This year it looks like Alabama vs Oklahoma in the big one. Who can argue? Ball State,Boise and Utah are undefeated but they know they do not belong in a big game. That leaves Texas,Florida,USC and Penn State to feel sad for blowing a game.
Most likely it will be the winner of Alabama vs Florida against Oklahoma, if Oklahoma doesn’t choke against a very beatable Missouri. And not sure that Texas or Texas Tech fans will even agree that Oklahoma should be in that game.
The Florida-Alabama winner is going. Oklahoma has looked better than Texas, to me, but I’ve only seen a few games. And Texas did beat Oklahoma. So I think we’ll get the right two teams, but it’s not that clear.
In the unlikely event Oklahoma loses, it’s going to be a typical BCS clusterfuck, since there are a bunch of teams that would have a good argument - the Florida-Alabama loser, USC, Texas, Penn State, and even the undefeateds… it probably won’t come to that at all, but something like that is always one game away. I’m curious to see who ends up in what bowl aside from Penn State-USC in the Rose Bowl and Fla/Bama-Oklahoma in the title game.
Devil’s advocate argument: According to Sagarin, Alabama’s strength of schedule is worse than Utah’s. Alabama’s SoS is a woeful #73 out of 117 teams. How can you possibly play in the SEC and have a strength of schedule that low? Well, by playing a “brutal” non-conference schedule of Clemson, Tulane, Western Kentucky, and Arkansas State. Utah, on the other hand, beat then-ranked Oregon State out of conference.
Number of teams currently ranked in the BCS Top 25 Utah has beaten: two (TCU and BYU). Number of teams currently ranked in the BCS Top 25 Alabama has beaten: one (Georgia).
Of course, Alabama’s SoS is going to increase after playing Florida. But it goes to show that maybe it’s Alabama that “doesn’t belong in a big game.” I predict that after the SEC Championship game Utah will still have beaten more BCS Top 25 teams than Alabama.
I will find great pleasure in Florida bringing the pain against Alabama.
http://utah.rivals.com/schedule.asp Utah also played some real bad teams. They squeeked by U of M ,who might be in a down year and won 3 games by 3 points. Not against tough teams either.
Texas and Oklahoma should both end with one loss. Texas won the Harris poll and beat Oklahoma by 10 on a neutral field while Oklahoma won a loophole. I’d imagine Texas fans can argue and have plenty of ammo to do so.
The BCS lesson? Win late and run up the score.
Timed out: “Win late” being in the season.
You’d think if anyone already knew this lesson it would be Mack Brown. Texas could have easily avoided this whole mess by simply not losing to Texas Tech, a team which Oklahoma utterly humiliated. (see how circular this can get?)
Utah’s strength of schedule* puts them 72nd, Alabama is 73rd. They’re both undefeated, but Alabama has looked dominant for the most part. Also Alabama has the automatic bump to SoS by playing in the SEC championship game. Maybe the Mountain West and WAC should have a late season playoff between their conference champs? At least then we’d know whether Boise State or Utah deserves to got to a BCS game. They could scheduled it in early December in Las Vegas and they’d get some good money out of it.
*I find those Sagarin ratings a bit suspect. “Strongest” schedule was Virginia’s, who got walloped early on (52-7) by USC then had a mixed record against ACC / Big East competition. So Sagarin’s numbers are based on the assumption that the ACC and Big East were the strongest conferences this year? Or did that one game against USC have a huge impact? Net, I think Alabama would be 11-0 or 10-1 playing Virginia’s schedule, and they would have knocked some teams out of the rankings, so then they’re SoS would no longer be 1st.
BCS is incapable of getting it “right” because there is no “right” answer under this system.
I don’t know about Ball State, but Boise and Utah being out of consideration is just elitist anti-mountain west crap.
Hey, the Oklahoma game was the third of three consecutive games Tech played against Top 10-ranked opponents (played against #1, #9, and #5, as I recall). This year we had a super-heavy back end on our schedule, and after humiliating OSU, we were spent.
Texas didn’t lose to Tech because they screwed up. They were outplayed. Tech owned the entire first half; I was damn proud of our defense for shutting 'em down so thoroughly. Texas started to get their shit together at the end, but overall, they earned the defeat.
How about we go with Mike Leach’s idea and base it on graduation percentage?
The ACC has taken a lot of criticism this year, but head to head against the mighty SEC, the ACC has six wins versus 4 losses. Ga Tech, Wake Forest has two wins, Duke one win, and Clemson one win. Clemson also had a loss, as well as NC State, FSU and Miami.
Thinking about the law of unintended consequences, this would probably lead to “helping” students graduate and anyway might reward the easiest class schedule/school. You’d have to do something to weight it, like team whose four year graduation rate most closely resembles or exceeds the general student populations, with extra safeguards to avoid cheating, plus points deducted for courses like “Physical Education” and “Rocks for Jocks”.
I realize everybody involved wants to say their team deserves it, but it’s football, not quiz bowl. This is a silly idea and I am sure Leach didn’t mean it either.
Technically, it’s college football.
Pretty much every fan of a Big 12 team other than Oklahoma, even if they also hate Texas.
I don’t usually bother with cites in The Game Room, but here’s theDallas News, Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Kansas City Star,
A minor quibble. 
Seriously, it just does not make any kind of sense to determine what happens on the field using criteria that measure anything else, be it school size or academic performance. Using the BCS ranks as a Big 12 tiebreaker is controversial enough, but that’s at least a measurement of how the teams play.
I think this year is a bigger mess than ever because you can make a good case for any one of Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, or USC to be ranked number 2 (USC is a bit of a tougher case because they haven’t played the schedule some have but I’d really love to see their defense match up against Oklahoma or Florida).
I think the only way we get a consensus National Champion is if Alabama wins their next two games.
I do have a question that somebody may be able to help me out with:
If Florida beats Alabama is it possible for Alabama and Florida to be 1-2 afterward and face off again in the title game?