Florida Wins National Championship, BCS Spared Final Blow

Last night, as you all probably already know, the Florida Gators were crowned victors of the 2009 BCS National Championship.  They defeated the Oklahoma Sooners 24-14.  This article is not as much about the game and what happened as much as it is about how Florida saved the BCS.

All college football fans (except for Florida fans) should have been cheering for Oklahoma last night.  Why, you might ask?  Simply because it could have very well been the downfall of the BCS if the Sooners won.

Let's put it this way: Texas beat Oklahoma, USC outplayed a very good PSU team and made a statement with their win, and Utah ended up undefeated.  If Oklahoma won, Texas would be screaming they are National Champions, while USC thinks that they are the best one-loss team in the Nation and would have more leverage for that case against Oklahoma than Florida.

Utah, the one undefeated team, would scream even louder that they played tough teams and won, and they deserve to be National Champions.

Now that Florida has won, USC has a case to say they are National Champions, but it is not as strong to pollsters as it would have been if Oklahoma would have won.  Texas really can't say they are National Champions because Oklahoma, who they beat, didn't win.  Utah still has a solid case, as they dominated Alabama while it took Florida, the "National Champions," a fourth quarter comeback to beat Alabama.

So, with Florida winning, USC only has a small case according to pollsters, and Utah is the only team with a huge case.  Do you see the difference?

If Oklahoma were to have won, there could be up to five or six teams making a solid case to the pollsters for the National Championship, but with Florida, there are only really two or three.

Right now, the BCS is probably sending millions of dollars to Florida for winning that game.  If there are only two or three teams that claim to have a case for the National Championship, the BCS is like, "Hey, no problem with a little bit of controversy.  Everyone can't be happy."

However, if five or six teams were to be making a case to be National Champions, the BCS would be like, "Uh-Oh!  We've got a problem.  Now we have triple the number of teams saying we suck and complaining for a playoff.  Now it is even more obvious to all fans and pollsters how bad our system is!  We might not survive much longer!"

You can't blame Florida, though—they were just trying to win.  You could ask Florida to purposely lose next time in this situation so that they can save all of college football instead of adding another so-called "National Championship" to their résumé.

You could blame Oklahoma for this.  After all, they had many missed opportunities that cost them points, and they were unable to get points off of turnovers.  Still, Oklahoma was trying to win and save college football, so we can't be too hard on them.

We could, of course, blame ourselves, pollsters, and all of college football for not recognizing the flaw of the system even before the controversies of the past years, and for not doing more about it.  We should have been pushing harder to get rid of this system.

Regardless whose fault it is, whether it is Florida's, Oklahoma's, ours, or the BCS' for even existing, all that matters now is that the BCS is saved.  Unfortunately, we will have to deal with this putrid system for at least one more year because Florida won the National Championship, saving the BCS from getting the final blow.