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2008 College Football Rankings

Week: 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | After Bowls

All but one BCS bowl produced a team with a claim to the national championship - but let's face facts. For the second straight year, the BCS got it right.

Utah makes a very compelling case on logical grounds - they did beat an Alabama team whose only prior loss had been to Florida, in a game far closer to Tuscaloosa relative to the opposition than the SEC Championship Game, and by a larger margin - but it's worth noting that the Sugar Bowl was not as much of an Alabama home game as it's been made out to be by Utah partisans, as Bama fans would have had to cross the entire state of Mississippi and move from north to south. I suspect Atlanta is closer to Tuscaloosa than New Orleans. A Florida-Utah game would be worth watching, but the body of work suggests Utah might be out of its element there - anyone would.

As for the others? USC is only here by demolishing Penn State, as people have completely forgotten how crappy the Pac-10 was in the regular season in the face of their undefeated bowl record. Sorry, but a round of games where teams decided to let up because it's "only" the Pac-10 doesn't make up for a regular season of mediocrity and being 0wned by the Mountain West. Not to mention, USC lost to a team that lost to Utah; they shouldn't even have a claim. The way Florida demolished Oklahoma, it's far from out of the question they could easily do the same to Texas, especially the way the Longhorns struggled against Ohio State. Any way you slice it, Florida is the national champion, and deservedly so.

How the C Ratings are tabulated: First, A Ratings are tabulated by multiplying the total score ratio, which is expressed by (points-opponents’ points)/points, by the winning percentage. Score ratio minimizes the effect of running up the score. Next, B Points for each game are tabulated by (margin of victory)/(opponent’s A rating)+/-1 for wins, and -(margin of loss)/(1-opponent’s A Rating)+/-1 for losses. The “+/-” is + for road games and - for home ones. The total number of B Points is multiplied by the A Rating to get the B Rating. Conference Ratings are tabulated by averaging the B Ratings of all teams in the conference. (Independents are counted separately, and Army and Navy are counted as one conference.) Finally, the C Rating is tabulated by taking the difference between the team’s B Rating and his conference’s rating, taking a fraction of that equal to the fraction of Division I-A the conference makes up, and taking the result off the B Rating. The three ratings go A, B, C across. Click here to see the complete ratings.

