THE SYSTEM HAS SPOKEN.....

Let the yelling begin in Texas. After a blowout win on the road over Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, a team Texas beat on a neutral field 45-35 back in October, has leaped over the Longhorns and into second in the BCS standings. Normally this would not matter so much until the season were over, but because Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech all tied for first place in the Big 12 South, the BCS ranking has become the tiebreaker and Oklahoma, as the highest ranked team, gets to go to the Big 12 Championship game Saturday night against Missouri and play for a conference title. We’ll let ESPN gab on and on about the system and so forth for the next 96 hours if you are interested tune in there as I’m sure they will be talking about the controversy, at least until the next time Stephon Marbury changes his shoes or Donovan McNabb goes to get some Gatorade and misses a coach’s comment on the bench and the frenzy begins again about his playing time. Otherwise we will go with reality here and break down the National Championship race as it stands with one week left.

Florida and Alabama play in the SEC title game on Saturday. The winner of this game will surely finish in the Top 2 and play in the BCS title game. See that’s simple. The other spot will go to the Big 12. If Oklahoma beats Missouri, it stands to reason that the Sooners will go play the SEC champion for all the marbles. If they are upset in Kansas City by the Tigers, then it looks like Texas would move up to #2 and go to the title game. By the way there is precedent for one team beating another but being ranked below them at the end of the season with an identical record. In 1993 Notre Dame beat Florida State, lost the next week to Boston College at home, and wound up behind the Seminoles in the final polls. In 2000 Miami beat Florida State on, you guessed it, a missed field goal, but the Seminoles ended up ahead of the Canes and went on to play (and lose) in the title game in the end. What we do know if that USC, Penn State and everyone else are out of the title race after there were no big upsets this weekend. The moral of the story is, if you are in a BCS conference and you go undefeated (meaning don’t lose any games to anyone) you would be in the hunt. Once you lose a game, you give the voters and the system the right to judge you in an imperfect system and you pay the consequences.

In the Heisman race it looks like it’s a 3 way battle between Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy, and Tim Tebow. Bradford and Tebow both have huge nationally televised games this weekend to showcase themselves to the voters one more time. Me thinks a big game by Tebow and a Florida win over #1 Alabama could push Tim to a second Heisman when all is said and done.

Also get ready for the ES-IF-PN 24/7 news cycle to start yapping about coaches being fired or not all over the land for the next month and who will get hired. Here’s a hint, until you see the press conference with the AD and the new coach, everything they say on ES-IF-PN is hearsay and rumor, usually just news to keep them talking for another rerun of Sportscenter. Keep your ears peeled as to what happens at Auburn, Notre Dame, and Arizona if any of them choose to go in a new direction after the season……