EBS Tournament - 1998

Season recap

In the first year of the BCS, Tennessee relied to offensive threats QB Tee Martin, RB Jamal Lewis, and WR Peerless Price to finish the year undefeated. Wins in the first two weeks over QB Donovan McNabb's Syracuse team and Florida set the tone for the season. Tommy Bowden's Tulane team, with QB Shaun King, was the only other team to finish the regular season undefeated.

A battle for #2 yielded seven one-loss teams: Florida St, Ohio St, Kansas St, Arizona, UCLA, Wisconsin, and Air Force. Most of these teams did little during the season to demonstrate superiority over the others, thus voters had difficulty differentiating among the top performers.

EBS Tournament

Champs Sports, Dec 23

New Mexico, Dec 24

Emerald, Dec 22

PapaJohns.com, Dec 22

Capital One
Jan 1

Cotton
Jan 1

Orange
Jan 1

Fiesta
Jan 3

Sugar
Jan 8

Rose
Jan 10

National Title Game
Jan 16

Tennessee

Florida St.

UCLA

Texas A&M

Kansas St.

Ohio St.

Arizona

Florida

Wisconsin

Tulane

Arkansas

Syracuse

First in:

6 BCS Champs	Conf.
Tennessee	SEC
Florida St.	ACC
UCLA	Pac-10
Texas A&M	Big 12
Wisconsin	Big Ten
Syracuse	Big East

Highest non-BCS Champ	Conf.
Tulane	C-USA

Non-BCS Champs or Indep. in Top 12	Conf.
No addl automatic qualifiers

Fill Remaining:

At-large Teams	Conf.
Kansas St.	Big 12
Ohio St.	Big Ten
Arizona	Pac-10
Florida	SEC
Arkansas	SEC

End of regular season rankings

Team	Seed	Bid	Conf	BCS Rank	BCS Avg	AP Percent	Coaches Percent	CPU Percent	AP Pts	CPU Pts	AH	RB	CM	KM	JS	PW
Tennessee	1	C	*SEC	1	.993	1	.999	.980	1750	1548	25				24
Florida St.	2	C	*ACC	2	.946	.955	.945	.940	1671	1464	24				23
Kansas St.	5	L	Big 12	3	.882	.843	.863	.940	1476	1337	22				25
Ohio St.	6	L	Big Ten	4	.867	.915	.906	.780	1602	1405	19				20
UCLA	3	C	*Pac-10	5	.836	.799	.808	.900	1398	1253	23				22
Arizona	7	L	Pac-10	6	.790	.807	.803	.760	1412	1244	21				17
Texas A&M	4	C	*Big 12	7	.758	.749	.705	.820	1310	1092	20				21
Florida	8	L	SEC	8	.730	.764	.746	.680	1337	1156	16				18
Wisconsin	9	C	*Big Ten	9	.681	.672	.712	.660	1176	1103	17				16
Tulane	10	M	*C-USA	10	.611	.610	.622	.600	1067	964	18				12
Arkansas	11	L	SEC	11	.513	.549	.529	.460	960	820	9				14
Nebraska			Big 12	12	.509	.466	.381	.680	815	590	15				19
Virginia			ACC	13	.472	.467	.528	.420	817	818	13				8
Georgia Tech			ACC	14	.434	.499	.483	.320	874	749	10				6
Michigan			Big Ten	15	.313	.428	.512	0	749	793
Syracuse	12	C	*Big East	16	.312	.349	.347	.240	610	538	2				10
Air Force			*WAC	17	.300	.457	.445	0	799	689
Notre Dame			Independent	18	.242	.298	.429	0	522	665
Georgia			SEC	19	.180	.231	.308	0	405	478
Texas			Big 12	20	.143	.145	.285	0	253	442
Penn St.			Big Ten	21	.130	.200	.189	0	350	293
Oregon			Pac-10	22	.121	.154	.208	0	270	322
Mississippi St.			SEC	23	.073	.117	.103	0	205	159
Miami (FL)			Big East	24	.062	.063	.123	0	110	190
Virginia Tech			Big East	25	.059	.108	.068	0	189	106

* - conference champion

Notes:
- Rankings determined using the current (enacted2005) BCS formula with the following exceptions:
- The AP Poll was substituted for the Harris Poll.
- Under BCS rules at the time, computer rankings were allowed to consider margin-of-victory in their calculations. They are included as is.
- With data available from only two computer rankings, both are given full weight with neither being dropped.
- Teams for which computer rankings were unavailable were given a computer average of zero and are shown only to attempt to qualify the ranking of automatic qualifiers outside the top 16.
- Data from:
- Final Bowl Championship Series Rankings (1998, December 6). Retrieved 11 November 2006, from Fox Sports - BCSFootball - BCS Standings Archive. Web site: http://msn.foxsports.com/id/7894687_37_1.pdf
- USA Today/ESPN Poll. (1998, December 7). New York Times, p. D7.

Computer rankings
AH - Anderson & Hester | RB - Richard Billingsley | CM - Colley Matrix
KM - Kenneth Massey | JS - Jeff Sagarin | PW - Dr. Peter Wolfe