SEC, Big 12 games nearly raise a bracket

FROM ATLANTA — It's a shame Texas couldn't be in the Big 12 North or this year's Missouri couldn't be last year's Missouri.

Otherwise, what we'd have today in college football is, dare we say . . . a playoff (and it's still pretty close to one).

It wouldn't be the eight-team format Barack Obama may have to amend the Constitution to get implemented, and it would exclude USC (sorry) and Utah ("U" deserved better).

But it could have looked remarkably like the seeded "plus-one" model Bowl Championship Series commissioners rejected in the spring.

Imagine a national semifinal game between BCS No. 1 Alabama and No. 4 Florida in the Southeastern Conference title game.

You don't have to imagine it, that's the game being played today at the Georgia Dome.

And if Texas were 11-1 and in the North Division, the No. 3 Longhorns would be playing No. 2 Oklahoma for the Big 12 title and a berth in the Jan. 8 championship game.

But Texas is not so geographically aligned, and Missouri (9-3) is not the Missouri that entered last year's Big 12 final needing only to defeat Oklahoma to earn a title-game berth.

What we have today is what we have, which is pretty good -- call it a three-out-of Final Four:

Alabama (12-0) vs. Florida (11-1) is bigger than an elephant's ear.

Two SEC schools, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the Associated Press media poll, are playing each other for a 99%-certain berth in the national title game.

It marks the 40th matchup of 1-2 in the AP poll and the first time it has happened in a conference title game.

Wouldn't you like to see the BCS screw it up like this every year?

The players involved are top-of-the-linebacker and the style contrast could not be more intriguing: Florida's speed against the girth of blue-collar Alabama -- Crimson Tide defensive lineman/forklift Terrence Cody's nickname should be "The Human Eclipse."

Except Alabama, as a team, isn't exactly carrying a piano on its back.

Toss in that the game is being played on spring-loaded artificial turf and what we see may look like the Olympic trials.

"That's going to be a fast track," Florida Coach Urban Meyer said this week, "but the team we're playing is going to be fast as well."

Florida is championed by junior quarterback Tim Tebow, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, who stood up after the Gators' lone loss against Mississippi and said you would never see a player play harder than he was going to play the rest of the year.