Are You Ready for a Florida/Alabama National Semifinal?

Florida’s impressive 49-10 demolition of Georgia handed the Bulldogs their second conference loss and has given Tim Tebow and the Gators the inside track to a SEC East Division title and a conference championship game berth. A year ago, it was Georgia that exploited Florida’s defense and harassed the quarterback en route to a stirring victory. On Saturday, the roles were reversed as Florida used its speed on both sides of the ball to rip apart the Bulldogs. Tebow was amazing, running for three touchdowns and throwing for two more. He’s not putting up the numbers of a year ago, but last year’s Heisman Trophy winner is playing at just as high a level. He remains in contention to be only the second collegiate ever to win consecutive Heisman’s. The Gators are playing the best ball of the season, and with the strength of their conference there’s a good chance Urban Meyer’s team could be playing “playoff” games during the stretch run.

Now that they have completed the toughest hurdle on their schedule, Florida officially controls its own destiny in getting to Miami for a shot at the BCS title game on January 8. This may seem hard to grasp, given Florida’s number five national ranking and a remaining schedule against teams with a 19-14 combined record, but it’s actually very true. That’s because Florida would have the opportunity to finish their season by taking on the likely number one team in the nation in the SEC Championship Game. That would be Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide, who executed a similar drubbing of the Georgia Bulldogs in the first half of their 41-30 win in Athens on September 27th. That remains the most dominant performance any of the top teams have had on the road, and supports Alabama’s claim for the top spot in the BCS now that Texas has been defeated.

Plenty of things still need to fall into place – most notably Alabama’s Saban Bowl showdown in Death Valley with LSU next week – but the road to the Georgia Dome represents an essential playoff drive for both programs, a journey that would culminate with their projected meeting on December 6 serving as a national semifinal game. The Gators still have four games left, and Alabama has three, but both are going to be prohibitive favorites in the rest of their games. With the way each is playing, a collision in Atlanta seems like the only possible scenario. In that case, the eventual SEC conference champion would have rightfully earned its spot in the BCS title game by winning a top-five showdown on a neutral field with the nation watching. Regardless of what goes on elsewhere, the SEC Championship would be almost guaranteed to harbor one of the slots in the national title game.

The Big 12 has been a tremendous conference all year long and is deserving of its consideration as the top conference in America, but the imbalance in its divisions creates a large headache that works to the SEC’s advantage. The Big 12 South has been much stronger and deeper than the North and the logjam between national championship hopefuls Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas in the South Division could come back to shut them out of the national championship picture. In any potential Big 12 Championship Game, the champion of the Southern Division would not have the opportunity for a quality win to boost its resume before the final BCS rankings came out. Kansas or Missouri would be the likely opponent for the eventual winner of the quartet. Those are two talented teams, but a conference championship win over one of those two teams doesn’t come close to holding the weight of a win over an undefeated Alabama or a one-loss Florida. This would pretty much guarantee the SEC Champion a spot in the BCS title game over the Big 12 Champion and create plenty of heartache in the Midwest. The Big 12’s best hope for a national championship remains a 13-0 season from Texas Tech, but that seems like a longshot with the Red Raiders still having back-to-back games against top-10 teams to conquer following their win over top-ranked Texas. If Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree can’t find a way to beat both Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, then the situation described earlier becomes very real.

In the bizarre world of college football, the system prohibits formal playoff games, but in this unique situation, it is artificially being created. The way the cards are falling, Penn State is in the best shape to earn one national championship bid with the SEC Champion likely having the best resume to snag the other one. Last November, the college football world was turned upside down by the abundance of shocking defeats at the top of the polls. If the folks in Gainesville and Tuscaloosa can avoid the upset bug in the month of November this time around, it will set up a colossal meeting on the first Saturday of December to set up a SEC Championship Game that would effectively be a championship play-in game.