SAN DIEGO — The Ducks can’t win. They can lose but they can’t win.
So, for a moment, put yourself in their position.
You have to win.
Confused? Don’t be.
Oregon is only the latest example of what’s wrong with the Bowl Championship Series. Not so much how the BCS decides its national champion, although Oregon likely has something to say about that, too (back in 2001, when everybody was pretty sure Nebraska would be clobbered by Miami in the national championship game at the Rose bowl, it was the Ducks — along with Colorado — on the outside looking in), but how the remaining BCS roster gets filled.
There are four BCS bowls: Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta.
So the top eight teams in the nation should get the bids, right? Wrong.
Conference champions from the Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big East and Pac-10 receive automatic bids. That leaves two at-large teams hoping for the best and the Fiesta Bowl doled out its two spots to No. 4 Ohio State and No. 5 Notre Dame.
Nothing wrong with that, but Oregon, No. 6, still got squeezed.
The Buckeyes and Irish are both 9-2. The Ducks are 10-1.
“Did our team feel we should be in a BCS bowl? Absolutely,” Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. “If you’re the fifth-ranked [in the coaches poll] team in the nation, then probably that should work, but it didn’t.”
So the Ducks can’t win.
They’re only loss was to Southern Cal. It wasn’t close, but still.
And now they have to play Oklahoma?
Oklahoma?
Who the heck is Oklahoma?
What are the Sooners ranked?
See how it’s all worked out for Oregon?
It’s hardly fair. The ducks beat Fresno State and Stanford and Washington and Cal and six other teams. Everybody but the Trojans and nobody beat the Trojans. And this is their great reward? A trip to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo and a game against an OU team that’s two blown calls from entering this evening’s tussle at Qualcomm Stadium on a six-game winning streak.
So the Ducks can’t win.
But if they can’t win, they still have to win. Because losing is inconceivable.
They can’t win and yet their entire season is on the line.
Indeed, for a team that can’t win, they have plenty to play for.
Much more than OU, which, as luck would have it, can’t lose.
This is the Sooners’ reward.
After a 2-3 start, Shreveport appeared more likely than San Diego. Heck, Norman appeared a better bet. Way back when, OU was looking at watching television through the bowl season.
But here the Sooners are, having run off five of six (and if they wanted to get all Bobby Knight and Lubbock about it, six of six), with a chance to win the game they haven’t won.
Think OU wouldn’t like another crack at TCU or UCLA, well, the Ducks are the new Horned Frogs and Bruins.
Tonight, the Sooners get their chance to go back in time and prove how good this team was always going to be, despite all the growing pains that were all too clear the first month of the season.
“That, to me, is a huge motivation getting to this bowl,” Sooner coach Bob Stoops said, “the opportunity to play somebody like Oregon … And I know it gets the players attention.”
And if OU loses, hey, it’s like water off a you-know-what’s back. The Sooners will have still triumphed over adversity, their season will still be none-the-less salvaged. Don’t think the Sooner Nation can’t wait, win or lose, to see sophomore Rhett Bomar throw to all those year-older receivers and hand off to junior Adrian Peterson.
So the Sooners can’t lose and the Ducks can’t win?
Something like that. And likely, the fans can’t lose either.
Once again, the game itself appears destined to be a winner.
You’ve got the Ducks, who’ve lost only once, in a position to prove they should have been sent somewhere else, against, at long last, a very good bunch of Sooners.
You bet it took a while, but here they are.
“You want that kind of challenge,” Stoops said.
“I think it’s going to be a very good football game,” Bellotti said.
All that’s left is to enjoy.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
Sooners can't lose
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