Will more dissapointments be churned in this year's bowls?
The Bowl Championship Series relies on a combination of polls and calculated methods to determine relative team rankings, the result being a selection of two teams to play in the BCS National Championship Game.
This year's results will certainly renew the annual debate about college football's way of determining the best team in the land, but the computers have churned out some interesting picks, but rest assured that disappointing games remain.
So let's dive into the 2009-2010 BCS Bowl selection:
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Number 6 Boise State (13-0, at-large) vs. umber. 4 Texas Christian (12-0 BCS #4 automatic)
Okay, so let's get this out of the way first. This is a great match-up. Both schools are from non-BCS conferences, yet they have made it to the heights of a prestigious BCS Bowl game. Boise State has one the nation's top offenses (Number 1 scoring offense) while TCU is ranked top in the nation for total defense.
What's interesting here is that this one is a non-automatic bid and the other is automatic. Because Cincinnati is ranked Number 3 by the final BCS standings, they get an automatic berth in the BCS, but since they are Big East champs, by rule they do not need a bid based on the "third-ranked team" rule. This means that the fourth nationally ranked team (TCU) gets an "automatic" bid, and for the first time in the short BCS history two non-BCS teams make it to a bowl game. The negative factor in this match-up is that it does nothing to help prove or disprove whether these teams should be in the discussion for national titles -- because they're not playing against the big time BCS schools. Maybe a TCU vs. Florida would have been interesting.
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Number 7 Oregon (10-2 Pac 10 Champion) vs. Number 8 Ohio State (10-2 Big 10 Champion)
The logical and expected choice, as both teams won their respective championships and with the way the BCS is set-up, it pits these two teams against each other. Oregon comes into the Rose Bowl, perhaps the most prestigious bowl game, to try and win it for the first time in more than 90 years. Oregon defeated Number 13 Oregon State in the Civil War to earn its fifth trip to Pasadena, and first trip since 1995 when they were defeated by Penn State.
Oregon's only Rose Bowl win was a 14-0 victory over Pennsylvania in 1917. Ohio State enters the bowl for the first time since 1997 after winning its fifth straight Big Ten championship by defeating Iowa. Oregon comes into the game with the seventh-ranked scoring offense in the nation and is it ever potent: Ohio State has avera ged 37 points per game. Ohio State comes into the game with the fifth-ranked total defense in the country, allowing an average of 262 yards per game and twelve points. The Rose Bowl certainly offers an intriguing match-up.
