Go Mountain West Football!

Should Utah have Kept Texas for 2008?

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard claims that had Utah left Texas on its schedule and won it would have launched them into the championship game.  The 2008 Sagarin ratings tagged the Utes at #56–a stark contrast from Florida at #4.  To supporters of the big schools, that seems like a no brainer.  And as much as I hate SOS for its inability to reduce bias and accommodate variation in weekly performance, even I have to admit that 52 spots is probably way too big of a difference for the weaknesses of SOS to be material.

The problem is that Penn St, rated at a nearly identical #55, was in the running for the National Championship until it lost to Iowa.  Had they beaten the Hawkeyes, I think it’s hard for anyone to argue that an undefeated Penn St would have been left out of the title game the way Utah was.  Nope.  Penn St would have gone on to the title game, and because it is in a BCS conference, no one would even care what their SOS was.  The implication here, then, is that SOS is primarily a measure the BCS uses to pomp itself and criticize outsiders.

The double standard that a mid-50′s rating would be sufficient for one team but not the other is disgusting.  However, just to be fair, it still doesn’t mean that Utah was one of the top two deserving schools for the title last year.  Because Penn St would have got in inspite of its weak schedule could just as easily mean Penn St would have got in undeservable as it means Utah was unfairly excluded.  The only sure thing in this situation is that tremendous bias exists in the system and puts the non-AQ at an unfair and unjustifiable disadvantage.

So, back to the original question.  Utah definitely could have bolstered its schedule by keeping the game with Texas.  Thereagain, though, Penn St’s schedule would have been good enough as is, so there would have been a double standard.  Utah still would have had to go undefeated to get a sniff at the championship, but with that kind of schedule, a BCS team might get in with a loss.  You can dance around it any way you want, and while you can’t prove that it means Utah should’ve been in, it does prove emphatically there is a double standard that is unjustifiable.