Crimson Red Sports

Get on the poll (http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings?poll=6)

My point-- How can the polls show Bama behind ND, while the sports books have Bama a 8pt. favorite? I trust the guys voting with their wallet 10x more than the AP/Coaches polls of agenda driven voters.

The poll system is severely flawed IMO.  There is no reason you should drop after losing to a higher ranked team in a very close game.  Before the game Bama was #2 and UGA was #3, meaning Bama was just slightly better than UGA and should squeak out a win.  Well, that is exactly what happened, yet UGA falls down to #5 (or 6) even though the outcome of the game was in perfect alignment with the pre-game poll.  So fighting to the final seconds and coming up 5 yards short all of sudden makes you worse than Oregon and even Florida, a team that you beat on the field just a few weeks ago.

The poll is not at all a ranking of teams in the order that you think they would beat each other in head to head competition, which it should be.  But instead there is way to much emphasis placed on losing, without any regard to who you lost to and how close the game was.  Notre Dame hasn't lost, so they naturally bubble to the top even though they would be underdogs to most of the teams in the top 10.

You can play a bunch of high school teams and work your way into the poll as long as you win each week.  See Kent State and Northern Illinois for example.  The fact that Northern Illinois is going to the Orange Bowl is utterly ridiculous.  The SEC has 4 teams who deserve that game more than they do who are being left out.  It is actually more than 4 teams, since some of the middle of the pack SEC teams that aren't even ranked deserve it more than Northern Illinois.

Since Kent State was blown out by Kentucy, and Northern Illinois lost to a bottom-of-the-barrel Big10 team in Iowa, I suspect that every SEC team, except maybe Auburn, would beat Northern Illinois.  The compromises made after threats of anti-trust lawsuits, combined with the inability of those ranking teams to actually watch the games or give much thought to the rankings, has led to worse BCS Bowls than we had before, and I expect that those funding these bowls are not happy.  Once the playoff format starts in 2014, I hope that we can get back to more realistic pairings and games that the fans actually want to see.  The creation of the Champions Bowl also will lead to better teams playing in New Orleans.

The Big East's demise and continued AQ status also hasn't helped matters.

What's more, Coach, is the fact that Florida did not have to risk their one loss record last weekend in a tilt with a top 5 teach. Although the situation with Bama last year was similar, UGA started below us prior to the SECCG and lost their game to the #1 team. In this case since UGA started ahead of FL they should have stayed ahead after that performance.

That needs to be revoked.  Or they should at least require a certain ranking to go along with being the conference champion.  In fact, if Northern Illinois or some other team is going to get in, then they should take the spot of the conference champion they finished ahead of (Louisville in this case).  I actually thought that is how it worked, but apparently that conference champion still gets to go and they are forced to take the BCS Buster as an additional team instead of as a replacement.  Now that I think about it, we should just do away with this AQ nonsense altogether.  If your conference is any good the champion will finish ranked high enough to get in.  If your conference is horrible that year you don't deserve to automatically go.  The SEC don't need no stinking AQ!!!