Bowl Championship Series

'With all the serious matters facing our country, surely Congress has more important issues than spending taxpayer money to dictate how college football is played."

From New Orleans -- Alabama's Crimson Tide football team had been hearing the song all week, at every rally and on every street corner of this LSU hyped-up city. Hold that Tiger. Hold that Tiger. And so it did. The Crimson Tide's 21-0 victory, the first-ever shutout in a national title game, got Alabama the $30,000 crystal bowl with the Bowl Championship Series' initials on it, and the final No. 1 ranking too. It will get the Tide little more, certainly not any sort of national groundswell of support as a team of legendary greatness.

NO. 1 OHIO STATE: Clinched a berth in the Jan. 8 BCS national title game with a 42-39 win over Michigan in Columbus. A formal bid won't be announced until Dec. 3. NO. 2 MICHIGAN: The Wolverines suffered their first loss but played Ohio State close enough to warrant consideration for a rematch against the Buckeyes. NO. 3 USC: The Trojans stayed very much in contention by shutting out the high-powered California offense in the second half and posting a comeback win at the Coliseum. NO.

No. 1 Louisiana State (13-0) and No. 2 Alabama (11-1) meet for the Bowl Championship Series national title Monday night in an all-Southeastern Conference rematch. LSU defeated Alabama, 9-6, in overtime Nov. 5 in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The SEC seeks its sixth straight title and eighth crown in the 14-year history of the BCS. LSU seeks to become the first team to win three BCS titles and Alabama is looking for its second BCS title after winning in the 2009 season. Alabama claims 13 national titles since getting its first in 1925 after a 20-19 win over Washington in the Rose Bowl.

This is the last in a weekly-ranking series of musings and observations on the national college football scene. If we have offended, irritated or otherwise disparaged any teams or Internet fan bases, especially in the Southeastern Conference, well, that's why we started doing this in the first place. There will be final rankings after the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Louisiana State and Alabama on Jan. 9. Coaches Les Miles and Nick Saban will be asked to donate $10 for every field goal scored, and $1 million for every touchdown, to their favorite local charities.

So it's come down to this: another Saturday in December filled with plot lines, potholes and conspiracy theories. Nothing much is at stake today except prestigious spots in the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Orange bowls, millions of dollars, the Heisman Trophy, the credibility of the bowl championship series, pride and perhaps, in the end, prejudice.

It would be accurate to say the arc of Boise State's undefeated season has not matched, say, that of Auburn's. No one around the state house here has bellowed "any team that emerges from the Western Athletic Conference unscathed deserves a shot at the national title!" The Boise State coach -- quick, do you know his name? -- has not campaigned for his team, called the BCS a "failure" or tried to woo Associated Press poll voters.

Welcome to the Rose Bowl of the future, a place where the Utahs, Brigham Youngs and Hawaiis of the college football world are welcome. Sort of. According to a modification in the Bowl Championship Series rules, the Tournament of Roses could be forced to take a non-BCS team in the next few years.

With little hope of a national playoff in sight, college football power brokers on Tuesday turned the game over to computer geeks, unveiling a complicated four-pronged statistical system to determine the 1-2 matchup in the bowl championship series' annual national title game. Seeking the fairest way in a non-playoff world to assure that the top two schools meet in an annual title game, the new formula will consider four variables: * Polls.

This marks the last season of the bowl championship series as we know it but, unfortunately for its many critics, not the end of the BCS. The controversial mechanism for sorting college football's complicated business limps into its eighth season, with a new four-year cycle to begin in 2006. A patch-work answer for a sport that has refused to embrace a playoff, the BCS was created in 1998 to free teams from their historical bowl ties and allow for a No. 1 vs. No. 2 title-game match-up.

