Can you believe that this will be the 11th season under the BCS? Eleven years of a system that few people even wanted, and even fewer are satisfied with. The calls for a playoff grow louder every year, but every year that goes by, only makes the system more entrenched and, by sheer force of will, more legitimate. Maybe once ESPN takes over they will finally be the one organization big enough to push the bowls around, but for the foreseeable future this is what we're stuck with. But hey, at least we got a Big 12 team against an SEC team, right?

Oh yeah, the game. On paper, it really is an incredible matchup. Two explosive offenses. Two athletic defenses. Two Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks facing each other for a title. But I'm not sure the excitement equals the matchup. Why? The one-month layoff kills all interest in college football.

This pairing was finalized over four weeks ago. So what have we been waiting for again? The traditional New Year's Day college football orgy is anachronistic. (Killed by the BCS, of course.) Exams are over. Christmas never stopped anyone from playing football. Once the NFL playoffs take over the sports landscape, it's impossible to win that formerly shared attention back. Even die-hard fans have trouble mustering energy to care about bowl games other than this one. All that not caring takes a lot out of you.

Many think the NFL's two-week layoff between conference championships and the Super Bowl is too long, but it's just enough to for the pageantry and hype to build, without everyone growing frustrated and giving up. Trying playing the game in mid-March and see who cares then.

It's also why these games are traditionally not close. Give two squads an entire month to prepare for a game and they will both handle it very differently. Chances are that one approach will work, and one won't. The layoff makes people sloppy, lazy, or worse—a live wire that can't control itself. If one team is not 100% ready to work when kickoff comes, things get ugly fast.

The good news is that you have no idea who that team will be—and this time it could be neither. I honestly could not even hazard a guess as to who will win this game or how it will go down. I know I've done a lot of bitching about this broken system and why it needs to go away, but—and this "result" is not an endorsement of the BCS at all—I really do want to see these teams play each other. Oklahoma is a machine, precise and efficient. Florida is more like a wave that simply overwhelms you. I just hope the game is entertaining, and for once, I think it will be.

BCS Championship Predictions [OU Sooners Blog]
Final Thoughts [Saurian Sagacity]
Five Reasons Oklahoma Sooners Win BCS Title Game [Crimson and Cream Machine]
Five Questions [Alligator Army]
TWTWCFB Special: Head-to-Head; It’s Science [Sparty And Friends]
Degrees of Loss Separation: Oklahoma > Florida [Simon on Sports]
Dear Sir, Eat A Bag of Dicks: Oklahoma [Mass Hysteria Sports]
Florida Gator Girl Pictures [In Game Now]
Hot Oklahoma Sooners Girls [Gunaxin]
« Which Team Wins? Perhaps We Have the Answer [Wiz Of Odds]

P.S. Don't forget. Suss. Live Blog. Servant becomes the master. Etc.

The game looks and plays just like the popular Madden NFL and NCAA football games, though all the goofy stuff such as player celebrations, cheering crowds, mascots and bands have been removed. LSU and Tennessee were the first schools to use it this season and it went well enough that XOS expects to make it available to all its clients this year. The company provides technology to most Division I schools. "The video game is an excellent resource we have," Perrilloux said. "Whenever we hit a play, that play would automatically match up with the defense that we would see or blitz we would see. If you make the wrong decision it's an automatic interception or it's an automatic incompletion."

How did Bowling Green prepare for the GMAC Bowl, we wonder? Pong? Asteroids? This?

(Kudos to Every Day Should Be Saturday for the enhancement of our original Normandy Ned graphic).

LSU Players Use Video Games To Prepare [MSNBC]
NCAA 2008: A Better Cover By Far [Every Day Should Be Saturday]

It still looks like we might have the uninspiring matchup of the Ohio State-Michigan loser facing a clearly not-their-best-team USC, though there's still hope. USC has a tough game with California this weekend, and then faces Notre Dame. If they win both those, they're almost certainly in. But: Let's head to the land of the fanciful. If USC loses this weekend, and then beats Notre Dame, and Florida loses in the SEC championship game — certainly possible — and Rutgers wins out (hardly a certainty) ... could we THEN have Rutgers in the title game? Or would they put Arkansas or somebody else in there?

Since the rest of the college football week is pretty much going to be devoted to Michigan, Ohio State and the Dead Schembechlers, we figured we should toss this out there before we forgot.

BCS Rankings [CBS Sportsline]