ND football is about the BCS, not the Gator or Tire Bowl. They have high expectations, and if their season consists of a Gator Bowl etc... then they feel like their season was a failure. I don't think that what happened to WVU a couple of years ago was fair. I think most of us can agree that the BE will be in a better light, once they can stand on their own and earn the accolades on the field and not have to rely on a Non football playing member to get their bowls or having to fabricate a BCS number(UL last year) from a team that wasn't even in their league to make them look better.

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:ND football is about the BCS, not the Gator or Tire Bowl. They have high expectations, and if their season consists of a Gator Bowl etc... then they feel like their season was a failure. I don't think that what happened to WVU a couple of years ago was fair. I think most of us can agree that the BE will be in a better light, once they can stand on their own and earn the accolades on the field and not have to rely on a Non football playing member to get their bowls or having to fabricate a BCS number(UL last year) from a team that wasn't even in their league to make them look better.

If Notre Dame was about the BCS and not the Tire and Gator Bowl they wouldn't have cut a deal with the Gator Bowl. Notre Dame is about making money, whether that be the BCS, Gator Bowl, or what have you. There is no fabrication, Louisville should have been in the Big East but the lack of a deal cut by C-USA and the Big East/Louisville meant it didn't happen. How is it fabricated when Louisville was going to the conference anyway? The Big East is going to stand on their own, and and Louisville is joining the conference, so it's not like the Big East took credit for a team not in their conference. The Big East is standing fine on their own. Notre Dame isn't a non-member, they play in every sport but football. It helps all of Notre Dame's sports if all of the Big East is making money because that means, say, West Virginia and Syracuse can keep their non-football sports up to par which helps Notre Dame. It's a partnership. It's not all take from the Big East, that's something you easily and conveniently forget. If not for the Big East Notre Dame would have all of their sports in Independence, which is a scheduling and financial nightmare, or Notre Dame would have to join the Big Ten or some other conference and give up their special benefits, so the Big East helps Notre Dame as much as Notre Dame helps the Big East.

L-yes Wrote:I've been to 3 Liberty Bowls in recent history and at none of them were memphis fans a substantial presence. 

You must have skipped the last LB when I and 20,000 other Memphis fans joined with Boise State to root for the Broncos.

Cats Claw ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!!! The BE didnt fabricate its number? Louisville was in C-USA last year, do you want to see their schedule?? The BE Champion was PITT not Louisville. Pitts BCS number(BTW they weren't ranked in the BCS POLL) should be the one that counts for the 2004 football season, not a C-USA teams. While you are at it why don't you go see if the BE can use Southern Cal's number too!
Read my post! I said ND wasn't non FOOTBALL playing member! I also said Cincy vs USF for the title period(never said game). The Gator Bowl board didn't want a BE team every year(or at all) so they settled with two years with one of those possibly being ND. The BCS granted the BE a wimp clause by allowing a C-USA school playing a C-USA schedule to count towards the BE numbers in 2004, because the best your league could come up with was an 8-3 unranked Champion. You ought to thank your Commish for securing some charity for his league.

Lets break this down since you seem to have lost your min over this>

Cats Claw ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!!! The BE didnt fabricate its number? Louisville was in C-USA last year, do you want to see their schedule?? The BE Champion was PITT not Louisville. Pitts BCS number(BTW they weren't ranked in the BCS POLL) should be the one that counts for the 2004 football season, not a C-USA teams. While you are at it why don't you go see if the BE can use Southern Cal's number too!

Since you don't have a clue what is going on here, the Big East never agreed to use Louisville's ranking to help their rankings. The ACC cut a deal to have Boston College's ranking count towards the ACC's rankings. As a result, all of the incoming C-USA schools rankings counted towards the Big East, the incoming MAC and WAC schools counted towards C-USA, etc. So before you go around making a fool out of yourself and crying that the Big East did this go complain to the ACC, they are the ones that asked for, and were granted, this rule. And that's a fact. Period. Whether you like it or not.

