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BCS Busters: TCU, Boise State meet in Fiesta Bowl
BCS busters: TCU, Boise State face each in Fiesta Bowl
Andrew O’Brien | aobrien7@gmail.com
As ‘Championship Saturday’ around NCAA college football came to a dramatic close late Saturday night, an array of emotions flowed through the stadiums, locker rooms, houses of fans and, well of course, the voters who ultimately decide the fate of the teams looking for a chance at the BCS national championship.
However, on this Saturday, one thing was for certain: The winner of the SEC championship game will get one of the two spots in the BCS title game.
Florida (12-1) playing without one of their biggest players, Carlos Dunlap due to suspension (DUI arrest), couldn’t stop the tough, smash-mouth style of Alabama (13-0) and Alabama beat the former national champions 32-13 and earned their spot in the biggest game of the year.
Filling the second spot wasn’t supposed to be easy, and indeed, it wasn’t.
The way many experts saw it: Texas beats Nebraska in the Big 12 title game and they get a shot to play for the national title.
But Nebraska had other plans. The Cornhuskers game into the game ranked No. 22 in the BCS poll and knew they were playing for an automatic bid for a BCS bowl game if they could upset the No. 2 team in the land, Texas.
The game was somewhat the way experts thought, a tough Nebraska defense would keep the Cornhuskers in the game. But when it comes to Big 12 teams, many people associate that with tons of scoring and much more offense compared to defense. That wasn’t the case on this Saturday, in this Big 12 championship. The entire game was back and forth, and Nebraska caused Texas quarterback Colt McCoy to throw a couple of interceptions. McCoy, a contender for this year’s coveted Heisman Trophy, could have all but locked up his first Heisman with a stellar performance in the game but he couldn’t seem to pull away. Late in the fourth quarter, Texas was driving and seemed to have the game and championship in their hands. But, one play quite possibly could have thrown the BCS into chaos.
McCoy threw a pass towards wide receiver Jordan Shipley. As the ball got to Shipley, a Nebraska cornerback ripped the ball from Shipley’s hands. It was like a combination of an interception and a fumble. This gave Nebraska great field position deep in Texas territory. Nebraska ran a few plays, but had to settle for a field goal. With 1:44 left in the game, Nebraska kicker Alex Henery nailed a 42-yard field goal to put the Cornhuskers ahead 12-10. But Nebraska did the unthinkable on the next few plays.
The ensuing kickoff went out of bounds, giving Texas the ball at their 40-yard line. On the very next play, McCoy completed a 19-yard pass to Shipley. The Cornhuskers were penalized 15 yards for a horse-collar tackle on the play, putting Texas on Nebraska’s 26-yard line and a first down. But then Nebraska defensive end Ndamukong Suh, an All-American and possible Heisman Trophy candidate after the Big 12 championship game alone, sacked McCoy for a 2-yard loss. Suh had 4 ½ sacks on the night, along with 12 tackles and seven for loss. Then, facing a second-and-12 from the Nebraska 28, McCoy was stopped for a 1-yard loss with 25 seconds left on the game clock. With 15 seconds to go and a third down, McCoy ran a play that he thought he might be able to move the ball from the left hash-marks to the right side of the field for Texas kicker Hunter Lawrence. But as McCoy rolled out to the right, he saw no one was open and had to throw the ball out of bounds.
The game clock read :00 and Nebraska appeared to have caused BCS pandemonium. But like all close plays, the officials would take another look. After looking at the play a few times, it was determined that the clock had one second left. Lawrence came on and hammered home a game-winning 46-yard field goal as time expired, giving Texas the Big 12 championship and a spot in the BCS title game in Pasadena, California.
With what seemed to the two biggest games on the day that would more or less decide who plays in the national championship game, there were other teams looking on to see if they would get their chance.
