2007 National Championship Game Result:

LSU Rips Ohio State 38-24 to Become First Two-Time BCS Champion

Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley

It speaks volumes about the state of college football in 2007 when a team gets into the BCS national championship game with two losses. Louisiana State University became the first team to make it with two losses. Ohio State made it with 1 loss.

Should the Tigers have been there? Georgia, Southern Cal, Missouri, West Virginia and Kansas all thought they should have been selected over LSU. Every one of them had it wrong in the end. Any one of them should have replaced Ohio State, not LSU.

The LSU Tigers kicked the snot out of Ohio State for the second year in a row. The Buckeyes started quick and could not even begin to finish what they started. It wasn't even a decent street fight. After going up 10 to zip early on, Ohio State's No. 1-ranked defense gave up 31 straight points to lose 38-24.

Early in the second quarter, LSU blocked an Ohio State field goal attempt before marching for a touchdown, and then intercepted a pass to march for another score.

Last year Ohio State started with a 7-0 lead against Florida before suffering an even more lopsided 41-14 loss. The legacy for Ohio State in its 9 bowl games against Southeast Conference teams is terrible, the Buckeyes have yet to win a single, stinking victory.

Ohio State's loss to LSU made it the 3rd team to lose 2 BCS title games. Oklahoma and Florida State have also lost 2 BCS title games.

It is not that the Jim Tressel-led Buckeyes cannot win a national championship. They beat Miami 31-24 to win the title in 2002. They just cannot seem to get it done against SEC teams, which are 4-0 in BSC title games, making the SEC the ONLY undefeated conference among the 6 major conferences.

To me the game was a huge disappointment in that it was not competitive for a national championship. One snapshot during the game says it all for me. The television crew pans in on a close-up of 3 Ohio State players conferring about their misery.

I look intently at the numerous stars on their helmets and think to myself, geez Louise, between them they must have more than 100 stars on their helmets. These are for individual efforts in logging a 100-yard rushing game, scoring a touchdown, intercepting a pass, recovering a fumble, or whatever. Who really cares? Stars on helmets cannot block and tackle.

I am thinking, "This must be the brain trust for individual glory at Ohio State." Here these guys are big shots with stars all over their helmets getting the snot kicked out of them on national television in the title game. Good grief. Football is a team sport.

Given their sorry performance, I believe Jim Tressel and the Ohio State glory brigade need to give it a rest before even the stars on their helmets get embarrassed. I do not really give a crap how many stars Jim Laurinaitis has on his helmet. As far as I am concerned, LSU knocked them off.

Having spent the entire college football season doing weekly wrap-ups and numerous articles on statistics few want to believe, I would like to note for the record that Ohio State piled up an 11-1 record by playing not a single top 20 team while LSU played 8 game-time top 20 teams and beat 7 of the them, losing only to Kentucky on the road in triple overtime.

Did the LSU Tigers deserve to be in the national championship game? Absolutely. Are they the real national champions this year? Absolutely. Bring any other argument to the field and settle it there. Ohio State found out who is this year's top team.

Who can say with a straight face that if they played LSU next week, they would put a whipping on them like LSU did on Ohio State?

(Editor's Note: This is the 8th and final article of a series on the 2007 bowl game results.)

Billions Are Bet on Them:

The Sagarin College Football Ratings: What They Are, How to Read Them and What to Do With Them

Copyright © 2007 Ed Bagley

While betting on sports is only legal in a few places in the United States, such as Las Vegas, millions of office workers are involved in sports pools every week now that the football season has arrived.

When you know that more than $700 million can be bet on one game—the Super Bowl—in only Las Vegas, then you understand that billions were bet illegally on the Super Bowl last year in the United States and in offshore sports books around the world.

Folks in the gaming business know that more than a billion dollars is wagered on every Monday Night Football game during the season.

For those who wager, it may be helpful to put some science on your side when you wager, and one of the best places to do that is with the Sagarin College Football Ratings.

Created by Jeff Sagarin, a 1970 MIT mathematics graduate, these computer ratings are for Division I-A (what the NCAA now calls the Football Bowl (FB) Subdivision) and Division I-AA (what the NCAA now calls the Football Championship (FC) Subdivision) teams.

You will have to forgive the NCAA for taking titles that have been used for years and are perfectly clear, then renaming them and creating confusion in the process.

If there is a way for the NCAA to assert its superior power, it does so by making everything more difficult and confusing, similar to your United States government and its IRS tax code which could reduce a sane person to tears just reading it.

Anyway, the Sagarin rating is a numerical measure of a team's strength.

A hypothetical victory margin is determined by comparing the rating of the two teams after adding 2.93 points to the home team. The home edge will vary during the season.

Only Division I (both A and AA) are counted for rating and schedule strength during the season.

A diminishing-returns principle exists to prevent teams from building up ratings by running up large victory margins against weak teams. Instead, it rewards teams that do well against good opponents.

The BCS (Bowl Championship Series) does not factor in scoring margin. For Sagarin ratings and more detailed information go to: www.usatoday.com

USA Today, the largest circulation newspaper in the United States, is the nation's daily newspaper and carries the Sagarin College Football Ratings. The ratings are updated following each week's games and published in USA Today on Wednesdays.

Following the first week of college football action, here are some facts that interested me about Sagarin's first-week ratings:

1) Washington, one of the poor to mediocre teams in the country the last several years, was rated No. 31 after hammering Syracuse 42-14 in its home opener.

2) Michigan State, another short end of the stick team for far too long, was rated No. 36 after steamrolling over UAB 55-18 in its home opener.

3) Appalachian State, a AA school, was rated No. 38 following its upset of mighty Michigan 34-32 on Michigan's home field. The win was the biggest upset in college football history as no AA team had ever beaten a ranked team.

Michigan was ranked No. 5 by both the AP Poll and Coaches Poll going into the game. Following its horrendous loss, Michigan ended up being ranked No. 40 by Sagarin.

4) Wyoming, a small school and never among the nation's top teams, was ranked No. 41 by Sagarin following its 23-3 home victory over Virginia.

5) Notre Dame, beaten badly (33-3) by Georgia Tech, was rated No. 57 after the loss. Georgia Tech was rated No. 2. The Irish failed to score a touchdown for the first time ever in their home opener.

6) Temple (ranked No. 143 after its opening loss) and Buffalo (ranked No. 145 after its opening loss) face off in week two. Both teams are among the 7 worst Division I-A teams in the country, joining Louisiana-Monroe, Rice, Duke, Utah State and Florida International.

7) A total of 242 teams, 119 A schools and 123 AA schools, make up the Sagarin College Football Ratings. The worst-rated A school is Florida International at No. 174 (56 AA teams are rated better), and their play reflects their rating. The worst-rated AA school is the No. 242 La Salle Explorers. La Salle is a Catholic university located in Philadelphia.

La Salle lost its home opener to Ursinus 28-0. Ursinus is not a planet but a real liberal arts college in Pennsylvania.

Ursinus College is not a Division 1 school (which includes the 242 teams with La Salle), not a Division II team (which includes another 157 teams), but a Division III team. Now you can better understand why La Salle College is ranked last among 242 Division I schools.

The first job for La Salle this year will be to score a touchdown, or any points, including a field goal or touchback. The Explorers next job will be to actually win a game. Good luck, La Salle, and God speed.