Longhorn fans should be disappointed that their team lost the tie-breaker for the
privilege to play in the conference championship. But their sense of victim-hood and moral outrage is poorly placed. Consider this:
After their six point loss to Tech, Texas needed Oklahoma to A. beat Tech for them, then B. beat
OSU whom Texas beat
underwhelmingly by 3 at home. Oklahoma did Texas's dirty work for them.
But Texas also needed Oklahoma to do this
unspectacularly enough to not impress the voters and computer ratings formulas, or hope for the miracle of Baylor to also beat Tech. Sorry, 'Horns. No dice...
Mack's tie-breaker methodology bitch:
The method used in a 3-way tie doesn't get controversial until this decisive fifth criterion. The
BCS's highest ranked team wins. The BCS is effectively a huge jury of knowledgeable people (polls) and five computer indexes, averaged to give each team its rating and ranking. Good a method as any, I suppose, although some fools, and their errors, are involved in these ratings.
Mack Brown's favorite tie-break method is uniform with several other elite conferences. The lowest
BCS rated team is eliminated, while the other two are evaluated by their head-to-head contest. Texas wins in Mack's favorite tie-breaker (which is why it is Mack's favorite tie-breaker). This method is as good as any other, but I fail to see a distinction in purity between allowing the
BCS rating to
eliminate a team and allowing it to
choose a team. In this case, its inherent unfairness would have been that the work of the tie-break
loser, OU, who effectively eliminated Tech via ass-whipping, would clear the way for the victor, Texas. A different result, equally arbitrary, but no more or less fair. The Big 12 can adopt this next year and I'd be fine with it.
Oklahoma high school divisions use the point spread differential. This year it would have been Tech (-38), Texas (+4), and Oklahoma (+34). Not surprisingly, Mack "Earn It On The Field" Brown hasn't mentioned this possibility.
Or pick your favorite method from these under-mentioned but reasonable tie-break methods: Highest ranked conference opponent defeated on the road, most top 25 wins, best non-conference record versus the highest caliber opponents... All of these favor Oklahoma in 2008. In fact, using the only method that could be used whereby Texas could declare a victory, we have to ignore the third party in the tie and pretend that the runner-up wasn't the very team that took the eliminated team out of the equation. Granted, this year, equally unfairly, we are ignoring that #2 beat #1. But the tie-breaker by nature must choose the value of one virtue over another. More importantly, it must be be done, and has been done, in advance, with no prejudice toward or against a particular team. Mack can cry all he wants to. To confess a weakness of moral character, I'd enjoy it
more if the system were distinctly unfair to him. But it's not. Mack, root for Missouri and enjoy a steaming, hot cup of shut-the-hell-up while you still have some esteem among your foes.
The best solution to the whole, overstated tie-breaker "crisis", by the way, is Mike Leach's: Graduation rate. It (presumably) favors Tech, but what better way to put all the BS in perspective, and to better motivate elite level coaches to look after their student athletes as students.
