Lucky enough is the key word. No one knows who was better among those two teams. Auburn did everything it could to make the national championship. LSU did not, therefore it was purely luck that allowed LSU to play for it. Also, how u manage to turn every thread into a shot about Auburn is beyond me. I know we were mentioned in this thread before, but it was as an example. I'm sure a lot of people here would love it if we could keep it that way and not get every thread taken to the smack forum cause you start taking shots at us.
Explain please? LSU, USC and OU all had one loss, so LSU did all it had to do, which is lose all but one game. I don't understand your statement. Auburn's problem was that they totally underachieved the year before and the low preseason ranking in 2004 ultimately led to your demise. Which refutes another poster's contention that the early rankings mean nothing.
I'm saying LSU got lucky enough to have their great season in a year that nobody went undefeated. Auburn was unlucky enough to have their great season in a year that 3 teams went undefeated. Do you disagree?
I'll be the first admit we had a run of luck in 2003 and I hope we have it again this year. :crystal:
Auburn was unlucky enough to not be named either USC or Oklahoma because as long as they both remained undefeated, they were in the BCS Championship game, regardless of what anyone else did. You just picked the wrong year to go undefeated.
Ok would have jumped AU on the basis of SOS. Now you could argue that AU had a stronger SOS, but using the SOS of 03, which also tracks the computers exceptionally well, AU was 3rd in SOS after OK and USC. Please don't argue this unless you can account for why the cmputers ranked you 3rd across the board. Advocating a different SOS, which I'm sympathetic to BTW, is really a future issue and not applicable to last year.
I can't imagine AU would have been #1 in any poll, delayed or not, because USC was there. If they were #1, given that there was a USC, I wouldn't rule out a fall to #3 because a decision had to be made. A critical decision really focuses the voters attention and AU comes in 3rd on the most important variable for undefeated teams, SOS. The OOC schedule would still have been attacked relentlessly and the computers would have ranked them #3 all year long. Most likely if they were #2 and it was close, the BCS would have still ranked them 3rd.
There is so much wrong with this. The old SOS was only a small contribution; it was essentially a tie-breaker when the other components were "tied." AU still would have been ranked 3rd under the 2003 rules. In fact, out of the top 10, I think only 1 pair of teams switched ranking. SOS is considered by the voters and it's a key parameter for the computer models. However, nobody can tell if it is under or over valued because nobody knows how much it counts. I-AA teams are not worse on SOS than all I-A teams. For example, playing ULL would have been worse in terms of SOS (i.e. the old BCS SOS) for AU than playing the Citadel, and the Citadel was a below average I-AA team. The bigger impact is the psychological excuse it gives voters to justify their vote.
