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When the Bowl Championship Series was put in place in 1998, its primary purpose was to ensure that the best two teams in college football would be given the opportunity to play for a national championship, but as we look ahead to the 11th BCS National Championship game, the system has once again gotten it wrong.
To be clear, the BCS got it right by inviting Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide to Pasadena. The Tide finished the season undefeated and did so in the toughest football conference in America—the Southeastern Conference—not to mention knocking off the No. 1-ranked Florida Gators in the SEC championship. Alabama beat quality opponents week in and week out and deserves a shot at a national title.
The same can’t be said for Texas.
Rather than earning their way into the championship game, the Texas Longhorns and head coach Mack Brown rode a wave of preseason hype to get into college football’s biggest game. At the end of the 2008 season, Texas was the odd man out looking in on the National Championship between Florida and Oklahoma. Despite beating Oklahoma head-to-head, Texas was held out of the big game and forced to play in the Fiesta Bowl, where it beat Ohio State.
With that said, maybe the BCS couldn’t bear to punish one of its own for two years in a row and again keep Texas out of the National Championship, but that doesn’t mean Texas deserves to be there.
Texas is one of five schools to finish the regular season undefeated, along with TCU, Boise State, Alabama and Cincinnati. With Alabama already in the championship, it left the BCS to choose from one of the other four—a 25 percent chance of getting it right, and it still managed to screw it up.
Texas finished the season undefeated but did so in a down year for the Big 12. In 13 games this season, including the Big 12 Championship against Nebraska, the Longhorns faced a total of six teams that finished with winning records, only two of which finished in the Top 25—No. 19 Oklahoma State and No. 22 Nebraska.
Take a minute to let that really set in—the Texas Longhorns made the National Championship game without playing any of the Top 15 teams in the country.
Then, look at TCU. The Horned Frogs, who played against two teams ranked in the Top 25 this season—BYU and Utah—had an average margin of victory over ranked teams of 29 points, and the Longhorns beat their ranked opponents by only 10.3 points per game in 2009. The two teams even have a common opponent—the Wyoming Cowboys.
Both TCU and Texas went to Laramie, Wyo., to take on the Cowboys and though both teams won, it took a second-half comeback for Texas to beat the Cowboys 41-10, but the Horned Frogs got the best of Wyoming 45-10.
In the end, the BCS got half of the National Championship game right, but it picked the wrong team from Texas. But after 10 years of getting wrong, who really thought the BCS would get it right this time?
b.chouinard@chronicle.utah.edu
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