Baylor can’t just think about the national picture though, because there in the midst of a hot race for what would be their first conference championship since 1980, when the program was still in the old Southwest Conference. The Big 12 also has a good shot at gaining a second bid into the major bowls, and finally there’s a race for the league’s top non-BCS game, the Cotton Bowl, which offers the opportunity to play a high-level SEC opponent.
The race for the BCS National Championship Game became crystal clear in Week 11 of the college football season, as there’s now no doubt that Alabama and Florida State are on a collision course to met in Pasadena for the title. Style points no longer matter for these teams, only winning football games.
There still remains a lot of interesting dynamics going on underneath the surface though,
The league has nine bids to fill, including the automatic spot in the BCS, which is the Orange Bowl, unless the champion (presumably Florida State) ends up in the national title game. If the ACC should get an at-large selection to the BCS, everyone moves up one rung on the bowl ladder and that means the conference needs ten teams to fill out its commitments.
College football Week 11 is marked with good games all over the TV schedule, and some big ones at night. Maybe it’s a good thing that Oklahoma-Baylor and Oregon-Stanford go down on Thursday night, because even without the week’s two biggest games, Saturday is still stocked. Here’s how the TV schedule breaks down…
Oregon is ranked third in the BCS standings, though it’s generally assumed that a win at Stanford would push the Ducks past Florida State into the 2-spot and give them control of their destiny in the national championship push.
It’s the biggest night in the history of the Baylor-Oklahoma rivalry on Thursday night. Granted, given Baylor’s spotty football record there probably aren’t a lot of a candidates for the honor. But on Thursday, the Bears and Sooners play a game that will decide if Baylor is a legit national championship contender and if Oklahoma still has a shot to win the Big 12.
Central Florida hosts Houston on Saturday night (7 PM ET, ESPN2) and the winner will hold the inside track to the outright conference championship and the BCS automatic bid.
Within the Pac-12’s six contract bowls outside the BCS, there’s a another divide. The Alamo, Holiday and Sun offer the chances to play what should be pretty good teams from the Big 12 or ACC, giving a team the opportunity to end its season with a notable win.
The game of the regular season in the Pac-12–maybe the entire country–is coming up Thursday night when Oregon visits Stanford (9 PM ET, ESPN). But there’s a lot more going on in this conference, and it starts with a compelling race in the league’s South Division. TheSportsNotebook’s college football coverage focuses in on the Pac-12 Sou
TheSportsNotebook’s has gone into recent lore with a look back on the high points of the Miami-Florida State rivalry and a preview of Saturday night’s game specifically. Our college football coverage closes its prep for Saturday with a look at the TV schedule that fans have in front of us…
For those of us who remember quite vividly the college football world of the late 1980s and early 1990s, this game wakes up the echoes. It’s easy to say that the Miami-Florida State rivalry was hot back in the day, but I don’t think even those words convey just how hot it was.
Week 9 of the college football season is in the books and that means it’s time for updated BCS bowl projections. The most notable developments this week were as follows…