quote:
I understand that. But why can you just arbitrarily throw away 12 games worth of results and only use the final game as the end all be all? If an SEC team goes undefeated in conference and those 8 teams they beat go 3-5 in bowls, does that really diminish what they accomplished? Why are the bowl games more important than a whole seasons worth of data?

I didn't say it was fair. Actually I'm pretty sure I said it wasn't fair but that's reality. Here's why it matters:

A bunch of teams can beat up on each other all year. Over 8 games, that group may collectively be seen as pretty strong, as they all beat up on each other and all seem to have good wins. But the only way to gain perspective on how good those teams are is to go off of out of conference matchups. A conference can beat up on each other. But who cares when all those teams lose badly to every OOC team they play? If OOC matchups & bowl games didn't matter, an 8-4 Sun Belt team and an 8-4 SEC team would be viewed as equals. Same goes with 12-0 SEC vs 12-0 MAC or Mountain West. The only way to gauge a team's schedule (and strength) is how those other teams do in their other 11 games. How do you not see this?

This post was edited on 12/27/13 at 10:46 am