Burning questions about BCS, a few candidates for Tennessee and more

Sam Bradford and the Sooners finish the regular season with two difficult games against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. John Biever/SI Stewart Mandel's Mailbag Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Stewart Mandel on Twitter

Say what you will about the BCS. One thing that's always been fascinating for me in 11 years of covering the thing is that you can count on an entirely unforeseen, unprecedented scenario to present itself every single year. There's too much time left to say what this year's edition will be, but there's one distinct possibility that seems to be on everybody's minds right now:

If Oklahoma beats Texas Tech and there ends up being a three-way tie between UT, Tech and OU in the Big 12 South, the BCS rankings determine the division winner. How do you think the voters would sort that out?
-- Byron, Tulsa, Okla.

See -- that's a new one.

A formula that was purportedly designed to determine the participants in the national championship game may now be used to decide the winner of a conference's division. The only comparable situation I can think of is the SEC in 2003, when Georgia, Florida and Tennessee all finished 6-2 in league play and 1-1 against each other. Georgia went to the SEC title game based on the BCS standings -- but those teams weren't in contention for the national title. At least two of these teams will be.

And here's the strangest part of all: Despite presently sitting at No. 3 in the standings, despite the fact it will most likely finish 11-1, Texas probably has the least chance of the three of playing for its conference championship.

First of all, if Texas Tech beats Oklahoma, or if the Sooners beat the Red Raiders but then lose to Oklahoma State, Tech wins the South, either straight up or in a head-to-head tiebreaker with the Longhorns. And I believe Oklahoma would win the three-way tie.

For one thing, the Sooners, for no logical reason, are already a spot above Texas in the coaches' poll, and they're only a spot behind the 'Horns in the Harris Poll. The discrepancy between them right now is in the computers, where Texas is third and OU is tied for fifth. Were the Sooners to beat 10-0 Texas Tech and (currently) 8-2 Oklahoma State, while Texas plays 6-4 Kansas and 4-6 Texas A&M, you have to think that gap would vanish. Basically, Oklahoma benefits from getting to make the last impression.

I'm fairly confident that's how said scenario would resolve itself. The better question is, should that be the case? That depends on your criteria.

Some people (I'm not one of them) like to compare two or more teams with the same record solely by the game they lost, in which case Texas (last-second touchdown on the road) has a better loss than Oklahoma (by 10 points at a neutral site). Obviously we don't know yet the nature of Tech's theoretical defeat.

Personally, I prefer to compare the 11 games the teams won rather than the one they lost. Texas will wind up being the only one of the three to beat the presumptive North Division champ, Missouri. But if we're talking BCS standings, that takes into account your nonconference schedule as well. Oklahoma beat two teams currently ranked in the top 25, 9-2 TCU and 7-2 Cincinnati. By contrast, Texas' best win came against 7-3 Rice, Texas Tech's against 5-4 Nevada.

There is no right answer to this question, but there is good news: History tells us that whenever we spend this much time fretting over a possible BCS dilemma ... something completely different will supplant it.

How can people claim that with the BCS the regular season is more important and is a de facto playoff? It's hard to call the regular season a playoff when you don't even know the rules of the playoff from year to year. Or even week to week, depending on who loses and the voters' whims.
-- Travis Trader, St. Louis

No, the regular season is not a playoff, or at least not a conventional one. See above.

But why, you ask, is the regular season "more important" with the BCS in place? Let us count the ways -- just using last weekend as an example. If college football had a playoff ...

• Iowa's dramatic upset of Penn State wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. The Nittany Lions can and probably will still win the Big Ten. The loss would only hurt their playoff seeding.

• Alabama's overtime win over LSU -- one of the most intense endings I've ever covered -- would have been largely irrelevant. While the game would still be a big deal because of Nick Saban's return to Baton Rouge, the palpable tension in that stadium after the Tigers blocked the Crimson Tide's field goal was due to the fact that Alabama's entire season was on the line.

Under a playoff, if the Tide had lost ... oh well. They could still clinch a spot in the SEC title game the following week.

• Would anyone outside of the two states involved have cared about the Texas Tech-Oklahoma State game? I doubt it. Whichever team won would still have more work to do to win its division, and the fact that Tech retained its No. 2 ranking in the BCS standings would no longer be part of the discussion.

• The only game in the country that would have taken on more importance under a playoff was TCU-Utah. If that's the kind of sport you really want, America, I have good news for you: It already exists. It's played on Sundays.