My Twitter Conversation with SI.com’s Andy Staples

So my beloved University of Cincinnati Bearcats football team finish their season with a perfect 12 wins and 0 losses. Their reward: a meaningless exhibition game against an SEC also-ran. As it turned out, they had been playing exhibition games the entire time, as they never had a shot at the national title as long as teams from the SEC & Big 12 were perfect as well.

What makes this so hard to take as a Bearcat fan is that they finished 2nd in the objective computer rankings, but 4th in the subjective human polls. (I use the term subjective to be nice, as corrupt may be more accurate—LSU’s coach Les Miles had Cincinnati 8th…8th!) And since the BCS ranking are based on 1/3 computers & 2/3 human polls, the Bearcats finished 3rd and out of national title contention. (Check out the final BCS standings here, conference rankings here.)

Now I could almost accept this unfair scenario if the reaction from the national media was something along the lines of: “this is an outrage; a playoff would be ideal, but under the current flawed system, Cincinnati should be in the title game”. I want to see all hell break loose on ESPN TV and the major sports sites labeling this the biggest injustice in the history of the BCS.

But this just hasn’t been the case. Either the Bearcats gets lumped in with (also undefeated) TCU & Boise State in a generic column calling for a playoff, or worse: the conventional wisdom is that Texas is the correct team to face Alabama in the title game. One such example was SI.com’s Andy Staples writing: “Texas deserves national-title shot”.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get inside the mind of someone who totally ignored the on-the-field evidence. Suspecting it was some sort of asinine smell-test, I opted for Twitter to raise my concerns with some chance of immediate feedback:

@Andy_Staples TX deserves title game based on what? Cincy is the rational choice: tougher sched & conference. TX backers don't bring facts.

Realize, you only get 140 characters with Twitter. I was trying to make the point that someone who thinks Cincinnati deserves the title game (e.g. me) compares the resumes and makes the logical conclusion. Someone who supports Texas (e.g. Andy) just says what he thinks without any stated comparisons. So Andy responds:

@davidedwinross Why is Cincy more rational than TCU?

He’s adding TCU noise that’s really not prescient to the debate. So I respond:

@Andy_Staples I was responding to your "TX deserves natl-title shot". why didn't u mention Cincy's tougher (than TX's) sched in ur article?

After thinking about it for a few moments, I decided to provide him the resume comparisons he conveniently left out of his article (with TCU added to the discussion since he brought them up):

@Andy_Staples computer: UC 2, UT 3, TCU 5. top25 wins: UC 16&17&18, TCU 14&23, UT 19&22. conf: BE 4, B12 5, MW 8. out-of-conf: UC > UT & TCU

I ran out of characters so I couldn’t expand on the out-of-conference discussion. Cincinnati had 2 respectable games: on the road against #18 8-4 Oregon St (who fells 4 points short of winning the Pac 10, the #2 ranked conference) and hosting the unranked 8-4 Fresno St. TCU had one: unranked Clemson (who played in the ACC title game, the #3 conference). Texas had none: all cupcakes. (See complete schedules and results for Cincinnati, Texas & TCU.)

Andy’s response:

@davidedwinross Because I think Texas would beat Cincy head-to-head. OU played a tougher schedule than Fla. last year, had same rec and lost

Good. Now, I can ask him to justify why he thinks the way he does:

@Andy_Staples so objective metrics call for Cincy, but your subjective thoughts call for TX. plz explain your methodology.

Finally, Andy confirms my initial suspicions with his last retort:

@davidedwinross Eyeball test. Gut instinct. Call it what you want. Just too bad they can't settle it on the field in a proper tournament.

OK. So I got what I needed. No need to spend any more time on this conversation. We always knew when comparing undefeated teams, that a traditional college power would trump the upstart (tougher schedule usually being the reason cited). We now know that even when the aforementioned upstart does indeed play a tougher schedule, the traditional power wins out anyway based on perception.

The funny thing is, BCS supporters point to the integrity of the regular season a key reason to keep this unfair system rather than switch to a playoff. Right now administrators from Columbus to Norman to Los Angeles are looking at Texas’s spot in the title game and making the collective decision to schedule regular season campaigns with a lot less integrity going forward.

I wonder what Andy’s eyeball test was based on anyway…uniform colors?

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