Swamp Journal

1. First off, anyone calling Urban Meyer "hypocritical" for saying that Michigan already had their shot, please leave the room and learn something. Meyer had nothing to do with the University of Florida in 1996. In fact, I don't think he was a head coach anywhere, and for all we know, he may have argued against that rematch.
2. In 1996, the BCS didn't exist. What we had at that time was the Bowl Alliance. And the purpose of that was not specifically to determine a national champion, but to improve the old bowl system. Under the old system, the SEC, Big XII, and Southwest Conference and exclusive contracts binding their champions to the Sugar, Orange, and Cotton Bowls respectively. (By 1996, the SWC was defunct, and the Cotton Bowl fell out of the old Bowl Coalition.) This meant that if the two top-ranked teams were the champions of these conferences, you couldn't match them up. Furthermore, the champions of the Big East and ACC were essentially "free agents," so they could choose any of those bowls, or the Fiesta Bowl, if they thought it gave them a better matchup. The Bowl Alliance, for all its flaws, did remedy those situations.
3. Even with these situations resolved, the Big Ten and Pac-10 were tied to the Rose Bowl, which wasn't part of the package. That by itself meant that the bowl game hosting the highest ranked teams in the Bowl Alliance wasn't going to be a championship game unless it just happened to work out as #1 vs. #2. So a rematch in that game is not exactly comparable to a rematch in the BCS championship game.
4. When the 1996 Sugar Bowl was set as a Florida-FSU rematch, even then it wasn't considered a title game. FSU came in unbeaten and ranked #1 (note that all rankings are AP), but Florida was ranked #3. The #2 team was Arizona State, the only other undefeated team in I-A -- but committed to the Rose Bowl. It was only after Arizona State lost the Rose Bowl (to Ohio State, coincidentally enough) that people viewed the Sugar Bowl as a championship game. If the BCS had existed in any form that included the Big Ten, Pac-10 and Rose Bowl in 1996, FSU and ASU would have met, and there would have been no question about it.
5. This year, both Florida and Michigan can make legitimate claims that they deserve to play Ohio State. In other words, Florida is at the very least a valid alternative to Michigan. In 1996, there really wasn't another legitimate claimant. If you want to say the Gators shouldn't have been granted a rematch, then you also have to provide a suitable replacement. Who would FSU have played? Well, #2 Arizona State and #4 Ohio State were obligated to the Rose Bowl. Number 5 was Brigham Young, champions of the WAC -- which wasn't part of the Bowl Alliance. At that point, you now drop to #6, which was Nebraska, which actually was expected to get the bid -- until Texas beat them in the Big XII Championship Game. (Texas at that point was 8-4, ranked #20. So do you allow a team that didn't win its conference? (Does that question sound familiar?). If not, you would have to drop all the way to #10 to get a conference champion in the Alliance -- Virginia Tech. The Hokies were 10-1, their loss being a 52-21 drubbing by Syracuse, although they went on to lose 41-21 to the aforementioned Nebraska team.

So the situations are not really comparable. Having said all that, I don't think there should be a rule against rematches -- my last point above illustrates that, although the inclusion of the Rose Bowl and its affiliated conferences greatly reduces the likelihood of a similar situation. In fact, if Florida had lost to Arkansas this past weekend, I don't see a reasonable alternative to another Ohio State-Michigan matchup.

Next post I'll talk about two other bowl topics: Jim Tressel's abstention and the Sugar Bowl.

# posted by MarkSouthFL @ 3:53 AM