Read my post! I said ND wasn't non FOOTBALL playing member! I also said Cincy vs USF for the title period(never said game).

And I told you that your comment about Notre Dame being a non-Football member doesn't mean that they can't help the Big East and the Big East doesn't help them.

The Gator Bowl board didn't want a BE team every year(or at all) so they settled with two years with one of those possibly being ND. The BCS granted the BE a wimp clause by allowing a C-USA school playing a C-USA schedule to count towards the BE numbers in 2004, because the best your league could come up with was an 8-3 unranked Champion. You ought to thank your Commish for securing some charity for his league.

Wrong, get your facts straight. The BCS didn't grant the BE that "wimp clause", the BCS granted the ACC that "wimp clause". You're sitting here whining about our commissioner when the ACC's commissioner is the one that secured the "charity" deal for their league.

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:The BCS granted the BE a wimp clause by allowing a C-USA school playing a C-USA schedule to count towards the BE numbers in 2004, because the best your league could come up with was an 8-3 unranked Champion. You ought to thank your Commish for securing some charity for his league.

Here's a little education for you, then maybe you'll stop whining and b*tching that the Big East cut a deal with the BCS. On a side note, Pitt finished the season ranked #21 in the BCS:

Playing the Game

BY DON CLEGG


While other leagues may play football better than the Big East, no one plays college football's boardroom game of power politics better than commissioner Mike Tranghese.

After a full season of listening to his football league being bashed by the national media on pretty much a daily basis as an example of what's wrong with the BCS, Tranghese let the cat out of the bag on another behind-the-scenes coup last week.
The national media pointed out several times during the latter stages of the season that the Big East's status as a BCS member could be in jeopardy.

The media was referring to a BCS rule that said a league's automatic bid could be stripped if the league champion didn't have an average finish in the top 12 of the final BCS standings over any four consecutive seasons.

Some media members even called that the "Big East Rule" under the assumption that it had been targeted at Tranghese's league.

The media baying escalated when Pitt emerged from the wreckage of the 2004 Big East season as the league's standard-bearer with a No. 21 ranking in the final BCS standings.

But as Tranghese noted in interviews with several newspapers last week, that didn't really matter.

Tranghese revealed that a deal had been in place with the BCS since the first month of the season that would allow the Big East to count incoming schools such as Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida in this year's rankings.

After all, as Tranghese pointed out, the ACC had already received permission to count Boston College in their rankings for this season - even though the Eagles played a Big East schedule in their lame-duck season.

As a result, Louisville - which finished at No. 10 in the final BCS rankings - goes into the books as this year's Big East champion for BCS computational purposes.

Swofford's Ulterior Motive

That revelation set off the predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth on the national scene, which only served to better illustrate the national media's ignorance and bias.

First of all, the current BCS agreement expires after the 2005 season and new guidelines will be in place for 2006.

If any team was to have its BCS bid stripped by this rule, it would have had to happen this year and it didn't.

The thing that caught my eye - but apparently flew under everybody else's radar - was that the ACC had opened the door for the Big East arrangement by asking to include Boston College in this year's rankings, if necessary.

Keep in mind that these conversations and arrangements were all being put in place during the first month of the season.

At the time, West Virginia was still ranked in the top 10, nobody had any idea Louisville was about to take off on the greatest football run in school history and Boston College had never finished higher than third in more than a decade of Big East play.

Why would the ACC think it was so important to have the right to count BC as an ACC team this fall?

Was there something there that everyone else had overlooked in the uproar over the Big East and the BCS?

As it turned out, there very well might have been - and it had a lot to do with that so-called Big East Rule.

I took the final BCS standings for the past four years (2001-04) and worked out the average finish for each of the six BCS conferences.

Here are the results, with the leagues ranked in descending order by their four-year average.

