Florida Gators Control Destiny in BCS

Florida is sitting pretty now that Penn State has lost.  Even if this week's BCS standings look like last week's except with no Penn State, Florida moves from fifth to fourth, which would at first appear to leave them two spots short.  However, looks can be deceiving and I'll tell you why.

First, Florida can remove one other team in front of them with a victory over Bama in the SEC Championship game, that is, if Bama even stays undefeated and remains ranked above Florida. 

If they don't stay undefeated, Florida won't need to beat them to remove them as an obstacle because they will have already lost. 

But given the scenario I'm about to predict, a win over a Bama team that loses before the SEC Championship game (which would mean losing to either Mississippi State or Auburn) would make a Florida win over that Bama team diminished and might create a problem with pollsters doing what I'm going to predict that they will do. 

However, Bama losing to either of these teams prior to meeting Florida remains a very long shot.

So let's say Florida beats Bama and moves to No. 3.  That would leave Texas Tech and Texas as Nos. 1 and 2.  Does anyone in their right mind really believe that the BCS power players and the pollsters are going to let two teams from the same conference play for the title?  Michigan saw first hand that it will NOT happen.

The BCS is too much work politically to keep it going to have something like that making all the other conferences collectively angry except for the "chosen" conference and this would have too much backlash.  And since there is two months between the announcement of the teams playing and the actual game, it would be talked to death.

Therefore, it is my assumption that if Florida beats Bama, the pollsters will use beating a then-No. 1 or 2 team as reason to jump the Gators over the Longhorns. 

This will also ensure that the Big 12 champ and the SEC champ play each other for the title which is the game most everybody wants to see and believes would be the best matchup.

Texas is the odd team out here, even though they are currently in line just waiting for Bama to lose.  Florida and Bama can't both win out, but Texas Tech and Texas could. 

And if they do, given the scenario above, Texas would be the team going elsewhere, in my opinion.  Texas really needs for Oklahoma to beat Texas Tech.  But that creates a different problem with perception. 

How do you rank one-loss Oklahoma behind one-loss Texas if they knock off then-No. 1 or No. 2 Texas Tech, which also happens to be the team that Texas didn't beat? 

But how do you rank one-loss Texas behind one-loss Oklahoma if Texas won the head to head?  These questions pose just a couple of the myriad of problems with the BCS.

For now, though, it's what we have.  Everyone knows it's a flawed system.  But it is somewhat predictable even if flawed.

My prediction is that if Florida wins out, they play Texas Tech for all the marbles, providing Texas Tech stays unbeaten.