10 million on the line.

"The bottom line," says Rose, the executive associate athletic director at Cal, "is that they lost to the No. 2 team (Oklahoma) in the nation, 12-0, on a neutral field (the Cotton Bowl in Dallas) and we lost by six to the No. 1 team (USC) on their turf, and anybody who saw the game knows we outplayed them until the final minutes."

"We have played better compe ion," says Bianco, assistant athletics director/media relations at Texas. "We are 4-1 against Top-25 teams at the time we played them. They are 1-1. We have more wins against the Top 25 than anybody in the top six. We have more opponents with winning records than they do, six to four."

"Close wins," Rose continues. "They had two against losing teams, Arkansas (22-20) and Kansas (27-23). We had one, against Oregon (28-27). I really thought that win was going to help us. They were 5-3, 4-1 in the conference (after the loss, the Ducks lost their last two games, to UCLA and Oregon State)."

"The Big 12 doesn't get the respect it deserves because of the North," says Bianco, referring to the division with co-champions who finished 4-4 in conference play. "We played in the toughest conference in the nation, the Big 12 South."

The average rankings of the six computers has Texas fourth and Cal sixth. One ranking places Cal 10th, but the BCS tosses the high and low ranking out before it ranks teams. On my ballot, which applies to the ESPN.com Power 16 and no farther, I have Cal fourth and Texas sixth. The late-season near-miss at Kansas affected my opinion of the Horns, and I put a lot of truck in their respective performances against the teams that beat them.

Each team has one play it would like to take back. At Cal, it would be the Aaron Rodgers pass that wideout Geoff McArthur couldn't handle in the end zone on the final possession against USC. At Texas, it may turn out to be Vince Young's ill-advised attempt to reach the ball across the goal line on Friday against Texas A&M.

If the Longhorns score, you can make the case that they would have beaten the Aggies 33-6. Instead, Texas A&M got a 98-yard fumble return for a touchdown, and the final score was 26-13. That argument is too simplistic, and no matter who ultimately gets a BCS bid and who doesn't, dozens of reasons will be cited in the coming days.

In the meantime, there isn't a Texas fan alive who won't raise his index finger and his pinky, and with all possible seriousness say, "Hook 'em, Golden Eagles."