Half-Time Advice For The Buckeyes

If you want to win this football game, you’re going to have to score a lot more points in the second half, and not let the other team score so much.

[Update at the start of the fourth quarter, after Smith is sacked, almost a safety]

They’re not following my advice, at least not the first part of it. Off to bed.

[OK, one more]

A wag over at Free Republic:

Being that it is Florida and Ohio, I can expect to see calls for a recount, no?

[Morning thoughts]

I’m asked in comments if I’ll now “give Florida the credit it deserves.” I’m not sure what that means. Florida was unquestionably, by far, the best football team on that field last night. Does that mean they’re the best team in the country?

Who knows?

This just once again points out the absurdity of attempting to discern who is the “best team in the country” or picking a “national champion” in college football. We had two big bowl games in which the teams that were heavily favored got beaten soundly, to most peoples’ amazement (perhaps even many of the fans of the winning teams). That should tell us that there’s something fundamentally wrong with how we judge these things and our ability to predict them.

Let’s go back to the old transitive paradox. Florida beat tOSU. Auburn beat Florida. Why isn’t Auburn the “best team in the country”?

Oh, that was then, and this is now. Well, OK. So would Florida have creamed the Buckeyes back in November, before they had a seven-week layoff? Or did the Buckeyes go from being the “best team in the country” to someone lucky to stay in the top ten in the first few minutes of the game, after they lost Ginn?

Who knows?

Were the losses of tOSU and Michigan in the post season an indication that they weren’t as good as people thought, or that the Big Televen conference is overrated against the SEC and Pac-10, or is it a consequence of the fact that both teams had a couple weeks longer break than their opponents, due to vagaries of the scheduling?

Who knows?

If you want to have a playoff, could there be a better lead up to it than the last two games we’ve seen in this stadium? After their performance in the Fiesta Bowl, shouldn’t unbeaten Boise State have a shot at the Gators now?

Who knows?

Folks, there are too many teams, and too few games played to determine a college football champion at any point in time (and it’s a dynamic situation), or even sensibly rank them. Live with it, and accept the old dictum that college football is the only sport in which the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars, and doomed to remain that way. And I’d be saying that even if Michigan had played last night, and won.

[One more, after looking at the overnight AP poll results]

OK, why did the Buckeyes drop only to number two? After that performance last night, they should have plummeted to the second half of the top ten. Once again, the irrationality and intrinsic paradoxes of the process is displayed.