BCS presents Texas vs. Alabama ... whether you like it or not

DALLAS -- Congratulations, Texas Longhorns.

Longhorns coach Mack Brown thinks Texas-'Bama is a great matchup. Wow, what a shock. (US Presswire)

You will play Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game because A) you were ranked No. 2 in the preseason poll, B) TCU was ranked No. 17 in the preseason poll, C) Cincinnati was unranked in the preseason poll, D) Boise State is in the WAC, and E) an official review put one second back on an expired clock at the Big 12 Championship Game so that Hunter Lawrence could kick a field goal for a 13-12 win over Nebraska here at Cowboys Stadium late Saturday.

To Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State, I offer my apologies.

And a punch in the gut.

You guys played well, beat everybody on your schedules, always won, never lost. But Texas has more history than all of you combined, started way higher than you in the national rankings, and has an awesome field goal kicker. So enjoy whatever meaningless game you will play next, and we'll now turn our attention to Alabama-Texas -- the Crimson Tide vs. the Longhorns! -- and use that to decide the national championship.

"I don't think there could be a better matchup than Texas and Alabama," said Mack Brown, who happens to be the Texas coach. I imagine he'd have a different opinion if he was the Cincinnati coach, the TCU coach or the Boise State coach. But he's the Texas coach. So Texas-Alabama is the best matchup he can imagine. But wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to use our imaginations at all?

No imaginations.

Just football games.

That's what I'd like.

I'd like a 16-team playoff with 11 automatic and five at-large bids, Selection Sunday followed by four weeks of compelling football, the likes of which we've never seen. You thought Saturday was great? How great would it be if you could watch four more weeks of meaningful games, watch 15 more do-or-die spectacles during which Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU, Boise State and 11 other schools would have a chance to prove on the field what they are and what they are not? It would be fabulous and it would dwarf the excitement that surrounds March Madness. And that's why everybody except Texas fans, BCS shills and total freaking idiots went to sleep Saturday disappointed that Texas won this game. It's not that people hate Texas. Or Colt McCoy. Or Bevo. It's that people would like to watch somebody like Cincinnati end its national title hopes with a Cincinnati loss as opposed to a Nebraska loss 960 miles from the Cincinnati campus.

As it is, the men who led Cincinnati to an undefeated regular season will spend the rest of their lives wondering if they once had the nation's best team, and they'll never know the answer because Colt McCoy threw a ball away and made it hit a rail with one second remaining. As Big 12 coordinator of football officials Walt Anderson explained afterward, the clock stops when an incomplete pass hits something regardless of whether that something is the ground, a water cooler, a cheerleader, Lance Armstrong, a woman with Lance Armstrong or, in this case, a rail on a field-level luxury suite. Soon as the ball hits something, the clock should be stopped. But clock operator Joe Thompson did not stop the clock when McCoy's pass hit that rail. So the clock turned to all zeros, and Bo Pelini started walking to midfield with his arms in the air.

"I thought, 'There's no way,'" McCoy said. "'We've got one or two seconds left.'"

McCoy was right, by the way. The replay clearly showed a second needed to be put back on the clock, and so a second was put back on the clock. That allowed Lawrence to trot onto the field. He drilled a 46-yard field goal as time expired (this time, for real) to push the Longhorns to a win and the Bearcats to some bowl game they can't possibly be excited to play in. Hell, they might even lose their coach to Notre Dame between now and then, and wouldn't that be something?

Cincinnati went from playing for a national championship to not playing for a national championship (and possibly losing its coach) all because of a wild ending to a game the Bearcats had nothing to do with. That's the system in place. That's the system that'll give us Alabama vs. Texas, but only because a replay official added a second to an expired clock and allowed Texas to kick the game-winning field goal.

"When we saw Colt throw the ball it did look like there was some time left," said Texas linebacker Sergio Kindle. "But it's just never good when you have something in somebody else's hands."

I agree, Sergio.

And I'm sure Cincinnati agrees, too.