College Football Championships with A Plus-One: The 2011 Season

Reminiscing on the 2011 season, and specifically the 2011 season’s BCS makeup, brings my blood to a boil.

Was Alabama the best team in the nation? Yeah, probably. Did Alabama deserve to play in the BCS Championship Game?

Absolutely not.

It’s noted in the 2008 Plus-One series that season began the process of ending the BCS through the realistic threat of antitrust lawsuits. A restructured postseason became inevitable in 2008, but 2011 may have helped move up the timeline with an atrocious title game no one beyond the SEC footprint wanted produced a rematch markedly worse than an already dismal first game.

And the November 2011 matchup between Alabama and LSU was dismal.

There’s been a modest push from national college football media in recent years to retcon LSU’s 9-6 overtime win at Alabama as a modern-day classic.

I don’t know if it’s a result of folks revisiting the rosters and seeing the bevy of NFL talent that was on the field that day — primarily on defense with LSU featuring Tyrann Mathieu, Eric Reid, Barkevious Mingo and Morris Claiborne; and Alabama with Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, Dont’a Hightower, C.J. Mosley and Courtney Upshaw — and assuming that meant it was great football; or if it’s a reflection of the SECification of all things college football in the last decade, an epidemic that really took hold nationally around this time.

Either way, this was not a good game. Both defenses were indeed incredible, but each offense was plagued with inconsistent — if not outright inept, in LSU’s case — quarterback play masked the rest of the season by said defenses.

What ensued was a joyless slog of one frustrating possession after another, and the most hope for excitement coming from gobsmackingly poor special-teams play.

And less this come off like a tirade against defensive-oriented football, I disliked the next season’s 70-63 West Virginia-Baylor shootout every bit as much as I disliked this LSU-Alabama game.

Low-scoring strategic chess matches can be wildly entertaining — I point to Stanford’s upset of Oregon in 2012 as one such example. This was less a chess match than running headlong into a wall repeatedly for four hours.

So, yeah, aesthetically a rematch of a bad game was bad enough on its own. The circumstances that made the rematch possible were worse.

Oklahoma State was well-positioned to reach the BCS Championship Game and face LSU in a meeting of undefeated teams; a clash of styles with the prolific OSU passing attack against the Tigers’ loaded defense; and pitting LSU coach Les Miles against his former program and former offensive coordinator, Mike Gundy.

However, a longstanding and still prevalent point of contention came to a head the weekend before Thanksgiving when the Cowboys lost a road conference game, while Alabama faced an FCS program then proceeded to climb in the rankings.

The Crimson Tide twice in as many years backdoored their way into the BCS Championship thanks in no small part to this scheduling quirk, the next year pounding Western Carolina on the same Saturday that Oregon¹ fell to Stanford in that aforementioned contest².

SEC and ACC programs facing lesser-budgeted opponents in late November is one of those wrinkles to college football reinforcing just how badly the game’s decision-makers are missing the point by focusing so heavily on crowning a national championship instead of on the journey of multiple regional champions. How can you have a championship process that begins with such an immediate, inherent flaw?

Another question the 2011 BCS process raised is if more value should be placed on the quality of a team’s wins, or the strengths of its losses? Now, to me this seems like a no-brainer that the former matters more.

Yet, Oklahoma State closed the regular season with wins over teams ranked in the final AP Poll No. 11 Kansas State; at No. 15 Baylor; and vs. No. 19 Oklahoma. The Cowboys beat KSU and OU by multiple touchdowns.

Alabama finished the regular season with wins at No. 24 Penn State and vs. No. 7 Arkansas.

What’s more, Oklahoma State’s Sagarin strength of schedule ranking after the bowl games — thus, after Alabama faced the No. 1 team in the nation twice — was third. Alabama’s was 15th.

In terms of purely results-based resume, the sole argument to be made in Alabama’s favor was losing at home to No. 1 outweighed losing on the road to a .500 opponent.

I personally disagree, but I could see the argument — in a vacuum.

Add some necessary context, though, and this more than the inherent flaws of the BCS computer system, the kowtowing to all things SEC, the rewarding of schedule hacks is why 2011 in particular gets me so heated.

The day prior to Oklahoma State’s 37-31 loss at Iowa State, coaches from the OSU women’s basketball team died in a plane crash. For those who have never been close to a college athletics department, athletes and staff across different programs share spaces and interact with one another on some level.

These are communities within the university ecosystem.

That’s not presented as an excuse for Oklahoma State losing, but rather underscores how gross the system was to punish a team for losing under such circumstances.

I have written this in another installments of the series and posit once again that Associated Press voters should have split the national championship, if for no other reason than to further underscore how useless the BCS was in fulfilling its only purpose.

Even without a split decision — perhaps sensing the system’s impending extinction amid conference restructuring and a woefully watched Championship Game — the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee announced less than six months later the formation of a four-team playoff to replace the Bowl Championship Series, and there were never again any instances of deserving contenders denied the opportunity to play for the title!

*cough*

Onto the Plus-One!

