[Husker] Question for a quiet list (fwd)

[Mike Nolan]

> I have a few friends that believe the Huskers would have been in the BCS
> top ten if we would have beaten T. Tech. My personal opinion tells me we
> would have been close but not in the top ten. Can any of then number
> crunchers here on the list be able to find out the answer? I know Bapi
> is pretty good at figuring out if we would have been or not so I'm
> hoping he can help with this. Thanks all!

It would have depended mostly on where the voters put Nebraska.  Would the
voters have put Nebraska in the top 10 with a win over TT?  Maybe.  That
would have given the Huskers one quality win with a so-so win over 
vastly overrated Pitt (now 3-4 and with games against Louisville and West
Virginia still to come it looks like at best a 6 loss season for them),
a win over Iowa State that is difficult to measure, and no blowouts against
teams that would have been cannon fodder for the Huskers in the 90's.  

Statistical query:  How many teams have gone from being in a BCS Bowl to
being bowl-ineligible in a single season, as Pitt appears likely to do?

The WCO is supposed to light up the scoreboard like a pinball machine,
but the Huskers have cracked 30 points just twice this season, and I don't
know if they'll be able to do that against Mizzou, Oklahoma, or Colorado, 
either.  Their best chance for a blowout will be against Kansas, and that's
not a lock.  Kansas State has a bad habit under Snyder of playing their
best road game in Lincoln, so that game's probably going to be a tossup.  

Were I a voter and had NU prevailed over TT, I'd have probably had the 
Huskers around #15 going into the Baylor game (I think there were two-loss
teams better than the Huskers), and I didn't see much in the Baylor game 
to make me eager to raise them into the top 10.  

If the coaches and the retirees that Harris is using were similarly
under-impressed, the Huskers would have had a difficult time making the
top 10 in the latest BCS poll on the basis of the computers.  

But the good news is that Schroedinger's cat might have survived in that 
alternate reality.
--
Mike Nolan