Reporting from New Orleans -- That was then, this is now, and this is how: Many Louisiana State fans still don't recognize the split college football title in 2003 after USC was awarded the Associated Press crown. USC finished No. 1 in both regular-season polls but was No. 3 behind Oklahoma and LSU in the final Bowl Championship Series standings. LSU defeated Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl to win the BCS title while USC claimed the AP title with a win over Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

Oregon defensive back Eddie Pleasant is looking forward to a pleasant memory of his final Bowl Championship Series game. The first two did not end well, Oregon losing to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl two years ago and to Auburn in the BCS title game in January. Pleasant, a former La Palma Kennedy High standout, played a regrettable but unforgettable role in the championship game loss, though he appeared to do nearly everything right on the game's pivotal play. Late in the fourth quarter, Auburn running back Michael Dyer carried the ball for a short gain before Pleasant pulled him toward the turf for an apparent tackle.

This is the last in a weekly-ranking series of musings and observations on the national college football scene. If we have offended, irritated or otherwise disparaged any teams or Internet fan bases, especially in the Southeastern Conference, well, that's why we started doing this in the first place. There will be final rankings after the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Louisiana State and Alabama on Jan. 9. Coaches Les Miles and Nick Saban will be asked to donate $10 for every field goal scored, and $1 million for every touchdown, to their favorite local charities.

This year's Bowl Championship Series motto: "Thought you really had a chance, did you?" Every game "sort of" counted. The BCS worked in Alabama, but outside Tuscaloosa there's ongoing discussion that it needs to be tweaked into an incinerator. Oklahoma State fell short in pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in formula-calculation history. Too bad close doesn't count in the BCS. They're cheering in Dixie and crying a river in Stillwater because Louisiana State and Alabama are playing Jan. 9 for the national title in New Orleans.

Things no one could have imagined a month ago: • Joe Paterno's being fired after 46 seasons at Penn State with a late-night Wednesday phone call from the interim school president. • Boise State's losing its first conference game at home since 1998 on another botched, last-second field-goal attempt. • Oregon tailback LaMichael James' returning from a seemingly season-ending elbow dislocation to rush for 146 yards against Stanford and possibly wrest the Heisman Trophy from Andrew Luck.

Reporting from Palo Alto, Calif. -- Stanford let the grass grow this week in an attempt to neutralize Oregon's speed but ended up being cut down to size. The most important game on the Farm since 1940 turned from frenzy to fizzle as No. 6 Oregon soundly defeated No. 3 Stanford, 53-30, before a crowd of 50,360 at Stanford Stadium. Stanford turned the ball over five times. "You play against a team with that kind of speed, that kind of talent, that's as well coached as they are, you turn the ball over, you can't win," Cardinal Coach David Shaw, summing up the night perfectly, said afterward.

Like test scores on a classroom door, the final bowl championships series standings were posted Sunday -- and not all the student-athletes walked away happy. Capping the end of another tumultuous regular season in college football, USC and Oklahoma finished first and second in the BCS -- and Auburn did not. Texas is going to the Rose Bowl, for the first time, to play Michigan, for the first time. And 10-1 California, ranked ahead of Texas in both human polls, is going to the Holiday Bowl.

The strangest half a season in memory is over and a lot of it was forgettable. The Big 12 Conference will be home for Christmas, just barely, but check back regarding the Big East Conference. Texas A&M followed through on plans to join the Southeastern Conference, the one big lead the Aggies haven't blown this year. The departure suspends a rivalry with Texas that started in 1894. Texas A&M called Texas about continuing the series but Texas said "let me check my schedule" and reported it was booked through 2018.

One problem with having 13 undefeated teams remaining only one week before the release of the first Bowl Championship Series standings is that, for some, it's not really a problem. The major bowls aren't upset. The Rose Bowl won't care about any five-alarm, talk-radio playoff controversy if it gets undefeated Wisconsin versus undefeated Stanford. You think the Sugar Bowl will cry if, a week before it hosts No. 1 and No. 2, it also gets to host No. 3 vs. No. 5 or 6? New Orleans would start Mardi Gras early if the one-loss loser of Alabama-Louisiana State played undefeated Boise State in a prelude to the Alabama-LSU winner playing, say, 12-0 Oklahoma.