There would have been no crisis, the undefeated team would be in and the top one loss team would have been in. Did I miss a crisis in 2012 (Oregon finished the year with one loss)? This Alabama team though, has the best resume of any BCS era one loss Alabama team, they were so clearly ahead that the polls even put them #1, but in the BCS era they would have likely been the clear #2 with no real debate. There have been controversial years, but this wouldn't have been one of them.
The funny thing is that after reading that first sentence, I was going to use Boise State as an example. Of course, someone would have complained, like the ESPN guy in 2009 bringing up Boise State, but perhaps we just have different views of what a controversy is. Controversy is moving a team down 2 places on a win, controversy was what happened in 2011, that's how I see it.
I probably should use a disclaimer on all SoS discussions, because to me it's kind of a ballpark figure type of stat. Okie State had an amazing (SEC West style) SoS of 3, and Alabama had an SoS of 15. That's a noticeable gap, but not so huge that you can't look at the fact that Okie State lost to a bad team and Alabama lost to the #1 team, and other factors. An interesting side note though is that if they had a conference championship game that year, that might have been enough to push them ahead of Alabama. Anyway, the argument I was making for FSU, is that the SoS is close enough even though FSU is lower that you shouldn't overlook one team being undefeated.
To get a feel for this year, here's the SoS stats:
Alabama 4
Oregon 33
FSU 37 (undefeated)
Ohio State 52
TCU 42 (they played one less game)
For the record, the BCS formula would have Alabama #1 and FSU #2, but I think the committee impacted the polls and that would likely have been FSU #1 with Alabama #2 by a significant margin. The main point though is that the SoS gap is so massive that it destroys most arguments in my mind, but I'm still not sure Alabama should have been ranked ahead of an undefeated FSU with a top 40 SoS.
I think the political nature of the committee invites controversy (honestly simply being controversial is not my main concern though), and what they did do to FSU (who I despise), goes against everything we've ever known about college football. The basketball committee gets away with a lot because no one actually sees their true seeding (they are there, but for reasons I haven't figured out yet they tend to be well hidden), and when it's all said and done people don't get that upset about being the difference between a 1 or a 2 seed. Here though, it all matters a lot.
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I was one of them, but I was confident in Alabama's ability to make it in, I just wanted the path of least resistance. It is sad to me what it's doing to the regular season though, I really wasn't all that worked up about most of the other games because I felt even with the loss Alabama just had to win (I made a post the week of the loss saying as much). It was nothing like 2011 or 2012.
