Could Les Miles, LSU Cost the SEC a BCS National Championship Berth?

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The Southeastern Conference sticks together.

Spend an entire holiday season attending West Coast bowl games, and you'd never hear a Pac-10 pride chant.

Yet the most football-crazed, rivalry-driven, animosity-defined conference in all of college athletics shares success with a conciliatory "S-E-C! S-E-C!"

Go figure.

However, the Mad Hatter and his Bayou Bengals could seriously put that loyalty to the test if they cost the Southeastern Conference a trip to Pasadena.

For weeks, it's been a foregone conclusion: The Florida-Alabama winner goes to the BCS National Championship.

Makes sense. After all, the SEC is the undisputed top conference in college football.  The Gators and Crimson Tide are both undefeated.  Why wouldn't the victor get the spoils?

Because our college football world, save the state of Louisiana, has seemingly lost track of the fact that LSU still controls its own conference destiny. And if the eight-point underdogs go to Tuscaloosa and pull the upset, the Tigers—not the Tide—will have the inside track in the SEC West.

Would a subsequent victory in a rematch with Florida be any more stunning?

Of course not. It's the SEC. These things happen.

And if those things happen as described, the South may be without a representative in the BCS National Championship.

"Hold it right there," you say. (And I listen with rapt attention...)

"Am I to believe that 12-1 LSU, with wins over previously undefeated Alabama and previously undefeated Florida, wouldn't deserve a chance to play for it all?"

"Don't believe it for one second," I reply.

But in college football, "deserving" is worth about as much as SEC officiating.

Just ask 2008 Utah.

Deserving doesn't guarantee you an invitation to the BCS Championship. A top-two spot in the BCS Standings does.

From it's current No. 9 position, LSU has a long way to go and no fewer than four undefeated teams to overtake without the benefit of a head-to-head meeting: Iowa, Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State. Not to mention one-loss Oregon, arguably the hottest team in the country. And one-loss Georgia Tech's going to make a run for it, too.

So that's not to say LSU can't, or shouldn't, EARN the Southeastern Conference another big dance invite.

It's just to point out an important possibility: If the Tigers derail the Alabama-Florida conference championship collision course, they might end up breaking the SEC's run of three consecutive national titles.

I wonder what that would do to conference camaraderie.

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