One item to note is that USC, ranked fifth in the final AP Poll, was ineligible for the postseason and I am adhering to that for this exercise. Ohio State missed out on playing for the Big Ten title — and possibly a BCS Championship — the following year after having opted to fulfill its one-year postseason ban in 2012, but a bit of a spoiler: My fictional Plus-One breakdown on 2012 includes an Ohio State that instead sat out of its underwhelming 2011 postseason.

In USC’s case, however, the 2011 ban was the second in two years of being ineligible. There really isn’t a feasible workaround, even in a reimagining such as this, with the Trojans playing in the 2011 bowl season.

Rose Bowl Game: No. 6 Oregon vs. No. 9 Wisconsin

So this one actually happened under the BCS system, and it produced a damn good game.

Neither Oregon nor Wisconsin would have had much claim to play in a Plus-One National Championship with a win, despite each claiming its conference title.

Wisconsin avenged one of its two losses in the regular season, beating Michigan State in an excellent (and inaugural!) Big Ten Championship Game.

However, coupled with a loss to an Ohio State team that finished below .500, the Badgers just wouldn’t have any pathway to the title round.

Oregon’s case post-Granddaddy of ‘Em All would be stronger, and certainly more interesting. Throughout the Plus-One series, I have put emphasis on conference champions getting preference over teams that didn’t win their league.

However, in the Ducks’ case, a common-opponent loss shared with Alabama would tip the scale firmly in the Crimson Tide’s favor should both win their bowl games.

Less cut-and-dry is what to do in the result of both Oregon and Stanford winning, which we’ll get into in a moment. Because in the case of this Rose Bowl, it’s less about the road to the National Championship than it is the bowl itself.

Winning a conference championship is a major accomplishment, and advancing to the Rose Bowl Game is special. My aim in producing the Plus-One series is as much about illustrating how much these bowl games mean to the sport’s history as it is about retooling the national titles of the BCS era.

A showdown of outstanding Pac-12 and Big Ten champs, in which the Rose Bowl itself is the prize, fits that concept.

Sugar Bowl: No. 1 LSU vs. No. 4 Stanford

Now this matchup would have been a ton of fun.

Bowl games between top-tier SEC and Pac-10/12 teams were all-too rare. College football fans never got to see the Alabama-Oregon matchup they wanted in the BCS era, and a pairing like this could have produced a classic.

It’s easy to forget, given he stepped down following the 2022 season amid several consecutive years of offensive inefficiency, that David Shaw’s teams were once some of the most innovative and exciting in the sport.

In the program’s first year with Pep Hamilton as offensive coordinator, and one of the all-time great college quarterbacks in Andrew Luck running the show, the 2011 Cardinal offense was a thing of beauty.

Pitting Luck and Co. against the wildly talented LSU defense has my mind racing. The thought of a Stanford win, doubly so, because it creates wild potential for the Plus-One National Championship.

The Cardinal suffered one loss — vs. Oregon on Nov. 12.

Were Oregon and Stanford both to win their bowl games, the Ducks advancing ahead of the Cardinal is obvious, right? UO would have had both the conference championship and the head-to-head win.

Well…

Stanford beating LSU means the Cardinal close out with as many wins (12) and victories against both teams that beat Oregon (LSU and USC). You would probably still have to go with the Ducks, but it isn’t an easy decision.

Orange Bowl: No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Oklahoma State

Let’s settle it on the field, winner goes to the Plus-One National Championship Game.

The 2011 Alabama defense is one of the greatest in college football history. That’s not opinion, nor is it based on eye-test measurements. The Crimson Tide absolutely pounded opponents into submission with a combination of overwhelming talent advantages across the board and masterful scheme, resulting in a final yield of 8.2 points per game.

No FBS opponent³ scored more than 14 points on Alabama, including a high-powered Arkansas offense that posted 36.8 points per game.

That’s all to say when I deem Alabama undeserving of its BCS Championship Game appearance this season, it’s not because the Crimson Tide weren’t arguably the best team. But they got their shot at LSU already, at home, and lost. Simple as.

Would the Tide have beaten Oklahoma State head-to-head? I mean…probably. But Alabama wasn’t without its exploitable weakness.

Although A.J. McCarron was middling at quarterback in 2011, and it wasn’t until the BCS Championship Game that offensive coordinator Jim McElwain⁴ unveiled a strategy that maximized McCarron’s limited repertoire. But, to be fair to both McCarron and especially McElwain, they didn’t need to deploy a specially tailored offense before then, because no other defense Alabama faced was near the caliber of LSU’s, so McCarron’s limitations were of no issue.

With Trent Richardson pounding away behind a stout offensive line, the Crimson Tide were perfectly constructed to wear down opponents methodically. That approach became unsustainable for Nick Saban’s long-term goals a few years later; in a conversation at Pac-12 Media Days a few years ago, then-Oregon head coach and former Crimson Tide assistant Mario Cristobal told a few other reporters and me that Saban was steadfast in changing his offensive approach following the 2014 Sugar Bowl loss to Oklahoma.

An Oklahoma team that wasn’t as talented as Alabama and, by all measures, shouldn’t have been competitive with the Crimson Tide exploited enough wrinkles in the Alabama defense to force the Tide offense to keep up.

