I don't love Texas. I don't hate Oklahoma. But what transpired yesterday in the Big 12 is absolute bullshit.
I know life ain't fair, but college football should be. Or at least it should use common sense trying.
Let me apologize to Texas. I posted some of the best assets of Texas Tech and Oklahoma, but am just now getting around to the Longhorn lovelies. Obviously, I'm the reason UT is getting royally screwed, right?
Okay then, you tell me. How is it that an 11-1 team that beat another 11-1 by 10 points on a neutral field judged second-best? By human or hard drive?
45-35 anyone?
I don't blame the computers. I blame the Big 12 for its cockamamie fifth tiebreaker. And, mostly, I blame the coaches. Unless your name is Bob Stoops or Barry Switzer there's no way you watched Texas-OU, Texas-Texas Tech and Tech-OU and honestly deducted that OU is the best team.
Texas beat OU - I repeat, Texas beat OU - and lost at No. 5 Tech on a last-play touchdown after it dropped what would've been a game-winning interception. Hold onto that interception and Texas is the clear-cut No. 1 in the nation with the inside track to the BCS National Championship Game. Drop it and the Longhorns aren't even worthy of playing for the Big 12 championship?
Irrational, meet illogical.
I know OU has rattled off 60-plus points in four straight games. But, unlike the computers, if you watched Saturday night's game in Stillwater you saw the Sooners score two touchdowns via pure luck -- on a tipped pass and a fumbled snap. You also saw Stoops call a running play in the final 30 seconds instead of showing some class and taking a knee with a 13-point lead.
Regardless, I don't care if OU won every other game 200-0, if it's a beauty pageant between the Sooners and Longhorns how do you not give the nod to the girl who won the head-to-head talent competition on the field?
Since its loss in Lubbock, meanwhile, all Texas has done is win three games by a combined 129-37. And somehow in that time it got passed by OU.
Playing in the SEC or ACC - conferences that actually covet head-to-head results - Texas would get the bid to the championship game. But here we sit, at the intersection of inexplicable and implausible.
Two teams that lost to Texas by 10-plus points - OU and Missouri - will play in the Big 12 title game while the Longhorns sit home.
I guess what I'm saying is, dang, I wish we had college football teams close to Dallas decent enough to argue about. - Richie Whitt
