CBS has Alabama number Three...

    Bama # 3 in Palmville... 

In the Palm Poll Alabama was not # 1

I just finished reading on CBSSports.com that columnist and numbers guru Jerry Palm named Oklahoma State, LSU, and then Alabama, 1, 2, and 3 respectively in their final power rankings. I guess Palm’s computer didn’t actually watch the Alabama – LSU game. That’s the problems with statistics and computers. How do you tell a computer that team A just kicked the living daylights out of team b? Jerry Palm can crunch numbers to hell freezes over and you can never convince anyone who knows football that LSU is better than Alabama. Palm may have the first politically correct software program ever written. If my program crunched numbers that deducted an outcome of Alabama being # 3 the first thing I’d do is to see what was wrong with the program. Or you can placate those not worthy.

It is entirely possible that Oklahoma State might be able to score a few points against Bama. I give the Cowboys that. Conversely, Alabama might score 70 points against a team who just doesn’t have a top caliber defense. Henceforth, the Palm finding will be known as the "kiss up to the Big 12 and all disgruntled teams" report around my home.

Now, I mean no disrespect to the Cowboys. I know they have a good football team. There is a difference between Big 12 Great and SEC Great. No pun intended it must be grating on the nerves to have come so close but not be holding the crystal in your hands. I do think that it would be better for all involved to have a plus one system. (Shouldn’t it be called a plus two system if you have four teams involved?) I don’ think the outcome would have been any different however. In my opinion what Oklahoma State doesn’t understand is that they can’t just score at will against Alabama. LSU could barely manage to get a first down, crossed midfield once, and then got tossed back across in the same series. That must be hard to understand in a league where every game is a gunfight. I’d ask all Cowboys and the Palm bunch to consider that LSU was a team that had beaten the winners of several bowl games and they didn’t score against the Tide. At the University of Alabama our basketball team doesn’t give up many more points than the Cowboy football team.

Or even # 2...

You constantly hear that Alabama didn’t win the SEC. No argument from me on that at all. I thought the BCS was designed to get the best two teams together at the end of the season for a showdown and sorry OSU it wasn’t at the Ok Corral this season. What happens if the best two teams play in the same conference or division? Do you arbitrarily punish one of those teams for having the bad luck of drawing that lot? Even the Selection Committee of the NCAA basketball field understands the foolishness of such an assumption.
Michigan understood that in order to run with the big dogs you have to prove that you can to beat them on occasion. The Big Ten’s record against the SEC has been terrible. So when Michigan is given the opportunity to play Alabama in a contrived opening season game in Texas they jumped at the chance. That was a smart move. Michigan has no downside in the game. If they beat the defending national champions, a SEC team, it gives them some juice for the remainder of the season. It really doesn’t matter that Alabama is losing most of its defense and Trent Richardson this season. Alabama will not be as good as the team that played and won the BCS Championship game. That doesn’t matter. The national media will hype the SEC as the greatest thing since Viagra. If Michigan beats the Tide it will give the Wolverines some instant credibility, even if the Crimson and White is rebuilding to a degree. The media and the NCAA need someone to challenge the SEC. In all honesty there doesn’t seem to be anyone on the horizon of hope in that regard.

But was selected # 3

Playing a SEC team almost worked for Boise State. I think they may have been one missed kick away from playing in the BCS game. They got that jump-start by beating Georgia. Even though Georgia was not a very good team in retrospect, playing the Dawgs helped Boise at the first of the season. When Georgia made it to the SEC Championship game the Broncos would have been in Fat City had they not missed one kick. If I was Oklahoma State, Stanford, or some other team that wants to make it to the next level I’d drop playing Podunk State and try to convince someone who resides in the rarified air of college football to schedule a game with my team. Rest assured that the NCAA or Television will make that happen. Right now, college football is like the PGA when Tiger Woods was king. It was great to watch the excellence of Woods on the course but the only question was who would win the first flight. The Championship flight was over. That’s how it is in NCAA football right now. The Championship teams are known. The NCAA has to manipulate a way to keep to two SEC teams from playing the big game. They will. Only the NCAA has the power to screw up something that allows excellence to be rewarded. In a couple of years when the SEC beats someone by 40 points in the BCS Championship game you can look back and remember when the best were allowed to play based upon merit. Maybe the NCAA can use Jerry's computer program...