Those weak teams were already baked into the pole going into the NOLA Bowl. In Wakes case they beat a team weaker than MU, yet get rewarded with a five spot jump.
You can’t have it both ways.
Rewarding losses to good teams and additional rewards for beating a bad team. Yeah they did that and others rewarded for losing as well. Guess the overall point is P5 getting benefits win or lose see
Did the pollsters hold Alabama's ugly wins against mediocre teams like lsuBR against them? HOLD EVERYONE TO THE SAME FREAKING STANDARD, or don't have a standard. That is what college football looks like to me now. There is no standard of excellence except what money can buy. Screw this crap.
Here is how I think the pollsters look at UL's record. There are 5 P5 conferences and 5 G5 conferences. UL plays in the Sun Belt, arguably the 3rd best G5 conference, but only 8th out of 10 FBS conferences. The SBC had 7 teams with losing records. UL's schedule had 8 teams with losing records, including Texas. UL barely beat a 6-5 FCS school and struggled against some teams with losing records. But, we still won and went 13-1. A great accomplishment, but not against great competition.
UL's problem remains that we are in the SBC and we play horrible OOC schedules, except for only 1 game each year. Until we upgrade our OOC scheduling, the SBC becomes a better conference, or we get into a better conference, we have likely hit our ceiling in the polls. We will not out-rank P5 schools and will not achieve what Cincy did unless and until we improve our competition. Despite all of that, we managed to finish in the Top 20 two years in a row in major polls. Quite an achievement.
Now look at the preseason 2022 poll. That 2 year achievement did nothing for us. All 25 teams are P5 schools with exception of Cincy and Houston in the 20-25 ranking and they just got accepted to a P5 conference. Everything is biased to P5 schools and G5 schools are just becoming feeder schools for P5 conferences with the transfer portal. UL needs to somehow parlay its R1 academic ranking and 2 year Top 20 ranking into a better conference and/or better scheduling if it wants to remain at that level with the pollsters, assuming it continues to win.
Louisiana went into the postseason with all the negatives baked in.
All season long the negatives had been baking.
When the regular season was taken out the oven Louisiana was ranked #16.
In the post season teams who couldn't rank higher than UL in the regular season suddenly jumped higher based on nothing burgers.
Postseason losses by teams slightly ahead of Louisiana in the regular season were treated like they didn't actually lose.
Louisiana was penalized twice with the postseason rewrite.
We got some love in the postseason power rankings:
https://www.espn.com/college-footbal...-shakes-top-25
Post season for the SBC and UL sucks. With conference realignment and the transfer portal, the SBC should be able to renegotiate its bowl alliances. It's not the N O Bowl per se, it is who the SBC conference champion is aligned to play in that bowl. To be a conference champion and #16 ranked and have to play the #3 team from the worse conference in the country only serves to hold back UL and the SBC. Any wonder a win in that game did nothing to help UL's ranking or national perception. It is imperative that UL schedule more P5 OOC games and play a P5 school in a bowl game. In the absence of that, UL will never rise above where it is now. With our schedule, lose a game and we are gone from the Top 25 only to possibly return if we beat Florida State, assuming we don't lose more than 1 game. We have to find a way to parlay our athletic and academic success and a new stadium into a better conference or go Independent until a better conference opportunity avails itself. No team from the SBC has ever made a move upward. The SBC is not a stepping stone to a better conference. I'm afraid our only ability to enhance our program is through Independent status and turn our brand into what BYU has done, something I'm aware that few people want or seem to think is a good move. But, we now have the academic credentials, the power ranking and a new stadium on the horizon to help us navigate through Independence and utilize our status in Louisiana to a greater position. I can't believe scheduling is an issue given our current status and 130 FBS schools looking to fill schedules. And who cares about bowl alliances given what we have. There is always an opening for a Top 25 program. Risk - Reward. What do we have to lose? What can we gain?
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