There's an elephant in the room and it's not Tracy Wolfson's mole, it's the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I NCAA College Football is the lone wolf of collegiate sports in regards to not having a playoff. It chooses its national champion via a structure known as the BCS. The Bowl Championship Series showcases the 'best' teams in the FBS including the conference champions of 6 of the major conferences in the bowl subdivision: Pac-12, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East & ACC. The Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange Bowls plus the BCS Title Game (pitting the top 2 teams at a site that rotates amongst the 4 aformentioned bowl games).
How those two teams are selected is a story that is more convoluted that a punctured Pixie Stick. A combination of human pollsters and computerized rankings result in the BCS rankings. There's such things as human error (see James,Craig) and computer glitches (even machines have bias) but every year, they find a way to make a cross section of its collective fanbase dissatisfied. Then again, every year has provided a new set of bizarre parameters and scenarios that cause politics to play a heavy role in determining who's in the title game and who isn't. Many would argue that the college football regular season is the greatest by proxy playoff therefore the most exciting regular season year in and year out of any sport on any level. I loathe politics but as a contrarian I enjoy making the argument between teams X, Y, Z, etc..
So this is where we get to this season's conundrum. Most would argue that the 2 best teams are not only from the same conference but the same division within the same conference and they played one another. Most people dislike rematches, they treat them like cold leftovers. The so-called most recent Game Of The Century between LSU and Alabama on November 5 was an epic defense battle marred by the poor special teams play of Alabama's FG unit. The game went to OT and LSU won it 9-6 in the 1st OT. Arguing college football is a lot like arguing art but I don't know enough about art to make the required parallels between the two but if you have an imagination, you get the picture.
Alabama can coast into the BCS Title came without even competing in its conference championship if the voters and the computers think that they are one of the two best teams in the country. But a team like Oklahoma State can sneak into one of those slots if it beats its in-state rival Oklahoma in their annual Bedlam rivalry game at home. But they haven't beat the Sooners since the end of the Civil War (it seems like it has been that long). Then you could make the case for a handful of other inferior teams but like Oklahoma State, you begin to argue about records, strength of schedule, the ridiculous teams they lost to, style points, bedroom behavior, what have you done for me lately, oral hygiene and most importantly, who can puff their chest out the most.
I think I'm going to go have a snack at the suggestion of Rex Ryan and enjoy the theater of it all.
