Never seen a trophy that said ‘#1 ranked team in the middle of October’… lotsa football left to play and I won’t lose any sleep about it until the end of November.

You are probably right about Sparty but the voters will always have more love for tOSU as far as a ‘quality win’. If we keep winning out I don’t think we will get ’94’d unless, and this is highly unlikely, that Bama and Texas run the table. If they do I will gladly have to congratulate them on getting to the NC and take a third seat in the Rose Bowl as their schedule and conf championship games will be waaaaaay too impressive for even me to argue with.

This is tough.

I think I’d rather have our “quality win” be over Ohio State, since even if MSU is an equal team to them, people will perceive OSU as better. Also, if OSU wins that game, they’ll likely move into the top 10 (plus there’ll probably be some more losses to help them move up. If MSU beats OSU, though, they’d still have a lot more work to do to climb up (they still have yet to play the meat of the Big 10 schedule), and also more opportunities to lose before our matchup with them, so we might not have any top 10 teams on our schedule.

I would like OSU to be deflated before our game in Columbus, though, and if a loss to MSU (and their second loss of the year) puts them into a similar performance as Wisconsin put up against us, I will gladly welcome a 41 point win @ Columbus. It would also be nice to have a BIG matchup to end the season, nationally televised game that (if MSU wins out until that game) would effectively be the Big 10 championship game. That, added to the fact that I go to MSU for grad school, and root on the Spartans whenever they’re not playing against Penn State (unless there are other factors that would help Penn State if MSU loses)

OK, I’m going crazy now. I know that for any of that to matter, Penn State also needs to win out.

Which brings me to my next point. If Penn State wins out and gets snubbed by the BCS selection criteria (either Texas & Alabama are both undefeated, or somehow a 1 loss Big 12 or SEC team leapfrogs us) I will definitely reach out my hand and congratulate the undefeated teams, but I will be bitter and resentful if a 1 loss team leaps us. I would also hope VERY hard for the BCS system to crumble, and for JoePa to leave one more mark on the landscape of college football and set in motion the gears to create a true playoff system.

As I’ve said before: we got screwed in 94, and soon after the BCS is formed. We get screwed by officiating in 2002, and that leads directly to instant replay being used in college football. If we get screwed in 2008, then there BETTER be at LEAST a +1 format (which would lead to the snowball effect and a full blown playoff format in a few years).

Of course, as I’ve also said before, I would love for us to be #1 or #2, and then for JoePa to effectively say “screw you, BCS, we’re taking our ball and going and creating our own postseason” and invite the other top 4 teams to a mini-playoff.