The final BCS rankings for each season are in parentheses, beginning with the 2001 season:

1. Pac 10 (3.0)

Oregon (4), Southern Cal (4), Southern Cal (3), Southern Cal (1)

2. Big 12 (3.3)

Nebraska (2), Oklahoma ( , Oklahoma (1), Oklahoma (2)

2. (tie) SEC (3.3)

Florida (5), Georgia (3), LSU (2), Auburn (3)

4. Big East (5.3)

Miami (1), Miami (1), Miami (9), Louisville (10)

5. Big Ten (6.5)

Illinois ( , Ohio State (2), Michigan (4), Iowa (12)

6. ACC (9.

Maryland (10), Florida State (14), Florida State (7), Virginia Tech (

Pretty obvious, isn't it?

Maybe they should have called it the ACC Rule.

According to these figures, if the ACC hadn't raided the Big East for Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, commissioner John Swofford and his wild-eyed southern boys might have been the first league ever kicked out of the BCS club.

Florida State was 16th in this year's final BCS rankings. When you subtitute that number for Virginia Tech's No. 8 in the above listings, the best team in the ACC's average finish over the past four seasons works out to 11.8.

That's only a couple of places away from the magic number of 12.

That had to be what Swofford was looking at in Boston College's case. He figured that BC had a shot at going unbeaten in the Big East and finishing in the top 10 of the BCS standings.

Coming into the season, Swofford had worked the numbers and knew the ACC could be kicked out of the BCS mix if it didn't have at least one team finish No. 17 or higher in the final BCS standings.

Making the arrangement to include Boston College was just another way of hedging his bets.

I guess you have to give Swofford credit for seeing this coming a year ahead of everybody else and finding a proactive solution.

You also have to tip your hat to the guy for manipulating the national media into thinking the Big East - not the ACC - was the league in danger of having its BCS privileges revoked.

Not that he had to try very hard with the vast majority of chuckleheads who populate the national sports media

Yeah, I'm sure the ACC with those lightweights MIami, FSU, and VT were the ones trying to secure some charity with a 8-4 BC BCS number, and not the BE with an unranked Pitt. The ACC unlike the BE is on firm ground with the BCS. Everybody and their grandmother thinks the BE BCS bid is a joke, and believe me you welfare programs better hope that UL can carry you for a long time.

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:Yeah, I'm sure the ACC with those lightweights MIami, FSU, and VT were the ones trying to secure some charity with a 8-4 BC BCS number, and not the BE with an unranked Pitt. The ACC unlike the BE is on firm ground with the BCS. Everybody and their grandmother thinks the BE BCS bid is a joke, and believe me you welfare programs better hope that UL can carry you for a long time.

Wrong. The ACC was actually in danger of NOT meeting their BCS qualification before cutting that deal. You're making a fool out of yourself by trying to twist this into a Big East thing. The Big East or C-USA didn't cut the deal the ACC cut the deal. Period. Read the article. Why would the Big East cut a deal to count Louisville when West Virginia was ranking in the Top 10 and Louisville was barely a blip on the Top 25 radar!? Congratulations on morphing into a troll over the last day or two, that's a heck of an accomplishment!

Where is the proof? You have a guy writing conjecture from his point of view(bias I might add) Nowhere in that article does it quote anybody from the BCS,ACC or Mike T. for that matter. The whole article is about might have beens and what he might be thinking. Go get an article with a quote from the BCS commish or the ACC, or a quote about the subject at all.

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:Yeah, I'm sure the ACC with those lightweights MIami, FSU, and VT were the ones trying to secure some charity with a 8-4 BC BCS number, and not the BE with an unranked Pitt. The ACC unlike the BE is on firm ground with the BCS. Everybody and their grandmother thinks the BE BCS bid is a joke, and believe me you welfare programs better hope that UL can carry you for a long time.

