BCS System Is Not The Only Culprit In This Mess

With the college football regular season coming to an end, and another year of BCS controversy upon us, it would be very easy for me to preach about the negatives of the current system and the need for a playoff.
But that argument has been exhausted countless times, and the last thing I need to do in this particular forum is to become repetitive.
So while I do take issue with the BCS system's lack of a playoff system (as well it's inconclusive nature), I think this is problem with more than one perpetrator. How else could you explain the fact that this is a discussion that is brought up on an annual basis?
There are two issues in which I wish to discuss in detail. The first of which directly pertains to the BCS.
With the way this season has played out, it has become clear that the two strongest conferences in the land are the SEC (Southeastern Conference) and the Big 12. Of the current top four teams according to the BCS standings, there are two representatives from each conference.
From the SEC, you have the unbeaten Alabama Crimson Tide and fourth-ranked Florida Gators. Luckily for the BCS braintrust, these two teams are matched up in the SEC title game this upcoming weekend. The winner will (at least we hope) emerge as the first half of the BCS National Title Game, and rightfully so.
But who that SEC representative will being playing against is where things get complicated. There are three one-loss teams in the Big 12, which has been extremely competitive all season. The Texas Longhorns beat the Oklahoma Sooners earlier in the year by a final score of 45-35, which set them up as the favorite from the conference to land in the national title game. But then came along the pesky Texas Tech Red Raiders, who have been one of the most pleasant surprises in all of college football.
Texas Tech edged Texas on Nov. 1 at home, thanks to a last second touchdown pass from QB Graham Harrell to All-American WR Michael Crabtree. Crabtree scored with one second remaining in the game, to give the Red Raiders a 39-33 victory.
With no losses at the time, Texas Tech leap-frogged all of the other Big 12 teams and found themselves ranked second in the BCS, and in the position to control their own destiny. But of course, in college football these things are never that easy.
With a spot in the Big 12 Title Game on the line, Texas Tech found a way to trip up and turn matters into a freezy. And for the sake of bringing things full circle, Oklahoma was the team who jumped right back into the national title picture.
The Sooners dismattled the Red Raiders on Nov. 22 by a final score of 65-21, and created what I like to call a perfect mess. You now have three teams from the same conference who all have one loss, and each of the teams has beaten one of the three, as well as lost to one.
A situation like this ultimately has no right answer, but for the sake of fairness there has to be one answer that makes more sense than another one. And it seems that the BCS has managed to screw that up.
College football's regular season came to a conclusion after this past weekend's contests, and both the AP and USA Today Polls have Texas and Oklahoma in the top four, with Texas Tech sitting at number eight in each. Clearly, in the mind's of the experts, Oklahoma and Texas are the two best teams in the conference. And while Texas Tech did beat Texas, I think the manner in which Oklahoma pounded the Red Raiders makes that a formidable argument.
So for the sake of reality (because Texas Tech clearly has no shot at the BCS Title Game), let's look at this from a strictly Oklahoma versus Texas standpoint.
In the AP Poll, Texas is ranked third and Oklahoma fourth. In the USA Today Poll, Oklahoma is ranked second and Texas third. So it is quite obvious that even the experts are unsure about what to make of what's going on.
It's supposed to be up the BCS to make sense of this all, but what came out in yesterday's release of their latest standings makes anything but sense. Behind Alabama at number one, Oklahoma is ranked second, with Texas third and Florida fourth. You can assume Florida would make a jump into the top two with a win against Alabama this weekend, but once again, how can you possibly justify Oklahoma being ranked ahead of Texas?
In my opinion, you can't.
Let's break this down logically. There are two teams from the same conference with the same record. If I asked you how can you determine which is the better team, what would be the best way to make that determination?
'Have them play,' you say? Well luckily for us, that already happened. And Texas won.
Now, it would be a compelling argument to make to say that Oklahoma is hotter right now, but not nearly as compelling as the fact that when the two teams met head-to-head, Texas beat Oklahoma.
It shouldn't count against the Longhorns that it happened earlier in the season, and Oklahoma's victory over Texas Tech is fresher in the public's mind. Oklahoma being the hotter team is strictly based on opinion, while Oklahoma losing to Texas is an undisputable fact.
It's obvious that the BCS does not take into consideration head-to-head meetings when determining how to rank teams with such similiar resumes, but it should.
But the blame for this mishap does not fall solely into the lap of the BCS makers.
Due to the fact that the three Big 12 powers have identical records, and play in the same division (the Big 12 is divided in half by two divisions for their championship game format), the conference was left clueless as to who should play in their own title game.
The Missouri Tigers won the much less competitive Big 12 North without controversy, but with a three-way tie atop the Big 12 South, the conference regulations state that the winner of such a division will be determined by the BCS standings. Which places Oklahoma in the conference title game, despite their loss to Texas. Of course. Why not add salt to the wound?
It would be safe to assume that if a situation such as this ever came up for a conference, the last voice of reason any team or fan is going to want to hear is that of the BCS. The Big 12 should (and I suspect will do so in the future) have given itself the opportunity to justify it's own championship game without the influence of a system as controversial as the BCS.
As Ivan Maisel of espn.com points out, the Big 12 could have avoided this mess had they borrowed a page from the SEC's tiebreaker system. While the Big 12 reverts to the BCS in the this situation, the SEC is far more specific.
It states that in the event of a three-way tie, the BCS would be used to determine the representative in the conference title game unless the team that is rated the highest is within five places of the second-highest rated team. In that case, (as is the case with Texas and Oklahoma) the rule states that the winner will be determined by, of all crazy concepts, head-to-head play.
And while that rule would surely leave Oklahoma fans disappointed, it would at least put the Big 12 in the position of making a sound, logical decision that is separate from any computer rankings.
Having a conference title game makes a whole lotta sense (memo: to the Pac 10 and Big 10, among others); but involving the BCS when it is unnecessary to do so does not.