Orange County Register

For years the defenders of the BCS system said that a playoff, along with flouridating the water and re-igniting war in Northern Ireland, would invalidate the regular season.

On Sunday the BCS standings made the Texas-Oklahoma game disappear.

There were 92,182 witnesses in person and untold millions more on ABC. Texas beat Oklahoma, 45-35. Both teams ended the regular season with one loss. Yet the latest BCS standings gave Oklahoma the edge, and, thanks to some boneheaded Big 12 tiebreakers, Oklahoma wins the Big 12 title and will play Missouri in Saturday’s conference championship game.

If the Sooners win, they will likely play the Alabama-Florida winner in the BCS title game. Or maybe the Alabama-Florida loser. We all know the actual head-to-head winner is irrelevant.

Re-spool ourselves to Dallas on Oct. 11, as neutral a site as you will find, three hours from Norman, Okla. and Austin, Tex. Texas committed no turnovers that day and cranked up touchdown drives of 74 and 80 yards, against the Sonners’ Dust Bowl defense, in the fourth quarter.

Since then Texas lost to Texas Tech on a last-second touchdown, at Lubbock, and Oklahoma blew out Texas Tech at home. Then Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State 61-41 in Stillwater _ which is likely to be a higher score than the OU-OSU basketball game in Stillwater _ and vaulted Texas.

In the aftermath, you had Barry Switzer babbling, on Fox, that Oklahoma was better because Texas barely beat Oklahoma State at home, 28-24. That was the third in a 4-game series against teams ranked No. 1, 11, 6 and 7. Texas went 3-1 in that stretch.

Switzer, of course, is the former Oklahoma coach who, before that, was the coordinator of a wicked Sooner defense. Do you think Lee Roy Selmon can choke back nausea when he sees Oklahoma play seven consecutive games in which it gives up AT LEAST 28 points each week? Texas’ defense isn’t very good either, but it’s given up 16 points the past two weeks.

The Big 12 is a flag-football league and it’s conceivable that Missouri, playing the Big 12 game in Kansas City, can jump up and surprise the Sooners, especially if probable Heisman winner Sam Bradford is really hurt. In that case Texas would play the SEC champ in the Big Game.

But how big is it when a head-to-head result between the two involved parties is ignored?

The computers favored Oklahoma because of strength of schedule. In other words, OU got points because it beat TCU and Cincinnati.

Good work, but let’s get one thing straight. In college football, where you have four non-conference games at the most, strength of schedule is a crock. Nobody plays an outstanding non-league schedule, and it’s a little tricky to figure out who’s going to be good when you sign the scheduling papers. Did Oklahoma think Cincinnati would be Big East champs when it arranged the game? Obviously not. The game wouldn’t have been arranged.

And should USC be penalized because Notre Dame has become such a failed state? Of course not.

The media loves to rip the BCS system, but in truth it loves the system itself because there’s something new to write every week, without having to interview those pesky coaches and players.

 The media should boycott the system _ ignore the games and the standings _ until a real playoff comes to pass, just like the one they have in Divisions I-AA, II, III and the NAIA.

Fortunately, we don’t have to take the Big 12 stuff seriously, or the BCS’ decision to ignore a game that was played on the Cotton Bowl grass.

Because we already have a national championship game, scheduled on Saturday in Atlanta.

It’s called the SEC championship game. It matches Alabama and Florida, the nation’s two best teams and the two teams that emerged from a league where people actually tackle. Hard.

After that game, the BCS championship, against the chuck-and-duck Big 12 representative, will be like a morning jog in South Beach.

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