Bowl Projections: Everyone Needs to Stop Griping About an LSU/Alabama Rematch

Everywhere you turn someone is griping about the potential for an LSU vs. Alabama rematch. The logic they use is convoluted, and normally, coincidentally skewed towards whoever their favorite team is. Can we sift through the mess though and just state the obvious?

The BCS Game is not a beauty pageant! I really don't care how "ugly" the 9-6 game was. That's a flat out silly argument to make. Really, when did we determine championship by who looks the prettiest? Ugly wins are still wins. 

Frankly, there is no team with the resume that Alabama has, and I'm not all that concerned with the bizzaro-world SOS rankings that the computers are presenting. For example, the computers want to convince me that Oklahoma State, who has beaten pretty much no one, has had a tougher schedule than LSU, who has beaten seven ranked teams, and three top-three teams. 

Two of the teams (oh boy) that OSU has beaten this year are still ranked. None are ranked higher than 16. The reality of the situation is that OS just hasn't played that tough a schedule, and everyone outside of the Big 12 realizes that. 

To be fair, Alabama really hasn't beaten a lot of great teams, either. I'm not going to try and avoid that. I'm just pointing out that there's a tendency to amplify one schedule and short change the other. In reality, beating Arkansas and Penn State is probably on par with any two wins that OSU has. 

Aside from that, neither team hasn't really beaten anyone that you wouldn't expect a team in the National Championship Game to easily handle. I'm not all that concerned if one team beat the 29th best team and the other only beat the 31st best team. If you couldn't beat either, you don't belong in the NC Game. 

And when you get down to it, there's really no comparison, unless you're just comparing "ISU" with "LSU" for the similarities in the acronym. They both lost tight games. One is playing in the National Championship Game. The other lost to a team that they should have beaten easily. 

Yes, there were exigent circumstances. Playing the best team in the country is exigent circumstances, too. 

The thing is, when you look at all the things we've always looked at to establish the rankings for years, Alabama should be and is the second ranked team in the country, and the whole point of the National Championship Game is to pit the top two teams against each other. 

It doesn't matter if it's "pretty" or not. If you want pretty, watch ice dancing. This is football. 

The worst logic is that if there were a playoff system, then this wouldn't happen. A team that didn't win its division winning the Championship! Guffaw! This would never happen with a playoffs. 

If there were a playoff system this would happen, but there wouldn't be all the griping! Teams that don't win their divisions win championships with playoffs. Just ask the reigning Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers. Ask the reigning World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals. The Connecticut Huskies didn't win their division in the regular season in basketball, either. 

The reality is that there's a darned good chance that if there were a playoff, the game would be the same, just with a lot less whining. Stop the griping. If you want "pretty," then you can always change the channel to Dancing With the Stars. Just allow the rest of us to enjoy football, where we have tackling and defense and that stuff that wins.