BCS

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. USC
4. Florida
5. Notre Dame
6. Rutgers

Meaning?

Meaning thatIf USC beats Cal and West Virginia beats Rutgers (hardly the least likely of circumstances) the season becomes (or should become) clear-cut. tOhio State-Michigan and USC-Notre Dame are our BSC semi-finals.

I, for one, couldn’t be happier. This would be as close to a playoff as we’re likely to see in the next 20 years.

I don’t want to hear about “close loss” or whatever. Whoever loses tOSU-Michigan goes to the Rose Bowl.

Anticipating objections:

1. How does a one-loss ND go ahead of a one-loss Michigan? The Florida State precedent (1993) deals with that.

2. A Notre Dame team having defeated Cal and Notre Dame (I’m also assuming they beat UCLA, yeah, there’s that) should leapfrog over a Michigan team losing to Ohio State.

3. Same-season rematches in college football suck. This is an inarguable truth of the universe, whether they be a conference championship game or a bowl (Oklahoma-Nebraska ‘79, Florida-Florida St. ‘96). Voters are often dictated by what they want to see as much as whom they deem worthy, and nobody outside of Columbus or Ann Arbor wants to see a November loser get another chance. This fact will hurt whoever loses between Michigan-tOSU.

Well, there's Florida, right?

Call it intuition or whatever, but I truly think that a Notre Dame team that beats USC would jump ahead of Florida. One cannot dismiss the impact of that prime-time Thanksgiving Saturday ABC game for launching teams’ and individual players’ fortunes. The 2002 game launched a two-loss USC team into the BCS as an at-large entry (over a two-loss Kansas State team that had defeated USC) and basically won the Heisman Trophy for Carson Palmer. Should Notre Dame prevail this way, I see them jumping Florida.