Thank Goodness Ohio State Was On Probation

A couple days after Alabama’s thrashing of Notre Dame, the most important thing about the BCS title game finally dawned on me: Thank goodness Ohio State was on probation.

Ohio State finished 12-0, but the Buckeyes were ineligible to go anywhere after ending the season with a win over Michigan. If they had been eligible, and the Big Ten title game had made them 13-0, they likely would have played Notre Dame for the national title. We don’t know what the computer rankings would have said, but a Notre Dame-Ohio State finale certainly would have been possible.

Now, I am a die-hard Ohio State fan. I once knocked on the door at Woody Hayes’ house just so I could meet the man (I did; got an autograph, too). But even I think it would have been a travesty if Ohio State and Notre Dame played for the BCS title.

Sure, the game likely would have been close, and it would have been billed as a clash of the only unbeatens in the country. But it would have been a travesty. The Buckeyes were unbeaten, but even I don’t think they were very good; at least they didn’t go out and prove it, like Notre Dame did.

As Alabama clearly showed last week, a BCS championship game without an SEC team would not be a championship game. It would have been absurd to have two Midwest teams make the final just because they were unbeaten, ahead of a one-loss SEC team. Absurd, I tell you. In fact, I wrote about this a couple months ago.

So let’s start planning for next year’s BCS championship game: Automatic berth to the SEC champion, regardless of how many losses it has. Everybody else can fight it out for the other spot.