Monday, December 1, 2008

Dear Mizzou, please save college football

On Sunday, the Oklahoma Sooners moved past the Texas Longhorns in the BCS standings and into the Big 12 Championship to face the Missouri Tigers.

The BCS standings broke up a three way tie between Oklahoma, Texas, and the Texas Tech Red Raiders for the Big 12 South Title and gives Oklahoma the opportunity to advance to the National Championship with a victory.

This might be the worst the BCS has ever messed things up. It was bad in 2004 when Oklahoma made it to the National Championship over Auburn, and before that in 2003 when Oklahoma made it to the National Championship over USC (seems to be a theme with Oklahoma), but putting a team in that lost to the team directly behind them is absurd.

This is an absolute travesty. During the regular season, the Sooners beat the Red Raiders, the Red Raiders beat the Longhorns and the Longhorns beat the Sooners. It would appear that the three teams are pretty much equal.

But appearances can be deceptive.

Yes, Oklahoma did have the largest margin of victory over Texas Tech with their 65-21 trouncing, but that game was played at Oklahoma. The Red Raiders have never won a big road game in their history, so this really wasn't that big of a surprise.

Texas Tech, meanwhile, did beat Texas 39-33, but it came on a touchdown with just one second left and the game was played at Texas Tech.

But Texas was able to beat Oklahoma by 10 points, 45-35, on a neutral field. That means Texas won a game with an equal number of Oklahoma fans as there were Texas fans. If any team proved it belonged in the National Championship by their play on the field, it was the Longhorns.

Now, we have to rely on a 9-3 Missouri football team coming off a loss to unranked Kansas to correct what the BCS has messed up. It wasn't even the human voters who got it wrong, as the AP, Harris and Legends polls all have Texas ranked higher than Oklahoma.

The USA Today Coaches poll, meanwhile, showed why it shouldn't exist, as they voted Oklahoma No. 2 and Texas No. 3. Yes, coaches are more intelligent when it comes to football than anyone else, but they simply don't have the ability to watch other teams as much as journalists do to know who the best team really is.

They almost got it right though, as the Sooners beat the Longhorns by just one point in the rankings.

Until college football gets rid of the BCS and goes with the logical way of deciding who plays for the National Championship, a playoff, we will have problems like this every single year.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

The Big Dead Sidebar encourages dialogue in the comments section. We just ask you to keep it clean and keep it on topic.

Blog Archive