At the time this deal was cut West Virginia was ranked #10 in the coaches poll and #11 in the AP poll. Louisville was #31 in the coaches poll and #26 in the AP. So, tell me, why would the Big East cut a deal to try and get Louisville to count towards their overall rankings?

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:Where is the proof? You have a guy writing conjecture from his point of view(bias I might add) Nowhere in that article does it quote anybody from the BCS,ACC or Mike T. for that matter. The whole article is about might have beens and what he might be thinking. Go get an article with a quote from the BCS commish or the ACC, or a quote about the subject at all.

It was all over the freaking C-USA message board if you had bothered to do some research. It's common knowledge that the ACC was the one that requested this deal. You can spin it all you want. Just because you choose not to believe it doesn't make it fact. You want a comment from a BCS commissioner, it said IN THAT ARTICLE that Mike Tranghese SAID the ACC requested that rule, you don't hear anyone from the ACC denying it. And, like I mentioned before, why would the Big East cut a deal to have an unranked team count towards their rankings when they had a Top 10 team already in the fold?

If you seriously think Swofford was sweating out the ACC's bid and banking on BC's football program to save his conference,you are the foolish one. Again, go get some proof, not some sportswriter(who probadly wouldn't know John Swooford if he ran into him) who is guessing about what mght have happened behind the scenes.

Quote:The BCS granted the BE a wimp clause by allowing a C-USA school playing a C-USA schedule to count towards the BE numbers in 2004

The ACC, not the Big East, proposed the migrating school counting towards the new conference rule.

It was on a internet message board, so it must be true. Thanks for the proof.

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:If you seriously think Swofford was sweating out the ACC's bid and banking on BC's football program to save his conference,you are the foolish one. Again, go get some proof, not some sportswriter(who probadly wouldn't know John Swooford if he ran into him) who is guessing about what mght have happened behind the scenes.

If the guy wasn't sweating he wouldn't have raided for Miami now would he? The ACC's average BCS ranking was about 12. They wanted BC's ranking to count because BC was projected to win the Big East and have a Top 10 program, which they came close to having. That way the ranking counted. You still haven't answered my question, why would the Big East run to the BCS and beg to have 3 unranked teams count towards their conference?

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:It was on a internet message board, so it must be true. Thanks for the proof.

Actually, Don Clegg is a writer for the <a href='http://www.news-register.net/sports/sports.asp' target='_blank'>Intelligencer/Wheeling News Register.</a>

Quote:It was on a internet message board, so it must be true. Thanks for the proof.

I believe it was in an article, not from a sourceless poster on this message board.

hbengal Wrote:

L-yes Wrote:I've been to 3 Liberty Bowls in recent history and at none of them were memphis fans a substantial presence. 

You must have skipped the last LB when I and 20,000 other Memphis fans joined with Boise State to root for the Broncos.

You have to be kidding.

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:Yeah, I'm sure the ACC with those lightweights MIami, FSU, and VT were the ones trying to secure some charity with a 8-4 BC BCS number, and not the BE with an unranked Pitt. The ACC unlike the BE is on firm ground with the BCS. Everybody and their grandmother thinks the BE BCS bid is a joke, and believe me you welfare programs better hope that UL can carry you for a long time.

Your bitter jealousy is really starting to show through. Cat's Claw, go easy on this guy- you've really riled him up. I can feel his blood pressure rising through my monitor.

L-yes Wrote:

St. Patrick Eagle Wrote:Yeah, I'm sure the ACC with those lightweights MIami, FSU, and VT were the ones trying to secure some charity with a 8-4 BC BCS number, and not the BE with an unranked Pitt. The ACC unlike the BE is on firm ground with the BCS. Everybody and their grandmother thinks the BE BCS bid is a joke, and believe me you welfare programs better hope that UL can carry you for a long time.

You're bitter jealousy is really starting to show through. Cat's Claw, go easy on this guy- you've really riled him up. I can feel his blood pressure rising through my monitor.

:laugh: