Wrap Up: 2012 Week 14

Baylor defended the TUCFC in their final regular season game beating Oklahoma State 41-34. Now Baylor will go to the Holiday bowl where they will play UCLA. This could mean a move of the TUCFC into the Pac 12 and will be a bowl to watch.

The big story of course in college football is Northern Illinois. Their inclusion in a BCS bowl has created ripples throughout the bowls. The biggest loser may be Louisiana Tech who is not in a bowl. At one point they were ranked in the top 25 and finished the season with a 9-3 record. But they were holding out to see which bowls would be available to them and got left with no bowl invitation after the Northern Illinois selection created a ripple effect that pushed Louisiana Tech out of two of the bowls they were targeting and the one where they had a standing offer closed as the bowl made their decision while Louisiana Tech was asking for more time. It is crazy to think that they got left out of the bowls.

As expected Notre Dame will face Alabama in the BCS championship game. To me the biggest loser here at the end of the season is Stanford. They played Notre Dame very close during the season and then had a bad loss to Washington. After that they started a new quarterback and have been a much better offensive team since.  They went to Oregon and beat them, then capped it off by winning the Pac 12. Still in the BCS rankings they are only ranked 6th, mostly because of bad rankings from the human voters. I don't understand why as a human voter you would rank Oregon ahead of Stanford when they beat them at Oregon.

Normally at this time of year I begin my 32 team NCAA football tournament, but I'm not going to this year. I'm beginning to believe that we will eventually work our way into a 16 team tournament. Though a 32 team tournament would come closer to matching the number of bowl games, it would require teams to only play a 10 game regular season and I don't think that will happen. A 16 team tournament would fit with an 11 game regular season and I do believe that is possible. That would mean the most games any team would play would be 15 a number we will be at next year when they begin the four team tournament.

So what would a 16 team tournament look like. Well it would look something like this based on the BCS final standings.

Group A
1. Notre Dame vs. 4. Nebraska
2. LSU vs. 3. Oklahoma

Group B
1. Oregon vs. 4. Clemson
2. Kansas State vs. 3. South Carolina

Group C
1. Alabama vs. 4. Northern Illinois
2. Georgia vs. 3. Florida State

Group D
1. Florida vs. 4. Oregon State
2. Stanford vs. 3. Texas A&M



TUCFC Power Ratings
Since it's the end of the regular season I give you the top 20.  Stanford made the biggest move up with their win over UCLA to take the Pac 12 title.  Truth is I actually think that Stanford is the best team in the country and as I said earlier, feel they got a bad wrap here at the end of the season.

Rank	Team	Record	WP	WDiffP	LP	LDiffP	Power
1	Notre Dame	12-0	1,652.219	1,187.163	0.000	0.000	2,839.381
2	Stanford	11-2	1,787.250	1,202.325	94.250	251.313	2,644.012
3	Oregon	11-1	1,328.594	1,125.588	18.406	53.313	2,382.463
4	Florida	11-1	1,340.906	1,072.425	9.188	39.125	2,365.019
5	Alabama	12-1	1,198.813	1,124.800	9.969	21.188	2,292.456
6	Kansas State	11-1	1,340.844	1,119.513	91.469	286.563	2,082.325
7	Ohio State	12-0	1,179.438	852.150	0.000	0.000	2,031.588
8	Oklahoma	10-2	1,107.813	931.838	29.906	99.563	1,910.181
9	Louisiana State	10-2	986.750	808.875	12.969	34.313	1,748.344
10	Georgia	11-2	907.438	872.850	15.719	70.438	1,694.131
11	Texas A&M	10-2	856.844	858.625	14.906	35.313	1,665.250
12	South Carolina	10-2	874.438	785.400	13.906	62.313	1,583.619
13	Nebraska	10-3	1,100.563	794.125	134.594	332.250	1,427.844
14	Oregon State	9-3	1,003.250	789.238	120.000	337.063	1,335.425
15	Clemson	10-2	703.469	648.100	42.156	123.938	1,185.475
16	Florida State	11-2	770.094	803.838	117.906	278.688	1,177.338
17	Michigan	8-4	595.594	533.200	45.063	146.500	937.231
18	UCLA	9-4	965.719	728.075	204.375	567.875	921.544
19	San Jose State	10-2	519.594	546.275	53.750	117.313	894.806
20	Northern Illinois	12-1	552.844	613.325	149.781	319.063	697.325