BCS bonanza over, intriguing matchups are set

When Texas beat Nebraska on a last second field goal in Saturday’s Big 12 Championship game, BCS chaos was avoided. The match-up desired by everyone, Texas vs. the SEC champion, in this case Alabama, was preserved. Two of college football’s most storied programs will be battling for the title. But are these really the teams deserving of a national championship appearance?
Alabama proved they belong with a 32-13 rout of 1st ranked Florida in the SEC championship game. But Texas left much to be desired against Nebraska, and in all honesty, should have lost.
The Longhorns’ 13-12 victory over the Cornhuskers was lackluster and lucky. If that last second field goal would not have slipped past the goal post, Nebraska would have won without scoring a single touchdown.
The Cornhuskers do deserve credit though; as they have an elite defense dominated by a future top five NFL draft pick, Ndamukong Suh. But for Texas to almost lose a game against such a defensive minded team, which has one of the worst offenses in the country, proved them not national championship caliber. Not to mention they almost lost against a .500 Texas A&M team the week before.
Also, the Big 12 is not the conference it usually is this year, as the next highest ranked team after Texas in the conference is Oklahoma State, ranked 19th. Texas, even though they are undefeated this year, is not deserving of an appearance in the national title game.
The three other undefeated teams besides Texas and Alabama are Texas Christian University, Cincinnati and Boise State. Out of these three teams, TCU has proven the most dominant, winning their final seven games by an average of 37 points and only allowing an average of 10 points in those games.
 Two of those games were against Utah and BYU, both of whom were ranked 16th at the time they played TCU. BYU had climbed as high as 7th in the polls and are currently ranked 14th, five spots higher than Oklahoma State is now.          
The highest ranked team Texas beat was 14th ranked Oklahoma State. Cincinnati was one missed extra point away from losing to Pittsburgh, who was ranked 15th at the time and was also their highest ranked opponent.
People could argue that TCU is not in a major conference, but the Mountain West has three teams ranked in the top 25, which is as many as combined the Big 12 and the Big East.
People could also argue that TCU barely beat Clemson and Air Force. But these games were both put away very early in the fourth quarter. And even though these games were close, TCU had them in their control and left no doubt to their outcome, unlike Texas’ game against Nebraska.
Since then no team has played quite like TCU this late in the season this consistently. Besides Alabama, they are the most dominant team in the country, and deserve to be in the national title game.
But since the BCS has a bias against the less prestigious conferences, it ranked Texas 2nd and Cincinnati 3rd, leaving TCU at that 4th ranking that has been with them for the last five weeks of the season. The BCS has once again put the wrong team in the title game.
As a result of the faulty BCS, TCU will face Boise St. in a battle of undefeated teams in the Fiesta Bowl. This is a very intriguing match-up, but in the end TCU will end up dominating. Alabama will “roll” over Texas, thus proving the BCS got it wrong once again. This year’s national title game will be bittersweet, as the real national championship should have been TCU vs. Alabama.