Geography lessens: Big 12, among others, needs major fix
By Gregg Doyel | CBSSports.com National Columnist Follow GreggOklahoma will pursue a national championship instead of Texas despite having the same record as Texas and despite the inconvenient truth of having lost to Texas. And that makes lots of you spitting mad.
And you're right. Go ahead and spit.
But hock a loogie in the right direction.
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| We don't really need an Oklahoma-Missouri rematch in the Big 12 title game, do we? (Getty Images) |
So don't spit on the BCS. And don't spit on the Big 12 tiebreaker system that allowed the BCS rankings to settle the three-way atom-split between Texas, Oklahoma and Texas Tech.
Where do you spit? I'll tell you where to spit. Spit on the most correctable flaw in this entire thing, a flaw so flagrant and so fixable that everyone has managed to look past it, as if it's not even there:
The Big 12's divisions.
Tell me, please, what Missouri has done to earn its place in the Big 12 Championship Game. Won the Big 12 North? Fabulous. Terrific. The Big 12 North is on par with the Big East. South Florida could win the Big 12 North.
But Big 12 rules say Missouri, by virtue of its latitudinal coordinate, deserves to play Oklahoma for the league title.
Ridiculous. In addition to being a blatant grab for money, which is fine, the Big 12 title game was presumably created to identify the best team in the Big 12. How Missouri factors into it this season, I'll never understand. Missouri isn't one of the best two teams in the Big 12. Missouri isn't one of the best four teams in the Big 12, and barely belongs in the top half.
Missouri played three teams from the Big 12 South, and went 1-2 -- and hasn't had to play Oklahoma (yet) or Texas Tech. The Tigers lost to Texas and Oklahoma State, and beat that Baylor juggernaut by a field goal.
Going forward, here's how we fix this thing. The Big 12 can keep its silly North and South divisions, since the goal apparently is to spread around as many crowns as possible. "Big 12 North champion" just has a ring to it, doesn't it? I think the Big 12 ought to dispense with the entire setup and just have a big banquet at the end of every season, regardless of the sport, and give everyone a big T-ball trophy. Pat Knight can bring the orange wedges.
Where was I? Oh, right. Fixing this thing. Here's how:
The Big 12 can keep its silly North and South setup, but at the end of the season, the top two teams -- whoever they are, wherever they're located -- play for the league championship. This season, it would be Texas vs. Oklahoma. Texas Tech would have a complaint, but I think 65-21 ends that complaint quite nicely.
It's not just the Big 12, by the way. Save some of your spit for the SEC and the ACC as well. They also have a conference title game whose No. 1 goal isn't to pit the league's best two teams -- just the best team from one half against the best from another. What if the best two teams are from the same half? Oh well.
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Hoopsisbest: For any conference to have a championship game based on divisions is stupid, no doubt. College isn't the NFL and college doesn't have a national playoff. What Doyel is proposing would be the next best thing to a playoff system. At least you would know for sure that the top two teams from each conference played off to see who would be the highest representative for their conference in a BCS bowl. While you would still have controversy on who played in the National Championship Game, it would still be the next best thing to a national playoff.
Question unrelated: If Mizzou beats OK, is Texas going to apply head to head standards and move over for Texas Tech to be considered most worthy Big 12 team to play for the National Championship? |
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Gregg Doyel: Hoops, I have always considered you to be one of our finest minds here in the CBSSports.com community, and this is another reminder why. Exactly on the Texas-Texas Tech thing. Everyone has an argument. Nobody's right if everybody's right. |
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This year, the SEC got lucky. The best two teams in the SEC happen to reside in different divisions, with No. 1 Alabama winning the West and No. 2 Florida winning the East.
Yeah, SEC, I said lucky. You were lucky. Or have you already forgotten last season? The second-best team in your conference was clearly Georgia -- yet Georgia didn't make it into the SEC title game, had no chance at playing for the national title, and had to take out its anger on Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl.
In the ACC, they split the league into Atlantic and Coastal, which is really stupid. The only "coast" in the region is the "Atlantic." Which means there is no rhyme or reason to how those schools are split up, beyond the fact that Florida State and Miami had to be separated to make sure no division was dragged down by both of them.
A "conference championship game" that doesn't pit the best two teams in the conference. Brilliant innovation. Right up there with the Internet, only Al Gore didn't invent this thing. Had to be Dan Quayle.
But rules are rules, right? So Missouri goes to the Big 12 title game while Texas, obviously one of the best three or four teams in the country, stays home. The only teams on par with the Longhorns nationally are Oklahoma and Florida, and maybe one other team. Who am I forgetting? No, not Alabama. Oh, right -- Southern California. Texas is clearly one of the best four teams in the country, along with Oklahoma, Florida and USC.
But Texas is out of the BCS title picture. Why? Because Texas has a major latitude problem.
