by Tim Cowlishaw from DallasNews.com
Oklahoma needed its fair share of good luck to take command of a football game with Oklahoma State on Saturday night.
The Sooners might need even more luck to win a beauty contest with Texas this afternoon.
After watching the Sooners' 61-41 victory over the Cowboys in a wild game at Boone Pickens Stadium, I think the Sooners should jump past Texas in the BCS rankings, a development that would put Oklahoma into the Big 12 championship game against Missouri.
I also think the Longhorns and their fans are right to think they are getting hosed in this process.
That's because Texas has a good gripe, not with the BCS system, but with the Big 12. The conference uses a three-way tiebreaker that is unimaginative and leaves everything in the hands of voters and computers.
With the Sooners, Longhorns and Texas Tech all tied at 7-1 in the Big 12 South, today's BCS rankings are used to break the tie.
It doesn't have to be that way.
It isn't that way in some other major conferences.
In the SEC and ACC, which also have two divisions within a conference, the tiebreaker actually uses game results to make the ultimate choice. They still use the BCS rankings to drop the lowest team (in this case, Texas Tech).
Then the head-to-head matchup between the two higher-ranked teams can determine who goes to the championship game.
In this case, that would make Texas' 45-35 win over Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl the deciding factor.
And I understand why Longhorns fans think that should be the case. But it's not the case, not yet in the Big 12. And it's not fair in a three-way tie to simply say that Tech's victory over Texas doesn't exist. Or that Oklahoma's 44-point win over Tech shouldn't matter.
Until the Big 12 changes the rule – and we can only hope the conference will do it this off-season – you have to look at all the factors that can be considered.
And plenty of those factors favor the Sooners.
They finished the regular season by scoring more than 60 points against two strong, ranked teams – Tech and Oklahoma State.
The Sooners played the toughest schedule of the three tied teams. Cincinnati won the Big East and will be a top-15 team this week. TCU already is a top-15 team. The best nonconference team Texas played was Rice.
For what it's worth, the Sooners had the most impressive victory in the matchups of the three tied teams (65-21 over Tech). And on Saturday night, they scored the most impressive road win in the Big 12 this season.
The Sooners, Red Raiders and Longhorns did not lose at home this season. Neither did 12th-ranked Oklahoma State ... until Saturday night.
