Code Orange

It’s the final week of the regular season and this is where everything will be decided.

Let’s start off with the BCS National Championship.  For once, who goes will be easy:

If Missouri defeats Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship game, they’re in the title game.  If West Virginia defeats Pittsburgh, they’re in the title game.  If either lose, Ohio State will get in.  If both lose, it will likely be Ohio State vs. Georgia.  Yes, Georgia.

As for getting into the BCS, West Virginia and Ohio State have already gained automatic bids by winning their conferences.  The winner of the Big 12 Championship will get an automatic bid, the winner of the ACC Championship game between Virginia Tech and Boston College will get an automatic bid, and the winner of the SEC Championship game will get an automatic bid.

The Pac 10 gets messy again.  Currently Southern Cal leads the Pac 10.  If they defeat UCLA today, they get into the BCS.  However, if Southern Cal loses, then the BCS bid falls to Arizona State - assuming they defeat Arizona tonight.  If both USC and Arizona State both lose, then it falls to Oregon - assuming they can defeat Oregon State.  If all 3 teams lose, then we’ll have a 4-way tie for the Pac 10 title between Arizona State, USC, Oregon State, and UCLA.  In the first round of head-to-head matchups, Arizona State is 2-1, USC would be 2-1, UCLA would be 2-1, and Oregon State would be 0-3.  That doesn’t really help us as now in this three-way tie-breaker, everyone is 1-1.

The next tie-breaker is to see how teams did against the next highest placing team in the conference down until we can break the tie.  Under this scenario it would be Arizona, as Arizona and Oregon would have 4 conference losses, and Arizona defeated Oregon.  Here, Arizona State would have lost, USC lost, and UCLA won.  That means, in the case of a 4-way tie, UCLA would win the Pac 10 (assuming I’m doing all of this correctly).

That takes care of our conference champions.  Georgia will get an automatic bid, either by being in the title game or due to the “Kansas State rule.” being an at-large placed at 3rd, or at 4th if the 3rd place team is a conference champion.

Hawaii is currently in 12th, which would give them an automatic bid into the BCS as well.  They don’t play until 11:30, so we won’t know until late to see if they still have a chance.  Looking at the BCS standings, they’ll want both Boston College and Oklahoma to lose, so that they’ll drop below Hawaii in the BCS.  They would also probably prefer an Arizona upset of Arizona State and for Tennessee to lose the SEC title to prevent the Sun Devils and Volunteers from hopping over them.

However, there is still one more way Hawaii could get in, and the Pac 10 could help.  The well known rule is that a non-BCS team must place in the top 12 of the BCS to get an automatic bid.  However, they can also place in the top 16 and finish above one of the BCS conference champions.  If Oregon or UCLA win the Pac 10 today, Hawaii would likely finish higher than them in the BCS (in fact, it would pretty much be certain in UCLA’s case) and, providing Hawaii wins, they should get in, even if they drop from 12th and stay above 16th.

As for the other 2 at-large teams, if it’s Missouri vs. West Virginia in the title, I don’t see how Kansas doesn’t fall into the Fiesta Bowl.  If Ohio State gets in, expect the Rose Bowl to pick up Illinois.  How about the last team.  That becomes interesting because the BCS field gets very thin after that.  If Missouri loses, they’re probably going to get the last at-large, but let’s assume a Missouri/West Virginia title game.  After going through the top 12, we’re likely still going to have a Fiesta Bowl spot to fill.  From what I can tell, possible teams going into that spot include Arizona State, Illinois, the loser of the ACC title game, USC if they lose to UCLA, Clemson, Oregon, and if they get high enough in the standings, Brigham Young.

You’d have to believe that this spot is most likely going to the Pac 10 unless the conference just melts down today.  If both Arizona State and USC win, expect this to go to Arizona State.   If USC loses, expect this spot to go to USC.  If they both lose, then it starts getting weird.  Perhaps a team like Illinois could sneak in.