Could Oklahoma State, which was similarly mismatched on paper, have done the same? After all, the 2011 Cowboys scored almost 50 points per game and Justin Blackmon remains, to this day, one of the greatest college receivers I’ve ever watched.

Cotton Bowl: No. 7 Arkansas vs. No. 15 Baylor

The trajectory of Arkansas football changed so profoundly in April 2012, crashing commensurate with then-head coach Bobby Petrino wrecking his motorcycle, one can almost forget just how closely the Razorbacks were flirting with breaking into the SEC’s top echelon.

Arkansas did not play in a BCS bowl at the end of the 2011 season because the system only allowed for two teams out of the same conference into the 10 slots (eight slots, prior to 2006). The Razorbacks instead played in the Cotton Bowl, where I have them slotted for the Plus-One series, as well.

The one difference is that instead of a matchup with Kansas State, which Arkansas won, 29-16, I have slotted Baylor to give the Cotton Bowl an old-school, Southwest Conference feel.

Baylor was on the upswing at season’s end behind the otherworldly play of 2011 Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. One could argue Andrew Luck was more deserving of the award than Griffin based on overall body of work, but RG3’s performance in the final month of the season ranks among the best stretches of any quarterback I’ve seen.

An Arkansas-Baylor Cotton Bowl, while having no bearing on the national championship picture, could have been a highlight of New Year’s Day 2012.

Fiesta Bowl: No. 13 Michigan State vs. No. 16 TCU

I’ll spare you a diatribe on how former Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon’s premature decision to fire Rich Rodriguez may well have cost the Wolverines a shot at the Big Ten title and possible BCS Championship Game berth in 2011; a scenario I present based on Michigan’s two losses that season coming to Michigan State and Iowa, in games the Wolverines scored just 14 and 16 points.

Rodriguez-coached teams with Denard freakin’ Robinson⁵ at quarterback would have scored a helluva lot more than 14 and 16 points.

No, I won’t go down that road. But I will say that Michigan bypassing Michigan State for a berth in the 2012 Sugar Bowl was indefensible, even with the Wolverines beating Virginia Tech to momentarily vindicate Brandon’s maneuvering.

Sparty beat Michigan head-to-head by two touchdowns, and came a play away from winning the Big Ten. Michigan State was more deserving of the spot, so let’s rectify the error with a fun Fiesta Bowl matchup.

I have repeatedly mentioned in this series the origins of the Fiesta Bowl as a showcase for the Western outsiders. TCU, in its last season as a Mountain West Conference member, stunned Boise State in a terrific game to claim the league title.

This TCU bunch wasn’t quite as strong as the legitimate national championship contenders of 2010, nor the 2014 squad, but still a real threat to an opponent the caliber of this Michigan State bunch.

What’s more, this gives the Horned Frogs a much more fitting bowl matchup than the lackluster Poinsettia Bowl meeting against Louisiana Tech.

Holiday Bowl: No. 8 Boise State vs. No. 11 Kansas State

As much as I’d like to posit Boise State would have played for the BCS Championship had it not lost to TCU, I’m not so sure that’s the case.

Chris Petersen oversaw one of the best all-around Broncos teams of his incredible tenure in 2011, with four-year starting quarterback Kellen Moore guiding an efficient offense and a stacked defense.

Boise State also scheduled up and scored an impressive, signature win effectively on the road when it routed SEC East champion Georgia in Atlanta.

However, with jokers like Craig James and others tabbing Boise State anywhere from the mid-teens to as low as No. 23 in the AP Poll at season’s end — with BSU having lost one game to a top 20 opponent — I’m not so sure.

Regardless, Boise State’s loss is enough to DQ it from the Plus-One title race, but the Broncos warrant a mention.

I noted in the last edition that the Holiday Bowl was arguably the postseason event most damaged by the BCS and TV-influenced conference reshuffling of bowl affiliations.

We’re again using Boise State losing a heartbreaker as a jumping-off point for giving the Holiday Bowl both its significance and its identity back.

The actual 2011 Holiday Bowl pit middling Cal and Texas teams head-to-head, while 11-1 Boise State was jettisoned off to Whitney, Nevada, to face a 6-6 Arizona State team that just fired its head coach. Bringing the Broncos to San Diego to instead face a 10-win Kansas State team, one year away from legitimate national-title contention, benefits all parties.

1. Oregon also lost the weekend before Thanksgiving in 2011 to USC.

2. Undefeated Kansas State lost to Baylor the same day in the 2012 season.

3. The qualifier is necessary as FCS Georgia Southern managed 21 points — albeit facing primarily Alabama’s second-and-third-stringers.

4. I am on-record stating that Jim McElwain has never gotten enough credit in his career, whether in his time as an offensive coordinator or as a head coach. The 2012 BCS Championship Game in particular was a genius effort, as he successfully devised a strategy of using big tight ends as wide receivers, then ran primarily short-to-mid-range routes to create mismatches against LSU’s undersized defensive backs.

5. What is it with Rich Rod successors inheriting outstanding quarterbacks, only to retool their offenses in ways that fail to utilize said quarterbacks’ abilities?