Re: Hurricane Matthew's impact on college football? (LSU-UFand UGA-USC postponed)
This is potentially huge although not as much so as in the BCS days.
Y'all remember the mess in college football in 2001? We wound up with a season where a team that did not even win its division (Nebraska) and lost its last game in a colossal blowout (62-36) wound up in the BCS title game as the sacrificial lamb for Miami - because of the 9/11 attacks. For those who don't recall, here's the overview of what happened.
The games of September 15 were all postponed or cancelled. (Remember that - it will be important in about 60 seconds or so).
The BCS rankings for November 19 were:
1) Nebraska
2) Miami
3) Oklahoma - one loss to Nebraska
4) Florida - a three-point loss to Auburn
5) Oregon - a 7-point loss to Stanford
6) Texas - a loss to OU
7) Tennessee - a two-point loss to UGA
And then disaster happened, maybe the wildest BCS chaos we ever had.
First, Colorado drilled Nebraska, 62-36 (and the game wasn't even THAT close - for real). The very next day, Okie State shocked Oklahoma, so both those teams fell a bit and we had:
Miami, Florida, Texas, Nebraska (only fell to #4), Oregon, Tennessee, Colorado (with 2 losses)
Because the UF-Tennessee game was rescheduled, everyone knew one of those two teams was for sure out. So Texas meets Colorado - who they had beaten earlier in a 41-7 blowout. Naturally, Mack Brown choked and on that same day, Tennessee pulled a stunning upset of Florida in what proved to be Spurrier's last regular season game in Gainesville. So now the polls said:
Miami, Tennessee, Nebraska, Colorado, Oregon
And once again, if Tennessee beat LSU....who they had beaten, 26-18, in September....then it would be simple: Miami vs the Vols. LSU had taken a circuitous route to the game, first watching Alabama shock West leader Auburn and then beating Auburn themselves to set up the rematch.
Trailing 17-7 and losing his quarterback just before the half, the LSU coach (some guy named Saban) stepped onto the national stage and pulled a stunning upset, 31-20, and caused utter BCS chaos. Come to think of it, that's another of Saban's gifts (insert 2011 and 2013 results here).
Now came the big question......would Miami face Nebraska (one loss), Colorado (two losses, but undid one by beating their conqueror and drilled Nebraska head-to-head), or Oregon (one loss).
When the BCS poll came in, they had a disaster on their hands when Nebraska went in over Oregon.
But what did not get a lot of ink at the time was that this entire problem was caused by the cancelling of one game: Colorado vs Washington State, scheduled for 9/15 and cancelled due to 9/11. You see.....if those two had played each other, the result would have delivered the BCS title berth (and right to get killed by Miami) to either Colorado or Oregon because if CU had beat Wazzu (10-2 under Mike Price that year), their SOS would have raised them over Nebraska......but since Oregon had played and beat Wazzu (24-17), a WIN by Wazzu would have raised Oregon's SOS enough to put them in the title game.
Seriously - the cancellation of one game literally affected the national championship match-up. And while I doubt anyone considers Florida a title contender, the FACT is that right now they have one loss and could conceivably back door it into the SEC title game if this game isn't played. If they did that and beat Alabama - ending the year with one loss AND an SEC title.......they probably play in the Final Four.
So it IS important in the big term.
