Figuring Out This Bowl Mess

With Penn State’s victory over Michigan State on Saturday, the Nittany Lions secured their automatic berth into the Rose Bowl and left the Buckeyes hoping for a shot at a BCS at-large bid.  With Oklahoma’s pummelling of Texas Tech last night, the entire BCS picture was shaken up at the top, most notably with the deadlock between the three Big 12 South contenders, Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech.  What does this mean for Ohio State’s BCS chances?  Not a whole lot, since there is a two team per conference maximum to play in BCS bowls, but what is concerning for the Buckeyes are the vast number of automatic bids going to lower ranked teams, meaning that the higher ranked teams are taking up at-large slots.

So, let’s get to work on painting the bowl picture for the Buckeyes.  First, remember that there are 10 possible slots for the BCS bowl games.  Six of these spots will be filled by conference champions, leaving four potential openings for the Buckeyes.  Since Utah finished the season undefeated, they have essentially clinched one of these four spots.  This leaves Ohio State, USC, the loser of the SEC Championship game, and one of the three Big 12 South teams fighting for three bowl spots.

Now, if everything goes according to plan (meaning that all of the teams in the BCS mix continue to win), then in all likelihood Ohio State will be the odd man out.  After all, it’s been a foregone conclusion that there will be two Big 12 and SEC teams in the BCS, and since Ohio State decided to embarass themselves on national TV against USC last September, there’s no chance that the Buckeyes would be picked to go to a bowl ahead of the Trojans.

Luckily for us, nothing ever goes according to plan in college football, meaning that Ohio State still has an excellent shot of going to the Fiesta or Sugar Bowls.  Any of the following should guarantee Ohio State a BCS bid, in order from most likely to happen to least likely to happen:

1.  Oregon State loses to Oregon next week.  If the Beavers fall to the Ducks next week, they will be eliminated from the BCS discussion, and USC will receive the automatic PAC-10 bid, meaning that instead of four teams fighting for three open at-large bids, each team will find a way in.

2. Florida loses to Florida State next week, then again to Alabama in the SEC Championship.  Two straight Gator losses to end the season would not only leave a terrible taste in the mouths of voters across the country, but it would also give the Gators a total of three losses on the season, whereas every other team competing for a slot would have zero, one, or two losses.  Alabama could potentially be eliminated with two consecutive losses as well, but the BCS selection committe would probably be much more willing to put in a 2-loss SEC team over a 2-loss Big 10 team.

3. USC loses two in a row.  Very unlikely to happen, considering the Trojans have games against Notre Dame and UCLA to finish the season.  If USC only loses one of its next two games, OSU still has a slim chance to receive the benefit of the doubt of the selection committe since they finished the season on such a high note and their two most productive offensive players hardly played (or didn’t play at all) against the Trojans, but it is doubtful.

4. The men behind the BCS come to their senses and issue a radical new rule change that states that if every single team in one (or two, in this case) of the six major conferences absolutely blows, then the conference champion does not deserve an automatic BCS Bid.  This will not happen, mainly because the season is almost over, but also because it just makes too much sense for college football to do it.  Chances are good that Ohio State will be left out of one of the “Big 5″ bowls, despite the fact that the general consensus is that they are better than at least three of the teams (ACC Champ, Big Least Champ, and Utah) that do get bids.

So, Buckeye fans, prepare to complain.  Because odds are, we’re going to get screwed and have to watch our team play in the Capital One Bowl on New Year’s day.  At least we can take solace in the fact that we’ll have a pretty good shot to take out an SEC team along the way.

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