I love how all the media types are blasting the fact that the polls leading up to the final one "didn't mean anything, if they were just going to change them at the last minute"
They don't like that their status quo got challenged, IE how can you move teams around so dramatically at the end of the season without a loss. They can't comprehend that their antiquated, and arguably more biased way of doing things is wrong.
First year is always rough and I applaud TCU's coach for taking the high road and saying lets go through this cycle again before doing anything drastic.
That works with a Championship game too though. See Miss St. this year and Alabama in the past ... every year a #2 in East or West Division that didn't go to the CCG will be a major threat to crack the top 4.
It's pretty clear the CCG is a big resume builder, however. It's another highly ranked opponent at a neutral site, a 13th game, and definitive champion.
Despite all the crying about media $$$ -- at the end of the day, Ohio State does have a better resume than Baylor -- and the CCG was a difference maker. More Top-25 wins, more dominant performances against those top-25 opponents, a comparable loss (they like to forget WVU is 7-5), an outright champion, better OOC schedule, better overall schedule, an ability to explain the 1 loss beyond simply "We didn't play Stanford Football that day".
In years when it's close with the other 4 conference champions (and probably #2 SEC), BXII will continue to be left out. The co-champions hurt. Long refuses to state it exactly, but he's at least made it clear that it was treated different and the 12 members were left to individually decide what "co-champions" meant and how to weigh it. Not having a 13th game providing a marquee opponent hurt their resume in comparison. Alabama, Oregon, FSU, and Ohio State were all able to add another ranked opponent while TCU played Iowa State, and Baylor made up ground with TCU by beating the only other ranked opponent in conference.
The BXII needs to re-evaluate how they run business overall. Because it's not working. They have just 1 school as a member of the AAU left - the one souring the pot. The other 4 jumped ship to conferences that have a clue. If Austin wants to basically run a Big East in Texas conference that's constantly getting poached by their neighbors, losing media markets and footprint, forced to bring in new mid majors and geographic islands b/c of political infighting and instability... they'll continue to suck. That conference isn't half as good as Shaggy thinks it is (some idiot actually came up with a 6team playoff where BXII and SEC get seeded into 2nd round). They're the new Big East with upstarts that don't play defense. An emperor with no clothes. And while their internal politics are a mess for different reasons (Texas basically replaces the Catholic basketball schools all on their own), they're just as screwed internally.
I don't particularly care if they unfuck themselves - it's like watching Notre Dame build a crappy conference of Mid Majors with poor academics who have always been after-thoughts and bottom dwellers while keeping their NBC deal to themselves.
Baylor really seems like it sucks. You're fucking Baylor: a transitory blip on the college football radar that will inevitably slide back under the rock of irrelavence from which you crawled out three years ago. I love how the committee made a point of condemning them for hiring a pr firm. What's next? Is Kenn Starr going to bring in the lawyers and start suing people.
What I think they're really being punishing for is that laughable OOC schedule. SMU may as well be a second DIAA team, and 5-6 (3-4) Buffalo is little better. Compared to VTech (P5), Cinci (was probably P5 when scheduled and co-champ of their Mid Major), Navy (respectable Mid Major), and Kent State (pure dog shit) ... one team at least made an effort to put together a good OOC slate, the other deliberately chose to play cupcakes and pad their record with glorified preseason warmups.
