Bowl Championship Series

No. 15 Rutgers' improbable comeback win over No. 3 Louisville on Thursday might not be enough to propel the undefeated Scarlet Knights into college football's national championship picture, but it sure raised a lot of other teams' hopes. With experts conceding the No. 1 berth at season's end to the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game next Saturday, previously unbeaten Louisville had the inside track to the No. 2 spot in the Bowl Championship Series standings. That would have put the Cardinals in the national title game Jan. 8 in Glendale, Ariz.

Though bowl games and Maryland Terrapins have been mutually exclusive terms in the first two years under Randy Edsall, many believe that will change in 2013.  Given the fact that the Terps seemed to be headed toward becoming bowl-eligible last season until they ran out of healthy bodies -- particularly at quarterback -- winning at least six games this fall doesn't appear to be far-fetched. But how far do you think the Terps can go -- and to which bowl? I think it's fair to assume that Maryland won't go from 4-8 to a Bowl Championship Series game, though Ralph Friedgen did that in his first year after inheriting a 5-6 team loaded with NFL talent from Ron Vanderlinden in 2001.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame ... 9:30 p.m. [ESPN Classic] This one examines the lack of a college football playoff and the Bowl Championship Series. So if we're not blaming the BCS, then whose fault is it? Texas fans want to know.

This should be one heck of an exciting final weekend because it says on Page 5 of the Bowl Championship Series media guide, "The BCS delivers the most meaningful regular season in sports. " The manual reiterates, "The BCS plays an important role in preserving and enhancing college football's unique regular reason where every game counts. " Except every game this weekend doesn't count. In fact, none of them really count. The national title game, no matter what happens, is going to be No. 1 Louisiana State vs. No. 2 Alabama.

The Sun's preview section will include a look at instant replay and other major national stories, including Southern California's bid to win the Bowl Championship Series title again. There will also be features on the Atlantic Coast Conference, Maryland, Navy, Morgan State and Towson.

The Bowl Championship Series matchups are all about computer rankings and politics in the highest echelon of college football. The rest of the games are about alumni bases and the particular leanings of the individual bowl directors. Emerald Bowl Maryland vs. Oregon State, San Francisco, Dec. 28, 8:30 p.m., ESPN, 105.7 FM, 1300 AM

8:15 p.m. [chs. 45, 5] See Texas try to make its statement against the Bowl Championship Series in the Longhorns' game against Ohio State. Also see whether Fox can come up with another faux pas to match the one from the Orange Bowl, in which the graphic showing Cincinnati's offensive line had a photo of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow when we were supposed to see tackle Khalil El-Amin.

Really, college football's post-season isn't complicated. Based on the Bowl Championship Series standings, the Maryland Terrapins will play Jan. 2 in the Orange Bowl. The Terps earned their BCS berth by virtue of their SOS and MOV and by winning the ACC. What's not to understand? The Bowl Championship Series - the often-criticized system for determining college football's national champion - has proven itself a coherent and undisputed ranking system. After inspecting Maryland's season (taking into account the average of the Associated Press media poll and USA Today-ESPN coaches poll; Maryland's strength of schedule, or SOS; its margin of victory, or MOV; the "Colley Bias Free College Football Rankings," an astrophysicist's creation of a computer ranking free of human handling - assuming Colley's sophisticated algorithm is beyond human error; and taking into strict account yesterday's high tide)

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- It is finally No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Florida tonight for the Bowl Championship Series national title in the game everyone outside of Michigan and Boise, Idaho, can't wait to see. It is finally time these schools met, at University of Phoenix Stadium, in the concluding act of an exciting season that ended with, among other bizarre things, Nick Saban going to Alabama. BCS national championship No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Florida, Glendale, Ariz., tonight, 8:15, chs. 45, 5 Line: Ohio State by 7

The second wave of postseason bids is poised to wash through college football. How deep the swells reach depends on a handful of games today. Starting with the Bowl Championship Series, most postseason scenarios hinge on three games: Miami at Syracuse, Notre Dame at Southern California and Oklahoma at Oklahoma State. Miami must win to keep a place in the BCS title game, the Fiesta Bowl, while Oklahoma must win to stay in position should the Hurricanes falter. Unbeaten Ohio State (13-0)

A book written by three Yahoo Sports reporters attempts to blow the boilermaker top off the sinister, fraudulent and perhaps illegal Bowl Championship Series, now entering its 13th preposterous season. Yahoo, mind you, is no in-depth dandelion. The same investigative news organization that brought you "Near-Death to USC Football" has unleashed "Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series. " Eviscerated in only 195 pages, the BCS is portrayed as the devil incarnate.

