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BCS could keep Oklahoma out of title game
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COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The poster boys this season for
what is wrong with the BCS will be, I’m willing to wager, Bob
Stoops’ Sooners.
To be sure, on Saturday, for the second weekend in a row, the
Sooners held off a ranked conference foe on the road. Not only
that, but they did so the hard way.
They beat Texas A&M, 42-35, at Kyle Field after wiping out a
14-point deficit and scoring the winning touchdown with their
Heisman candidate running back, freshman Adrian Peterson, off the
field nursing an injured arm.
It was a more impressive victory than they pulled out two Saturdays
ago at their in-state nemesis’ stadium in Stillwater, when a
long would-be game-tying field goal by Oklahoma State sailed wide
of the goal posts with the clock expiring.
“To overcome all that we did today I think is a positive
sign,” Stoops said after winning at A&M.
“It’s not easy down here.”
But the Sooners, second-ranked in the BCS, may wind up with a lot
less to show for all of their fortitude the last two Saturdays than
they should get. For their season all but ended in earnest in
College Station.
Make no mistake; Saturday was their season. Had it been less
critical, Stoops wouldn’t have burned freshman defensive back
Marcus Walker’s redshirt. But with yet another opposing
quarterback, this time the Aggies’ Reggie McNeal, burning the
Sooners’ pass defense, it was time to play desperate. An
undefeated season and national championship game berth were in the
balance.
That wasn’t because Peterson got hurt. He came back, after
being assisted off the field and into the locker room, to help
Stoops’ offense run down the clock. And last season’s
Heisman winner, sixth-year quarterback Jason White, rose to the
occasion when Peterson went down. His strike to Mark Bradley down
the middle of the field with 6:43 left, which Bradley turned into a
39-yard score, was his fifth touchdown pass of the game.
“He’s the best,” Stoops said of White. “His
toughness, resilience. And he’s talented.”
It is a luxury to have one Heisman candidate. To have more than one
is the height of extravagance.
As a result, Peterson’s injury is the least of the
Sooners’ problems.
Instead, the Sooners’ biggest problem with two regular-season
games left and the Big 12 title game, which they all but assured
themselves of playing in with the win over the Aggies, is that they
won’t meet a team that can positively influence the computer.
Next week they host Nebraska, which lost Saturday to Iowa State.
The Saturday before Thanksgiving they travel to Baylor.
And there isn’t a team in the Big 12 North that is ranked.
Iowa State and Nebraska are the best of that lot.
Meanwhile, Auburn, the third-ranked BCS team, is scheduled to play
Georgia and Alabama to close out its regular season. Georgia is
ranked No. 8 and crushed Kentucky on Saturday. Alabama is on the
cusp of the Associated Press poll.
If Auburn survives those two games, it will advance to the SEC
title game to meet Georgia, again, or Tennessee, which was ranked
ninth on Saturday before being upset by Notre Dame.
As a result, Oklahoma’s season just became a waiting game.
Its 2004 campaign, 9-0 now, is kind of like a good movie that comes
out early in the year, well before people start talking about
Oscars. It very well could get lost.
That isn’t right. It wouldn’t be fair if it were any
other team in the Sooners’ cleats right now, either. The
Sooners shouldn’t be penalized because their schedule
isn’t what it has been or, more precisely, the Big 12 is
having a slightly down season in football. It is still a power
conference.
What the Sooners face the next few weeks is why college football
needs a playoff. They are very likely to wind up undefeated,
whether Peterson heals quickly enough to play next weekend or the
week after that or come the conference championship game next month
in Kansas City. And they are very likely to find themselves sitting
on the outside looking at the national championship Orange Bowl no
matter their success.
The teams Auburn faces could make this all moot, of course. They
could help save the BCS another embarrassment like last season.
They could remove another undefeated team from the equation like
North Carolina did Miami a weekend ago.
Still, Wisconsin and Utah are undefeated. This college football
season is still headed toward winding up with multiple undefeated
teams and no way of sorting them out.
The BCS will always be a bankrupt system, as the Sooners are in
danger of finding out.
Kevin B. Blackistone
The Dallas Morning News
