Clay Horning
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If Oklahoma falls short tonight, though it will hardly seem like it back in Norman, it won’t be the biggest upset in the history of the Big 12 championship game. It may not even be the biggest upset the Sooners have suffered at the Big 12 championship game.
It would, though, be shocking.
Perhaps the only good to come of it would be that those making the case Missouri should have simply made way for Texas (or those who think the conference should concoct a system that, should this season be repeated in the future, would make way for Texas) can now go about cooling their heels.
Yet it shouldn’t take an upset tonight to highlight the right thing. Because what you have tonight is the right thing, Oklahoma playing Missouri for the conference championship.
It’s unfortunate the Sooners and Tigers are separated by 18 spots in the BCS standings and it’s unfortunate that a 5-3 mark against league teams was enough to run away from the rest of the North Division. Also, it’s too bad the Sooners could not have reached Kansas City free of controversy.
But the source of that controversy is not how the Big 12 has gone about deciding how to determine who reaches the championship game as a result of a three-way divisional tie. The source of the controversy is the three-way divisional tie.
Think the controversy would be any more muted had a points format had been followed or, as the SEC tiebreaker would have unfolded under the same circumstances, Texas Tech would have been eliminated (more than anything on the basis of a 44-point loss to OU; which also would have served to eliminate the Sooners)?
The answer is of course it wouldn’t.
It’s a 12-team conference.
It’s impossible to play everybody.
Two divisions are therefore required.
The only way to produce two divisions given the conference’s geography, free of gerrymandering even Texas Republicans take issue with, is to divide North and South.
Bob Stoops was asked Friday about a system that put the teams with the two best records in the conference championship game.
“Then you’d have to get rid of the divisions,” he said. “I just don’t see how it would work.”
It wouldn’t work.
It couldn’t work.
In that system, had Texas taken care of Texas Tech, the Longhorns would be playing the Sooners again tonight and how would that be fair?
OU was in the same spot in 2000, having already beaten Kansas State. But the Wildcats won the North. Give the divisional structure, the matchup makes perfect sense.
Another misguided notion is the one that says the Big 12 will be revisiting its tiebreaker system. Because every time you hear it, it’s in the context of something being wrong with the tiebreaker system. Only nothing is wrong.
Selfishly, the conference went with the BCS because it figured the highest-ranked BCS team stood the best chance of delivering the conference a national championship. Selfishness aside, the BCS is in the business of determining the nation’s best teams.
On that basis, the system appears to be holding up just fine. Who wouldn’t take the Sooners over the Longhorns right now straight up?
So here we are at Arrowhead tonight. Even freezing, the place will be full. Even OU a heavy favorite, is the ABC’s prime time choice.
Not one conference coach wanted the game when it was first considered. Yet it’s been nothing but a fantastic success.
The Sooners and Tigers meet again.
Nothing wrong with that.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