News item: President Barack Obama has announced that he is rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers in tonight's Super Bowl, claiming that they have long been his favorite team if you don't count his hometown Chicago Bears. My take: What, has the guy been taking sports fan lessons from Hillary Clinton? Bonus take: It's really a wily political move, cozying up to the Super Bowl team that's from one of the great political battleground states instead of the team that plays in John McCain's backyard, but I would rather he concentrate on the truly important issues facing this country ... like fixing the Bowl Championship Series.

8:15 p.m. [chs. 45, 5] See Texas try to make its statement against the Bowl Championship Series in the Longhorns' game against Ohio State. Also see whether Fox can come up with another faux pas to match the one from the Orange Bowl, in which the graphic showing Cincinnati's offensive line had a photo of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow when we were supposed to see tackle Khalil El-Amin.

News item: Utah improved to 13-0 with a solid, 31-17 victory over No. 4 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl on Friday night, which should further energize calls for a playoff system to determine the Football Bowl Subdivision national championship. My take: I think so. The Utes soundly defeated a team that was No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25, the USA Today coaches poll and the Bowl Championship Series rankings for five of the final six weeks of the regular season. If you take the "C" out of BCS, you'll get my opinion of the current system.

East Carolina coach Skip Holtz hopes to meet with Syracuse's athletic director but said he is not close to accepting the Orange's head coaching job. Holtz said yesterday that he has had no formal meetings with Syracuse and called an NFL Network report that he was to be introduced as the new coach today "inaccurate." Holtz, however, didn't rule out replacing the fired Greg Robinson. "I would like to have the opportunity to talk to [Syracuse AD] Daryl Gross," Holtz said. "But at this point, no, I'm not going through an interview process.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame ... 9:30 p.m. [ESPN Classic] This one examines the lack of a college football playoff and the Bowl Championship Series. So if we're not blaming the BCS, then whose fault is it? Texas fans want to know.

The Maryland football team, which inspired modest expectations when the season began, was ranked No. 8 last night in the first Bowl Championship Series standings, which eventually determine the national championship game. It comes one day after the Terps (7-0) got their first Top 10 ranking in the Associated Press poll since the beginning of the 1985 season, checking in at No. 10, and five days before the team's showdown at No. 19 Florida State in Tallahassee on Saturday. Maryland (No. 12 in the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll)

MIAMI - Down the road, Maryland's football program should be better for its Orange Bowl experience. But the learning experience was humbling last night, as the No. 6 Terrapins received a 56-23 beating from fifth-ranked Florida before 73,640 at Pro Player Stadium. The here and now was a display of dominance by the Gators (10-2), who overcame the disappointment of a loss to Tennessee at the end of the season and the distraction of quarterback Rex Grossman's surprise benching because of a curfew violation.

Presenting the last sports media notes of the year, with the reminder that, though one size is supposed to fit all, you can try to exchange the column if you have saved your receipt: So the NFL has gone from dipping its toe into the waters of taking over game telecasts to trying to wade in deeper. Fortunately for all of us, the water was still too cold. Or, more accurately, too hot. No one got too worked up last year when the NFL Network started carrying regular-season games, but the rumbles of discontent grew louder this season because of a marquee matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys and tomorrow's New England Patriots-New York Giants game.

If you wanted to instigate even more heated debate on the need for a college football playoff system, you couldn't have ordered up a better set of circumstances than the current one. Any team that found itself perched at No. 1 or No. 2 and on its way to the national championship game acted as if that rarefied air was too difficult to breathe. As a result, Ohio State backed into the No. 1 Bowl Championship Series ranking without having played in the two weeks since it beat Michigan, 14-3, on Nov. 17. The Buckeyes climbed from No. 5 to No. 1 in the BCS without even putting on their helmets.