Who Wins the Early BCS Lottery?

The BCS ranking system exists for one reason, to choose who goes to the national championship game.  Well, that’s what we thought up until now.  For the first time the BCS rankings before the end of the season have real meaning.  At this point, nobody knows who the winner tomorrow is going to be, but the argument is simplified a bit with a clear loser out of the three.

Texas Tech is all but forgotten in this discussion.  The combination of their loss in the three way tie being a blowout and late in the season ends their championship dreams.  Lucky for us, this only makes it a little easier. 

Even though the tie is really between Oklahoma and Texas, since Texas Tech decided to poke their head in the discussion head to head is thrown out.  How odd is it that we’re faced with a two way tie that isn’t a two way tie because of the BCS system.

Taking a look at what will happen is actually not that difficult, that is if this is treated as any other week in the BCS.  Oklahoma wins the trip to Kansas City on the BCS game show.  Before this weekend Oklahoma already was ahead of Texas in both human components of the BCS. 

The computers were the only thing keeping them back, and it was still close.  Texas walking all over a bad Texas A&M team isn’t going to sway either the voters or computer rankings enough to give them a boost that would keep them ahead of Oklahoma.

The win by Oklahoma this weekend will now bump their strength of schedule up higher than Texas for the computers.  It will also be fresher in the minds of the voters than anything Texas has accomplished.

The only way the situation pans out differently is if the voters treat this like it matters.  Everybody knows that the way the final BCS rankings go down is different than what happens during the season.  Coaches pay attention more and tend to actually cast their ballots instead of letting the GA down the hall do it. 

The coaches are accountable for their picks during the final week as opposed to the votes being anonymous throughout the season.  Voters can intentionally attempt to sway the rankings based on who they believe should be in the title game.  So the question is do the voters weigh what’s at stake when they cast their ballots?

If enough voters want to screw with the polls to try to bump Texas in, then we could have a very interesting situation on our hands.

On a separate note, how different is this from last year where the rankings week to week were a futile hope at guessing who would survive.  There are more one loss BCS teams in the big 12 south than there were in the whole nation last season. 

Unfortunately for the fans while the predicament itself lends credence to the playoff argument, the reality is that the BCS is thrilled right now.  It’s a mess, and we’re all going to be watching.