Mike Celizic

For all its flaws — and there were many — the Fiesta Bowl was a highly entertaining and competitive football game with a storybook ending. It also came with a message for the BCS: You guys really blew it when you left Utah out of the equation.

The Texas and Ohio State teams we saw Monday night in University of Phoenix Stadium played hard and gave us a terrific fourth quarter. But they did so many things wrong, especially in as uninspiring a first half as anyone should ever have to sit through, they both surrendered any right to be considered as an alternate national championship candidate.

Ohio State, which came in with two losses, including one to Penn State, was not going to make a case for being one of the top teams in the country, no matter what it did. But Texas stood to state its case for consideration in the AP poll as the top team in the country. All it needed to do was mop the stadium floor with Ohio State.

Texas failed in that mission. The Longhorns weren’t admitting it after the game. Colt McCoy, the Heisman finalist quarterback, played a first half that could be described at best as mediocre. With a chance to take the lead late in the half, he underthrew an open receiver in the end zone, giving the ball to the Buckeyes on the one.

McCoy redeemed himself with a final drive that produced the winning touchdown with 16 seconds to go. This prompted him to proclaim, “I don’t think there’s anybody in the country who can beat us at this point.”

Silly fellow. He had barely beaten Ohio State, which is a member of the all-powerful Big Ten. That’s the conference that sent seven of its 11 teams to bowl games, including two to BCS bowls. That would have been incredibly impressive if any of the teams other than Iowa had bothered to win their games.

But the Big Ten’s reputation exceeds its performance these days. The conference finished 1-6 in the NCAA’s exhibition season. Penn State, a one-loss team that had beaten Ohio State, got thrashed by USC in the Rose Bowl. So beating Ohio State does not justify a “mission accomplished” kind of reaction by the Longhorns.

The Buckeyes played hard, but their defense couldn’t cope when Texas went to a no-huddle offense and failed terribly in the game’s deciding drive. Their offense was incoherent at best, especially once Beanie Wells got hurt and had to sit out the second half. True freshman quarterback Terrelle Pryor will be a good one, but he’s not an accomplished passer — yet. Mostly, the Buckeyes’ best play was letting Pryor scramble for first downs.

USC does have an argument for being considered as the top team. The Men of Troy utterly dominated Penn State in the Rose Bowl and can legitimately argue that they can beat anyone. After watching Monday night’s Fiesta Bowl, they have to think they can easily dispatch Texas.

But USC did lose during the season to Oregon State. That leaves Utah as the one team that really has grounds for complaint. They whipped a one-loss Alabama team every way possible to end the year as college football’s only major undefeated team. But Utah doesn’t play in a BCS conference, so it gets no respect from the computers and the voters.

Sadly, the BCS has decided that the two best teams in the country are Oklahoma and Florida, even though each has a loss. Oklahoma’s loss was to Texas, which makes the Sooners’ presence in the mythical national championship game even more suspect.

It all argues more eloquently than any pundit with a word processor can for a real playoff that would establish a legitimate champion, not one based on the judgment of men and machines.

Monday also argued for the Big Ten being demoted until it proves it can compete with BCS conferences other than the ACC. Ohio State has dumped its last two big bowls and USC has four straight Rose Bowl wins. The rest of the conference isn’t any better.

These things ordinarily run in cycles, and one has to assume the Big Ten will eventually get better. But at the moment, it doesn’t deserve the reputation as the meanest, toughest conference in the country that so many still give it.

Ohio State had a chance to demonstrate that at least one Big Ten team could still beat a major opponent. And Texas did its best in the first half to give the game to the Buckeyes. They almost took the Longhorns up on the offer, but in the end, they let Texas march down the field and into the end zone.

It was a great finish for the Longhorns, but that doesn’t make Texas a claimant to the national championship. It was Ohio State they beat, and that just barely. If there were a playoff, the Longhorns would be in it. But there isn’t and they’re not.

Their season is over. The arguments go on.

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