LSU versus ALABAMA

The foregone conclusion of this year’s college football season is that LSU and Alabama are the two best teams in the nation.  We are basing that opinion on all the sports pundits, our own personal observations and of course, the dreaded BCS formula.  Once again, we are relegated to the archaic and profoundly flawed BCS system.  In the end, who’s to say that Alabama deserves to play in this game rather than Oklahoma State, Stanford or maybe even Boise State. 

What’s sticking in my crawl with this, other than the BCS, is that Alabama gets in this game without having won their conference championship.  For that matter, they’re not even in their conference championship.  Somehow, that just doesn’t seem all that fair to me.  I remember back a few years ago when Ohio State was undefeated and ranked number one.  Michigan was undefeated and ranked number two.  They played what most folks at the time considered the greatest college football game of all time with Ohio State barely winning 42-39.  There was considerable opinion at the time that Michigan should have received a rematch in the Fiesta Bowl with Ohio State for the National Championship.  That did not happen.  Ohio State faced a big underdog, Florida, in the championship game and got clobbered. 

For that matter, everyone is saying that no matter whether LSU loses to Georgia in the SEC Championship Game, they still will be number one in the nation and will play for the National Championship.  Now, wouldn’t that be something to have two SEC teams playing in the National Championship Game, both with one loss and neither one champion of their own conference.   Crazy isn’t it.  Now, it’s unlikely that Georgia can pull off the upset but it is college football and stranger things have happened in this great game.  I actually am pulling for Georgia to pull off the great upset just so the BCS gets one more black eye. 

My picks for this weekend’s conference championship games are as follows:

Oregon manages to beat lowly UCLA for the PAC 12 Championship. 

Georgia upsets LSU by three in regulation.

Wisconsin runs all over Michigan State in the Big Ten Championship Game. 

Oklahoma State and Oklahoma in a shoot-out but Oklahoma hangs on at the end to win the Big Twelve Championship. 

Finally, Virginia Tech has Clemson for lunch winning by three touchdowns. 

Just maybe we’ll get lucky this off-season and the powers to be will decide on some level of playoff for the 2012 season.  There’s lots of talk right now and it looks like it just may happen on some level.  Any playoff scenario is better than what we currently have with the BCS.  I think an eight-team playoff would be great but much too lofty for the BCS folks.  Looks like maybe two games at the most.