Would BC Have Had a Shot to Crack a 12-Team CFP in 2007?
The 2007 college football season had everything you could ever want: the greatest upset in the sports history, the curse of No. 2, the first two-loss national champion since 1960 and Mike Gundy screaming, Im a man! Im 40! And Boston College was smack dab in the middle of it all. In view of last weeks announcement that the College Football Playoffs Management Committee will consider expanding the field to 12 teams, its time to wind back the clock. For this thought experiment, well use the final BCS standings to retrofit the bracket. Remember, CFP rankingsmore committee-based and less mathematicalwerent introduced until 2014. If youre not familiar with the proposed 12-team format, the bids go to the six highest-ranked conference champions and six highest-ranked at-large teams. The top four seeds, along with a first-round bye, are awarded to the four highest-ranked conference champions. But before we get into the hypothetical bracket, lets review just how crazy the 2007 season was. Appalachian Statestill an FCS program at the time and 34-point underdogskicked off the year with a jaw-dropping upset win over No. 5 Michigan, subjecting the Wolverines to the largest ranking drop in AP Poll history. It was a sign of things to come for a season dubbed as The Year of the Upset. Ranked teams fell to a lower-ranked or unranked opponent 62 times in regular season and conference championship competition. In Week 5 alone, there were eight top-25 upsets, three of which watched top-five teams suffer major setbacks. Stanford pulled off a miraculous stunner in Week 6 at the Coliseum after backup quarterback Tavita Pritchard hooked up with Richard Shermanwho was playing wideout back thenon 4th-and-20 to keep the Cardinals game-winning drive alive. Stanford then scored and snapped USCs 35-game home win streak, despite being 41-point underdogs. The No. 1 team was knocked off four times throughout the year. What was more bizarre, however, was that teams ranked No. 2 lost seven out the final nine weeks of the season, and all but one of those defeats came at the hands of unranked opponents. The terrible twos saw Cinderella stories collapse in succession. Cal botched its perfect start to the season in Week 7, squandering a game-tying field goal opportunity on Oregon States 12-yard line with five seconds to play. South Florida, in just its eighth year as a Division I-A program, had a clear path to the national title before losing to Rutgers in Week 8. BC avoided the fate of previous No. 2swell, once. Then, in Week 10, Matt Ryan and Jeff Jagodzinksis crew lost to Florida State at home, triggering a two-game losing streak. A few weeks later, Oregons season turned upside down with Dennis Dixons ACL tear, resulting in the No. 2 Ducks loss to an unranked Arizona team. The next Saturday, No. 1 LSU lost its second triple overtime game of the season, and No. 2 Kansasmind you, two games away from a National Championship appearancefell to Missouri. The Tigers life in the limelight was short-lived, as Chase Daniel and top-ranked Missouri were clobbered by Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship. And No. 2 West Virginia choked a 13-9 game against a 4-7 Pittsburgh team in Morgantown during a contest that saw Pat McAfee miss a pair of chip-shot field goals and Heisman Trophy contender Pat White sustain a dislocated thumb in the second quarter. It was the third time in eight weeks that both the No. 1 and No. 2 teams lost. LSU weaseled its way into the national title game and beat Ohio State to become the first two-loss champion in 47 years. Phew, that was a lot. You get the point, though. It was a puzzling season, one in which Hawaii, Kansas and Illinois found their way to BCS bowls. Right.