No. 5 Cincinnati had to overcome a 31-17 halftime deficit in a wild 45-44 win over Pittsburgh to end its regular season with a perfect 12-0 record and claimed their second Big East championship. Cincinnati hoped a Nebraska upset would vault them over No. 3 TCU and into the national championship picture.
Conversely, No. 4 TCU (12-0) hoped a Texas loss would put them into the second spot, ahead of Cincinnati.
Neither of these happened, and Cincinnati gets a chance to play the now fifth-ranked Florida Gators in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day.
As for TCU, they will play Boise State, another undefeated team at 13-0. This is where the BCS doesn’t quite make sense.
All season, speculation was if TCU and Boise State could stay in contention for a BCS bowl game, who would get the chance if both didn’t. Now that both teams did get a bid, the problem is they are going to play each other. This essentially doesn’t answer anyone’s question: Can teams like TCU and Boise State who are from non-BCS conferences play with the top-rated teams.
Perhaps alternative matchups would be to have Florida play TCU and Cincinnati play Boise State, that way two BCS-conference schools are playing against the two teams not from BCS conferences. This could tell a lot more about BCS-conference affiliations.
There has been plenty of speculation and doubt surrounding the BCS, with the common alternative of instituting a playoff system.
One solution could be: A combination of both the BCS and a playoff system. Perhaps the best way to keep things fair is to utilize the pros of both. Keep the BCS standings, and when the final BCS poll comes out after Week 14, take the top six to eight teams and then have a playoff. If this happens, then you have teams like Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State, who were all undefeated, getting a chance to play for a national championship. Football is much different than basketball, therefore having any more than eight teams would simply take too long and not make sense. Basketball teams can play two games in a four-day span. Football players should play around one game per week, and having shortened weeks playing twice in five days at most. If a playoff system like this is created, it also gives teams who have played so dominantly all year but fall short a second chance to prove themselves. For example, speculation at the beginning of the college football season was Florida and Texas would play in the BCS title game. Texas got there, but Florida fell short. Of course, Alabama deserves it; they beat the No. 1 team in the country in the biggest game of the season for both teams. But, for Florida, playing in the Sugar Bowl is a consolation for them. The Gators went 12-0 through the regular season in the nation’s toughest conference.
And please don’t take this the wrong way. This isn’t a plea because I’m a Gators fan, and if the Gators had won the SEC championship my feelings would remain 100 percent the same. I feel bad for teams like TCU and Boise State, who ultimately had no chance of playing for a BCS title game unless all of the top-rated teams in the country lost at least one game, maybe two. TCU in all likelihood wouldn’t have gotten a shot at the national championship if Texas lost anyways.
Why, you ask?
Well, it’s simple. If Texas would have fallen, since Cincinnati was only a few thousandths of a percentage point behind TCU in the BCS poll, a win over No. 15 Pittsburgh would have easily gave them the boost to hurdle TCU, who was inactive Saturday. Another reason TCU’s chances of playing for the national title were slim results back to the SEC championship. In 2006, when Florida won the national championship, beating Ohio State, there was speculation that if Michigan, who was then ranked No. 2 in the BCS, could beat No. 1 Ohio State in the final game of the season for the Big Ten, the two teams would get a rematch for the national championship. Some similar talks surfaced preceding the SEC title game. If Alabama were to beat Florida in a close game, and if Texas and Cincinnati lost, would Florida get a chance to rematch Alabama?
Of course those questions won’t be answered because Texas won and will play Alabama for the national championship, but they still linger.
All of these are legitimate reasons that an eight-team, BCS and playoff system combination could make the most logical sense and be the fairest way to determine the best college football team in the country.
Nevertheless, this isn’t the case, and the BCS bowl games are as follows:
BCS Title Game – Alabama vs. Texas
Fiesta Bowl – TCU vs. Boise State
Sugar Bowl – Florida vs. Cincinnati
Rose Bowl – Ohio State vs. Oregon
Orange Bowl – Iowa vs. Georgia Tech
