Big 12 Deserves the Bashing, not the BCS

So while every UT fan gets prepared to root for Missouri on Saturday, and while the majority of OU fans learn about their team's #2 BCS ranking from the one person in each Oklahoma town that can read, I'm not sure what to make of this debacle. Though I feel UT should be #2, I don't necessarily view OU's ascension itself as the debacle.

What I feel is tragic is that the Big 12 allowed a tiebreaker to be decided on the basis of computers and the votes of a number of people who are not held accountable in their voting, and probably are not all that well informed to begin with. In nearly every other BCS conference, in the event of a 3 way tie, the corresponding tiebreaker drops the lowest ranked team in the BCS, and then decides the tie based on the head-to-head matchup between the top ranked 2 schools. That way, the tie is given to the team who prevailed on the field. Blame the Big 12 for taking it away from the on-field results and putting it in the hands of idiotic pollsters. And regarding those pollsters:

1. The Coaches' Poll, which is in and of itself kind of ridiculous. You are asking coaches who have been immersed in their own preparation all week, and immediately after their game on Saturday begin planning for the next week's game, to be able to give informed opinions about the other 116 D-1 teams? That is asking a lot! Basically a coach plays their game, scans highlights, reads scores, and makes their vote by the next day. Plus with college coaches being so close to one another (or at least highly familiar with each other) there will always be people who vote one team higher or lower based upon their affiliation with the coach. Thus, it really is an unfair position to put coaches in.

2. The Harris Poll. Who are the voters and where is the accountability? It is 114 voters who "have been randomly selected from among more than 300 nominations submitted by the conference offices and the independent institutions." I have no idea what this truly means, nor do I know who these people are. Why is Slappy McJohnson deciding which teams play for the national title?

Personally, I think 45-35 should have settled this, but I can see how people could vote OU over UT. The problem is that they were allowed to come to that conclusion, rather than having the matter settled on the field as it should be.

LET'S GO MISSOU!