By JOHN ROHDE, The Oklahoman

The Bowl Championship Series makes for strange bedfellows.

This season is particularly strange, but nothing is stranger than Bedlam bedfellows.

With four Big 12 teams ranked in the top eight of the most recent BCS standings, fans throughout the South Division will be cheering out of both sides of their mouths the next six weeks.

For the first time since the 1996 PGA Championship, Tiger Woods is not competing in one of golf's major championships.

The obligatory bet of choosing Woods or another player in the field has been tabled at least until next year's Masters.

This week's British Open at Royal Birkdale actually should have been the second straight missed major for Woods.

Leading your league in batting average, home runs and RBI is far more difficult task than finishing first in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

The math simply doesn't add up for the horses.

Humans must win three hitting titles in a five-month span.

Horses must win three horse races in a five-week span.

Humans have 162 games.

SAN ANTONIO -- Oklahoma State wants Bill Self to be its next basketball coach, and Kansas wants to keep him.

Here are some reasons why this is so:

-- Self is the guy who can remember the name of a junior varsity assistant coach he met eight years ago.

Dead coach walking.

Kelvin Sampson's coaching days appear to be numbered.

The former Oklahoma coach has been accused of repeatedly providing "false and misleading information" to Indiana and NCAA investigators.

It's more of the same from Sampson.