2009 BCS Bowls According to WASEAN

Selection Sunday kicks off at 8 p.m. EST Sunday. What would the bowls look like WASEAN were used to pick who goes where? WASEAN doesn’t care about how well teams travel. It would assume that each bowl selects the best available team it is allowed to take.

Remember the rules . . . no more than two teams from one conference and 9 wins are required. The top non-BCS conference team gets an automatic bid, as long as they finish in the top 12. The selection order this year is Orange, Fiesta, Sugar; but any bowl losing its team to the National Championship Game gets to pick first, with the bowl losing the #1 team going first. The bowl losing #1 cannot take a team from the #2 bowl’s conference without their permission.

We would also add a rule that bowls don’t have to select matchups that would involve rematches or intra-conference opponents playing each other.

So first the automatic bids:

Championship Game: #1 Texas (13-0) vs. #2 Alabama (13-0)
Orange Bowl: #10 Georgia Tech (10-2-1) vs. ?
Fiesta Bowl: ? vs. ?
Sugar Bowl: ? vs. ?
Rose Bowl: #9 Oregon (9-2-1) vs. #28 Iowa (10-1-1)

Iowa you say? Well yes, in the world of WASEAN, only regulation counts. Iowa and Ohio State would have both finished 6-1-1 in the Big Ten. The Big Ten tiebreakers are head to head (tie), Overall winning percentage (Iowa’s 10-1-1 beats Ohio State’s 9-2-1 – essentially Iowa beat Arizona, and Ohio State lost to USC).

Next we’ll go to the replacements for the Championship Game. The Fiesta selects #3 TCU. The Sugar takes #4 Florida. Now we have:

Championship Game: #1 Texas (13-0) vs. #2 Alabama (13-0)
Orange Bowl: #10 Georgia Tech (10-2-1) vs. ?
Fiesta Bowl: #3 TCU (12-0) vs. ?
Sugar Bowl: #4 Florida (12-1) vs. ?
Rose Bowl: #9 Oregon (9-2-1) vs. #28 Iowa (10-1-1)

Now the Orange Bowl is up. It would not be forced to select and intra-conference rematch, so they pass on #5 Virginia Tech and select #6 Boise State to face Georgia Tech. The Fiesta Bowl is next and selects #5 Virginia Tech to face TCU.Finally the Sugar selects Cincinnati to face Florida.

Here are your matchups:

Championship Game: #1 Texas (13-0) vs. #2 Alabama (13-0)
Orange Bowl: #10 Georgia Tech (10-2-1) vs. #6 Boise State (13-0)
Fiesta Bowl: #3 TCU (12-0) vs. #5 Virginia Tech (9-3)
Sugar Bowl: #4 Florida (12-1) vs. #7 Cincinnati (12-0)
Rose Bowl: #9 Oregon (9-2-1) vs. #28 Iowa (10-1-1)

The entire top 10 is in, except for Oklahoma, who isn’t eligible with only 7 wins (don’t forget four of their losses were by a combined 12 points, with 3 of them against #1, #12 and #17).

These are the actual projected matchups:

Championship Game: #2 Texas (13-0) vs. #1 Alabama (13-0)
Orange Bowl: #10 Georgia Tech (10-2-1) vs. #3 TCU (12-0)
Fiesta Bowl: #18 Penn State (10-2) or #28 Iowa (10-1-1) vs. #6 Boise State (13-0)
Sugar Bowl: #4 Florida (12-1) vs. #7 Cincinnati (12-0)
Rose Bowl: #9 Oregon (9-2-1) vs. #12 Ohio State (9-2-1)

Not a huge difference this year. Essentially Penn State or Ohio State ‘steals’ Virginia Tech’s bid and Ohio State possibly gets in ahead of Iowa.