At the end of a weekend crazy enough to cap the craziest season in recent memory, we find a total reordering of the BCS. Here we go.
The first big shock was huge: Big East power West Virginia somehow managed to choke and choke hard, falling to unranked Pitt and thereby becoming the 6th second-ranked team this year to fall, and the 5th to an unranked team. Ouch. Say buh-bye to the title hunt, boys. On the other hand, they did give Pitt its first road win in 14 months. Pitt, for their part, improve to 5 and 7.
Unshocking in the extreme was overrated Mizzou finding itself unable to match Oklahoma. OU dominated the Missouri Tigers even more convincingly than in their regular season matchup back in October; the final score was 38 to 17, and OU claimed its second Big XII title in a row (amusingly, they’ll face the former #2 in the Fiesta Bowl).
With both #1 and #2 off the list, then, where does the BCS go? Well, wonder no more, little buddies, for the answer is known: the title game will feature LSU vs. Ohio State.
How’d we get here? LSU comes in the back door, by claiming the SEC title in their win over Tennessee on Saturday. Ohio State — in their capacity as the the old #3 — is an obvious choice to promote to the big game; they’re 11-1, and the 1 was a shocker against Illinois. LSU, though, requires some explanation. The prior rankings went Mizzou, West Virginia, OSU, Georgia, Kansas, Virginia Tech, LSU. The #1 and #2 losses outlined above clearly disqualify those teams, and OSU is in the show already, which brings us to the matter of Georgia. The 10-2 Bulldogs were for some reason ranked higher than LSU or Tennessee, but they’re manifestly not the SEC champs (they lost to Tennessee, who then lost the SEC title game to LSU), so they get kicked to the curb. (We agree that you can’t expect to play for the brass ring if you don’t win your division.) Kansas is, well, Kansas; they played candyasses all year, and the BCS voters know it. VaTech may be the ACC champs after beating BC on Saturday, but they’ve got just as many losses as LSU, and one of those was a cajun-style 48 to 7 ass-whippin’ from LSU back in September. Which brings us right back to Baton Rouge. (The fact that it took 6 OTs for LSU to lose twice didn’t hurt them.)
What a mess. It would’ve made more sense if the rankings past #2 last week made any sense; the calculus required above makes it clear that Nos. 3 through whatever were pretty much random, because when it came time to pick a new top pair, the BCS realized that their old #4, #5, and #6 needed to be skipped for the top game to make sense, and that means the whole list is a clusterfuck. Frankly, we hope there are many, many more years like this so that everyone sees that the only fair thing is for the NCAA to have a Division I tournament for football just like they do for the lower divisions and just like they do for basketball. There are plenty of plans out there they could adopt, and — quite frankly, and pardon my french — fuck the bowl sponsors. This whole this-bowl and that-bowl proliferation is absurd, and needs to be exposed for the fraud it is.
Finally, there’s one more lovely thing afoot. Very late last night, Colt Brennan and his Hawai’i Warriors managed to rally from 21 points back to win against Washington, 35 to 28, thereby staying perfect and making it impossible for any just system to keep them out of a BCS bowl. (Brennan was 42 of 50, including 6 for 6 in his final 76-yard drive; Hawai’i’s final 28 points were unanswered by the Huskies, who did not score in the second half.) They got their wish: they’ll meet Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. We don’t expect Georgia to have much trouble with the Warriors, but we’ll be rooting against our conference anyway. Hawai’i has tried to play big teams for a while now, to show folks they’re for real, and they’ve been frustrated because quite frankly nobody wants any part of their offense. USC flat out refused to schedule them. They deserve a shot at a good team and a good bowl, and I’m looking forward to watching it. Where can I get a Hawai’i jersey?