BCS Rankings: LSU and Alabama Sap Intrigue from Last Weekend of College Football

Congratulations to LSU and Alabama, both for achieving convincing victories in their respective rivalry games and rendering the final weekend of the 2011 college football season all but meaningless, at least as far as the BCS National Championship Game is concerned.

The Tigers can start walkin' to New Orleans right now if they want to, seeing as how even a loss to Georgia in the SEC title game next week won't drop them out of the top two in the BCS rankings.

Not after the way Les Miles' squad picked apart Arkansas in the Battle for the Golden Boot.

The Crimson Tide, on the other hand, hammered hated Auburn in the Iron Bowl, 42-14, to avenge last year's disappointing loss to Cam Newton and company and solidify their their standing as one of the two best teams in the nation.

That should be enough to secure Nick Saban's team a rematch with LSU in January, marking only the second time the BCS title will be contested by a team that didn't at least play for its conference championship.

All of which leaves the rest of the country with a slate of mostly meaningless games next weekend, at least as far as the crystal football is concerned. If you want to see any change atop the BCS standings, you'll have to pull for LSU to get blown out by the Bulldogs in Atlanta and for Oklahoma State and/or Virginia Tech to destroy Oklahoma and Clemson to capture the Big 12 and ACC titles, respectively.

And if you're at all a believer in polling conspiracies, you can always encourage voters in the USA Today and the Harris Polls to switch a few of their votes for 'Bama to the other teams hanging around the top of the heap.

Other than that, there's not a whole lot at stake on Championship Weekend. Oregon is all but certain to take UCLA out behind the woodshed in the inaugural Pac-12 Championship Game.

Nobody outside the ACC really cares about the ACC, but Virginia Tech should be able to exact revenge against a Clemson team that beat it 23-3 in early October but has lost three out of its last four.

Fewer still could give two shakes of a lamb's leg about the Big East. Houston should have little trouble making minced meat of Southern Mississippi to sew up the Conference USA title and the lone non-AQ bid into the BCS.

And, before I forget, LSU will do to UGA what its done to just about every challenger that's come it's way this season. That is, win handily while hardly having its quarterbacks throw the ball.

The Big Ten Championship Game, between Michigan State and Wisconsin, and the Bedlam Game, between Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, should make for entertaining, if not downright exciting, football fare, but, again, neither figures to have any bearing on the now-closed-off National Title race.

The winner between the Spartans and the Badgers is guaranteed a berth in the Rose Bowl—no better, no worse—while the Cowboys will need their first win over the Sooners since 2002 to be a rather convincing one if they're to have even the slightest chance of leapfrogging their way into the top two.

Meanwhile, Stanford and 'Bama will stay home, waiting anxiously as the BCS bowl matchups are announced on Sunday.

An anticlimactic weekend, to say the least. Let's just hope the bowl season brings a bit more intrigue, and that 'Bama and LSU don't play another 9-6 "defensive masterpiece" to cap arguably the most confusing season in the modern era of college football.