In real life, this one was mildly controversial at the time but became very non-controversial after the fact. Ohio State were #1 the entire season, while arch-rival Michigan rose to #2 in October, riding an undefeated record all the way to The Game (of the century)1“Game of the Century” is a term used in college football about once a decade or so, often in reference to a regular season #1 vs #2. “The Game” is of course the nickname for the Michigan/Ohio State rivalry. “The Game (of the century)” is a nickname this game should have, but doesn’t, because I guess nobody can recognize solid fucking gold when it’s staring them in the face.. Ohio State won by a mere 3 point margin. Home team advantage is often calculated as around 3 points or so; it is perhaps unsurprising that many sportswriters therefore saw the Buckeyes defending home turf by this exact margin as something of a tie, an inconclusive result as to which team was truly better. Michigan only fell to #3 following the loss, behind #2 USC, who then proceeded to lose in an upset against UCLA the very next week. Despite this, Michigan was just barely edged out for the final #2 by SEC champion Florida, who jumped from #4 to #2 following an SEC championship game win over a good Arkansas. Needless to say, there was much hollerin.

Anyway then the games were played. Michigan lost the Rose Bowl to USC, while Ohio State got destroyed by the palindromic score of 41-14 by Florida, ending all controversy over their selection and beginning a truly obnoxious era of college football fandom. This was the launch of the obnoxious “S!E!C!” chant2This chant has existed since the 80s, to be clear. But this game, where Florida humiliated a midwestern team thought all year to be the country’s best, is where the chant went mainstream., the first of a 7 year natty streak by the conference, the birth of a million dumb talking points about “SEC speed” or whatever. It also births a really gross sense of entitlement from the SEC’s ruling class and their media partisans, which will come up in many future playoffs.

But enough about that! In a 12-team world we at least dodge the initial controversy (it is of course unknowable if the SEC’s dominance would have meaningfully shifted in either direction under this format). Florida is an uncontroversial #2 from the jump, since non-champ Michigan is ineligible for that seeding to begin with. USC’s embarrassing upset costs just one spot, while Louisville, champions of the Big East under Bobby Petrino, lock in the #4 spot. Petrino would ride this success to the Atlanta Falcons job, which I’m sure went just peachy for everyone involved. Michigan naturally come in at #5, potentially setting up that Game rematch for the second round, quite possibly in the Rose Bowl3No idea how bowl assignments for the quarter and semi finals would have gone in this world, but in our world the highest seed gets their choice of that year’s quarterfinal bowls, and I’d have to assume Ohio State would want the historic Rose Bowl.. Bo Schembechler would be rolling in his freshly dug grave.

LSU is our #6, setting up perhaps the only possible controversy of this selection. The Arkansas team that won the SEC West and then lost to Florida is not in our field, but two teams from the Hogs’ own division are. LSU has maybe the stronger claim of those two, since they can boast a win over Arkansas. Auburn, down at #9, don’t have that, though they do have a win over LSU to make things nice and messy. Arkansas partisans would be rightfully upset at being punished for losing a game they were good enough to qualify for, in favor of two teams who weren’t, especially because any of the three would have been underdogs to the Gators. I think if we were relitigating this season today the Razorbacks would likely be in, but back in 2006 human voters treated conference championship games like any other game on the schedule, and conventional wisdom was you had to move down if you lost a game, so here we are.

Wisconsin come in at #7, an excellent Big 10 team that got overshadowed by the two other excellent Big 10 teams. Their only loss all year was at Michigan, avoiding Ohio State entirely. And yet for all that, Wisconsin in real life couldn’t even get a BCS bowl, playing in the Capital One Bowl4The Citrus Bowl, which this year is called the Cheez-It Bowl. It’s not the Cheez-It Bowl, which was the Copper/Cactus Bowl (currently Rate Bowl), and famously featured 9 combined interceptions in its inaugural year, a true masterpiece of dumb garbage football. It’s also not the Cheez-It Bowl, which I guess is the Tangerine Bowl now that the Citrus Bowl doesn’t use that name, but is of course today the Pop-Tarts Bowl, the best bowl game of them all. Anyway now the word “bowl” looks fake to me. against Arkansas. BCS rules at the time prevented more than 2 teams from the same conference from earning bids, so even with 2 extra spots (the national championship game was its own separate game, rather than one of the 4 BCS bowls, starting in this season) there wasn’t room for Wisconsin, with their spot instead going to….

Boise State! Undefeated WAC champions Boise State earn the #8 seed and final home game in our bracket, but in real life earned something even more special. They faced Big XII champs Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, and after a massively exciting game involving a goddamn Statue of Liberty play5The game-winning 2-point conversion, in fact! the Broncos won in OT, 43-42. Boise’s win and undefeated season under first-year head coach Chris Peterson began their time as one of the best and most consistent “BCS Busters” of the era. It also earned the Broncos a single #1 vote in that season’s final AP poll. Boise State does not claim a national championship for this season, but they certainly could if they wanted to. And in our world they’d have a chance to earn one outright.

The rest of the field is pretty orderly. Those Sooners would rank at #10, travelling to frigid Madison WI. Notre Dame is here at #116Given how it ended I always forget the Charlie Weiss era started reasonably strong. while Wake goddamn Forest jumps slightly to be our #12, champions of the ACC. The conference was in a bit of a flop era, with all traditional powers (and even traditional spoilers!) in slumps. Which is how you wind up with the Demon Deacons defeating Georgia Tech in a conference championship game with an auto-bid to the playoff. What a beautiful world we could have lived in.

(and for the record, this means that, 9 years into this format, the rule meant to give the little guy a shot has benefited the ACC more often than any other conference. lol, lmao)