ShareThis'Tis the season of bowl snubbings...
If college football fans have learned anything over the 14-year history of the Bowl Championship Series, it's that Santa doesn't run the show, Scrooge does.
And somebody almost always gets Scrooged.
No players and no fans feel the pain and frustration worse than at Oklahoma State.
The 11-1 Cowboys believe they deserve a shot at the national title.
And they're right, they do.
The Big 12 champions beat four teams that are ranked in the final BCS standings, including a 44-10 drubbing of No. 14 Oklahoma last Saturday.
Oklahoma State's body of work should have earned the Cowboys a shot at the national championship.
Not, however, at the expense of No. 2 Alabama.
The 11-1 Tide beat one fewer team in the final BCS standings than Oklahoma State. But the difference-maker likely came down to a comparison of each team's best win and only loss.
Alabama's best win was a 38-14 hammering of No. 6 Arkansas; Oklahoma State's was a 52-45 win against No. 8 Kansas State. That should make the Cotton Bowl matchup of Arkansas and Kansas State a bit more intriguing.
In the final BCS analysis of whether Alabama or Oklahoma State should get to play unbeaten LSU in the national title game, their losses were probably the biggest determining factor.
Oklahoma State suffered an eye-popping 37-31 double-overtime loss to Iowa State, a four-touchdown underdog. Alabama lost by three in overtime to top-ranked LSU.
The SEC factor -- superiority of the conference and its domination of the BCS championship game the past five years -- probably came into play as well. Four SEC teams are ranked in the Top 10 in the BCS standings.
Are the two best teams playing for the national title?
The Unbalanced Line and many other college football pundits think so. But no one knows so.
Nobody can say unequivocally that Alabama -- or LSU for that matter -- would beat Oklahoma State.
Unfortunately, we'll never know. That's what makes the BCS system so patently unfair, so wrong, and why it should be blown up in favor of a playoff.
Having polls and computers determine which two teams deserve to play for the national title is fundamentally flawed, especially when there are more than two unbeatens in contention. Or, as in the case of this postseason, when there are a few one-loss teams vying for a single spot in the title game.
This would have been the perfect season for a plus-one playoff scenario: No. 1 LSU vs. No. 4 Stanford and No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Oklahoma State, with the winners of those games meeting in the BCS title game.
Then nobody could claim the Cowboys got the royal BCS shaft.
At least Oklahoma State got one of the $17 million BCS bowls, and a great matchup against No. 4 Stanford in the Fiesta.
The team that truly got Scrooged is No. 7 Boise State. Its only loss was by a point, 36-35, to TCU on a missed last-second, 39-yard field goal.
As a result, the Broncos lost out on an opportunity for one of the two at-large BCS bowl bids and wound up getting a MAACO Bowl matchup with 6-6 Arizona State and a $1.1 million payout.
In the meantime, two lower ranked 10-2 teams -- No. 11 Virginia Tech and No. 13 Michigan -- got the at-large BCS bowl bids and are set to face each other in the Sugar.
Talk about an injustice!
No wonder Boise State coach Chris Petersen sounded off earlier this week about how frustrated everyone is with the BCS and how it needs to be changed.
Boise wasn't the only team that got Scrooged; No. 8 Kansas State (10-2) also got left out for the sake of Virginia Tech and Michigan. No. 6 Arkansas couldn't qualify for an at-large bid because of the BCS bowl limitation of two teams per conference.
Bowl Scrooging wasn't limited to the BCS.
Penn State was the victim of the most blatant, shameful snubbing.
Ostensibly because of the fallout surrounding former assistant Jerry Sandusky's arrest for child sex abuse, Penn State was not invited to the Insight, Meineke Care Car or Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl. Instead, those bowls penalized Penn State's players by selecting Iowa (7-5), Northwestern (6-6) and Ohio State (6-6) respectively, all of which were beaten by the Nittany Lions.
At the very least, 9-3 Penn State (not Iowa) should be playing 9-3 Oklahoma in the Insight Bowl. Instead, the Lions are relegated to a TicketCity Bowl game against No. 19 Houston (12-1), a better matchup than the other three bowls. but a lesser payout of $1.1 million.
The Unbalanced Line's Heisman forecast:
1. Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck
2. Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III
3. Alabama running back Trent Richardson
(Contact John Tucker at jtucker(at)unionleader.com)
(E-mail John Tucker at jtucker(at)unionleader.com)
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