Most any talking head you hear on ESPN or the radio these days has the Florida Gators playing for the FedEx BCS National Championship in Miami Gardens on Jan. 8.
A good case, of course, could be made that Urban Meyer’s team is playing the best of any team in the country right now, considering the Gators have outscored their last five opponents (Arkansas, Louisiana State, Kentucky, Georgia and Vanderbilt) 250-57 after losing to Mississippi 31-30 in “The Swamp” on the last Saturday in September.
Still, to get to Miami, the Gators must run the table. A 3-1 finish won’t do – Florida needs to go 4-0 to make the trip to Dolphin Stadium as either the No. 1 or No. 2 team in the final BCS standings which will be released on Sunday evening, Dec. 7, on FOX.
Florida should be favored in each of those four games it has remaining to play – Saturday against visiting South Carolina, Nov. 22 against visiting Citadel, Nov. 29 at Florida State and De. 6 against the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship Game at “Swamp North” – the Georgia Dome.
By beating Alabama, currently the No. 1 team in the BCS standings, Florida naturally moves up into one of the top two spots, both of which fly to South Florida to decide which school will have to fend off the complaints of fans for Southern California, which perhaps will pay the deepest price for losing this wild-and-wacky season.
Back on Sept. 25, a Thursday night, Pete Carroll’s Trojans traveled to Corvallis, Ore., to play Oregon State. The Beavers stunned the Trojans, 27-21, dropping USC from No. 1 to No. 9. Quite a drop, you think? Especially since most experts believed USC has perhaps the best talent in the country, as evidence their 35-3 spanking of Ohio State on Sept. 13 in the Memorial Coliseum.
Two days after the Corvallis stunner, Florida blew a 17-7 halftime lead at “The Swamp” as Ole Miss scored 17 unanswered points in the third quarter on way to its 31-30 victory, a setback that dropped Florida from No. 4 to No. 12 in the polls. Afterward, a subdued and emotional Tim Tebow vowed that he and the Gators would work their tails off the rest of the season and would not to lose again.
Well, USC hasn’t either and yet the Gators have climbed over the Trojans into fourth place in the latest BCS standings, and Oklahoma, which fell out of the top spot on Oct. 11 when Texas won 45-35 in the Cotton Bowl, is even between Florida and USC in the BCS standings.
The Men of Troy and their loyal supporters must be wondering what they’ve been doing wrong. The Trojans merely have won six straight, three by shutouts. Two of those were a combined 125-0 over the state of Washington – 69-0 over the Cougars of Washington State and 56-0 over the Huskies of Washington.
Well, the Trojans aren’t doing anything wrong. Their Pacific-10 brethren, unfortunately, aren’t doing the Trojans any favors. Oregon State has struggled since beating USC and neither Oregon nor California mounted much of a threat.
Just as a weak Big Ten Conference probably would have worked against Penn State if it had remained unbeaten instead of losing at Iowa last Saturday 24-23, the Pac-10 has hurt Southern California. Should JoeGrandPa and the Nittany Lions beat Indiana and Michigan State, they will play in the Misery-Loves-Company Bowl – the venerable Rose Bowl – against USC. At least the two teams will be able to say they had Pasadena on Jan. 1.
The “Tebow Manifesto” has yielded some very impressive victories – 51-21 over visiting LSU on Oct. 11, 63-5 over visiting Kentucky two weeks later and then the 49-10 “atonement” over Georgia. If Florida goes 4-0, it certainly will sway the human voters in the USA Today coaches’ poll and the Harris Interactive Poll – two-thirds of the criteria which determine the BCS standings – and an 8-1 record against the best teams of the SEC surely will jog the computers.
That same scenario happened two years ago, in coach Urban Meyer’s second season, when Florida was able to overcome all the talk of an Ohio State-Michigan rematch by winning the SEC Championship Game 38-28 over Arkansas to set up the national championship game in Glendale, Ariz., against top-ranked Ohio State. The Gators then cracked the Buckeyes, 41-14, for their second national title.
Who they play will depend on some key games taking place these next four weeks. About the only thing that is clear right now is that Penn State won’t be the opponent. The Nittany Lions just won’t be able to make up for their last-second loss in Iowa City with home games against Indiana and Michigan State.
It’s likely the Gators’ foe would come from the Big 12 South, where Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma have emerged as national-title contenders. One of those three will be eliminated Nov. 22 when the Red Raiders, who bounced Texas 39-33 in Lubbock two Saturdays ago, visit Oklahoma to meet a Sooners team which was beaten soundly in Dallas by the Longhorns.
If Oklahoma beats Texas Tech, there will be a sadness in Lubbock that can only approach the day the music died – Feb. 3, 1959 when Lubbock’s own Buddy Holly died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and J.P.”The Big Bopper” Richardson at Clear Lake, Iowa.
But the Sooners then have to travel to Stillwater to play the Oklahoma State Cowboys, who are still smarting after last week’s 56-20 loss at Texas Tech. An upset by the Cowboys, of course, ends Oklahoma’s national title dreams for the year.
But a Sooner victory over Oklahoma State would move them to No. 4 in the BCS standings. An Oklahoma victory likely would not be enough to pull the Sooners past Florida and also Texas into the No. 2 spot behind Alabama.
And here’s where it really gets interesting. Get this: Oklahoma could end up with one loss and not get the chance to play for the Big 12 conference title Dec. 6 in Kansas City but could earn a spot in the BCS National Championship against Florida.
How’s that? In determining the South Division representative for the Big 12 Championship Game (likely against North Division leader Missouri), one of the conference’s tie-breakers, if Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma all have one loss, is the team which is ranked the highest in the BCS standings on Sunday, Nov. 30.
That likely would be Texas, provided the Longhorns take care of business this Saturday at Kansas and on Thanksgiving Day in Austin against Texas A&M.
Imagine then if Texas and Missouri face off in Kansas City and the Tigers avenge their defeat in Austin and send the Longhorns tumbling down the BCS standings on Dec. 7. That would open the doors for a possible Florida game against Oklahoma and coach Bob Stoops, Steve Spurrier’s defensive coordinator when the Ol’ Ball Coach won the national championship in 1996.
Then again, if Texas doesn’t lose the Big 12 title game, it likely comes to Miami to play the Gators. Southern California would need Oklahoma to beat Texas Tech, Oklahoma State to beat Oklahoma and Missouri to beat Texas to get to Miami, where it won the 2005 national championship by embarrassing Oklahoma.
Now you know why Pete Carroll thinks the BCS stinks, why JoeGrandPa calls it the B-SC, why experts far learned than myself have said, “Remember, you can’t spell BCS without a B and an S.”
With apologies to Jim Mora, we ask, “Playoff?”
Playoff, indeed!