BCS Rankings: Unless LSU Wins Out, We Won't Get a True National Champion

For the first time since 2008, it appears a one-loss team will play in the BCS Championship Game (sorry Houston, it's not happening). This begs the question, do we even need a BCS Championship Game this year?

In a perfect world, how college football determines its national champion would be decided on a year-to-year basis. In 2005, a single BCS Championship Game was all we needed. In 2008, a four-team playoff with Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and USC would have been ideal.

Perhaps an eight-team playoff would have been best to settle the mess with which the 2007 season left us. Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect, and neither is any major conference college football team outside of Baton Rouge.

After the season's first month, three teams looked to be far superior to the rest of the pack: Alabama, LSU and Oklahoma. The stars were aligning for a repeat of 2009, when Alabama, Florida and Texas held the top three spots in the polls from mid-September right through the end of the regular season.

Something funny happened, however. Actually, a lot of funny things happened, many of them this past weekend. We are now left with LSU and a slew of one-loss teams who will be trying to stake their claim to a BCS Championship Game berth over the next fortnight.

Fortunately for college football fans, it's been awhile, eight years in fact, since we were left feeling unsatisfied about the national champion (No Auburn, you wouldn't have beaten USC in 2004). The 2003 USC-LSU split national title was the last major post-bowl controversy.

History may repeat itself if LSU does not go 14-0. Does an Alabama win over the Tigers in New Orleans make the Crimson Tide a worthy champion? Not really, as it would simply even the score after the Bayou Bengals' win in Tuscaloosa earlier this month.

If the Tigers fall to Arkansas and the SEC Champion is decided by a wacky tiebreaker based purely on which of the three SEC West teams has the lowest BCS ranking, will we have any idea who the best team in the SEC is? I know I won't.

On the other hand, if LSU does beat Arkansas and Georgia in the SEC Championship Game to complete a perfect run through a murderous schedule, do they have anything more to prove? They don't to me, regardless of what happens on January 9th in the Superdome.

If you want a fair and true champion, root for the Tigers to win out. However, if you love drama and debate, root for an upset or two over the next couple weeks. You might not feel completely satisfied that whoever is holding the crystal ball seven weeks from now is the true national champion, but in an imperfect world, isn't that the way it should be?