	1 (1)	Florida (13-1) SEC Leader Princeton-Yale Title	.773	91.528	81.721	With Tim Tebow coming back, don't be surprised if Florida's back here next season.
	2 (2)	Oklahoma (12-2) Big 12 Leader	.625	68.151	59.577	Oklahoma may have gotten punked by Florida and earlier lost to Texas, and they look a lot more human now. But the impressive body of work they'd built up shouldn't be easily dismissed.
	3 (4)	USC (12-1) Pac-10 Leader	.784	62.165	52.763	It's easy to see the allure of the "USC for national champion" bandwagon, the way they demolished Penn State and won by huge scores down the stretch.
	4 (3)	Texas (12-1)	.698	55.298	48.010	Ohio State is a decent team, but the gap was already tight before the bowls and Texas should have done something closer to what USC did against the Buckeyes. How empty is that National Championship bandwagon now?
	5 (6)	Boise State (12-1) Non-BCS Leader	.744	42.249	34.947	They lost, but there is little shame in a one-point loss, certainly when you contrast it to...
	6 (5)	Penn State (11-2) Big 10 Leader	.662	39.734	33.721	...the Nittany Lions' awful, no-good, very bad day against the Trojans. They're lucky they kept it as close as they did down the stretch.
	7 (8)	Utah (13-0) MWC Leader 2007 Boise State Title	.725	36.503/td>	30.899	No one knows now that they struggled against Oregon State, Air Force, New Mexico, and even Michigan. Instead, the Mountain West is talking about joining the BCS.
	8 (7)	Alabama (12-2)	.619	23.496	20.492	The Tide learned the hard way not to listen to people who automatically assume non-BCS teams never have a chance in BCS bowls, despite all evidence to the contrary over the years.
	9 (10)	TCU (11-2)	.640	23.933/td>	19.271	The Mountain West came close to having two teams, if not in the national title conversation, at least in the top tier. TCU's defeat of Boise proved the Mountain West is here to stay.
	10 (9)	Ohio State (10-3)	.522	20.694	16.426	Ohio State came close to ending all the mockery sent in their direction (and proving me wrong), but Texas was just too good a team. Had the Fiesta taken my advice, OSU might be sitting pretty right now.
	11 (14)	Iowa (9-4)	.489	15.612	11.810	I knew Iowa was better than their record, but given what other teams around them did demolishing South Carolina in the way they did was overachieving a little. They deserved to be picked ahead of Michigan State.
	12 (11)	Texas Tech (11-2)	.559	14.953	11.699	The Rebels gave the Red Raiders what for, despite Texas Tech being a better team playing closer to home. They can still take pride in what they did this season, but there's still a lot of work to do.
	13 (13)	Missouri (10-4)	.454	11.676	8.749	The Tigers needed OT to beat a Northwestern team eager to prove they should have been Outback-bound. A bit worse than it should have been, but they can take pride in taking the Big 12 North again.
	14 (15)	Georgia (10-3)	.479	9.602	7.987	Georgia may have been the major beneficiary of Ohio State going to the BCS, because they didn't have to deal with the Buckeyes.
	15 (16)	Mississippi (9-4)	.451	9.596	7.982	Their questionable losses - Wake, Vandy, and South Carolina - all came early, and were never all that bad. Imagine if they had won just one or two of them. How highly might we be talking them up?
	16 (25)	Tulsa (11-3)	.529	14.158	7.792	Tulsa finally redeemed themselves in shocking fashion, beating a listless Ball State by a margin the Cardinals might have been expected to beat them by.
	17 (20)	Oregon (10-3)	.467	9.934	4.884	Oregon beat a good Oklahoma State team (that had once been in the national title picture) by a decent margin. Their worst loss schedule-wise is at Cal, but when they lost they lost big; Boise at home was the only loss by less than 10.
	18 (24)	Florida State (9-4) ACC Leader	.428	4.692	2.448	An ill-timed loss to BC cost Florida State a trip to the ACC Title Game that might have rendered the Orange Bowl more tolerable. After demolishing Wisconsin, they're ranked in the AP and coaches' polls, and beat ACC champion V-Tech.
	19 (23)	Virginia Tech (10-4)*	.446	4.495	2.270	The Hokies gave Cincinatti a rude awakening to their first BCS game and made my Golden Bowl seeding look foolish. In fact, the ACC's parity was a bit underrated this year.
	20 (18)	North Carolina (8-5)	.364	4.199	2.003	There is no shame in losing by one to a team as good as you are... unless your conference rivals are far better. But this season has to vastly exceed anyone's expectations.
	21 (12)	Ball State (12-2)	.598	6.912	1.496	Just like that, Ball State looks as faltering-down-the-stretch as Tulsa did heading into the game. But they, too, have to be pleased with how far they came - but is there anywhere to go but down?
	22 (22)	West Virginia (9-4) Big East Leader	.434	2.239	.400	West Virginia lost at the two worst possible times to cost themselves the Big East - but unlike Cincy and Pitt, they won their bowl game.
	23 (21)	Pittsburgh (9-4)	.378	1.690	-.113	Sun Bowl: Came on strong at the end of the season with wins over West Virginia and UConn, after a nasty loss to Bowling Green had set them back and another to Rutgers didn't help.
	24 (17)	Oklahoma State (9-4)	.442	1.066	-.799	How the mighty have fallen. After being in the national championship conversation for a while, the Cowboys go down to an embarrasing defeat.
	25 (19)	BYU (10-3)	.496	2.140	-.887	BYU perfectly illustrates my theory as to why the Pac-10 went unbeaten in the bowls after a mediocre regular season. "Arizona? No problem! We'll beat them easily!"