by Don Borst, FOXSports.com
The voters should do what the Big 12 game officials didn't have the guts to do.
That is, put Texas Christian (or Cincinnati, for that matter) into the BCS national championship game.
It's too bad it won't happen. The referees have an excuse: They work for the Big 12 Conference, which desperately needed Texas to avoid an upset by Nebraska.
The voters have no excuse. They still get to choose among undefeated teams to put in the national championship game against Alabama. But chances are, they will choose Texas.
Four times over the years, the Big 12 has screwed itself out of the national title game with a huge upset in the conference championship game. They weren't going to allow that to happen again, no matter how dominant Ndamukong Suh was for Nebraska.
Look, I don't hate the Longhorns. And I don't root for tcu, or Cincinnati ... or Nebraska. I don't hate the BCS, and I don't necessarily even crave a playoff tournament.
But that ending of the Big 12 championship game was just wrong.
Here's exactly what happened: There were 24 incomplete passes in the Texas-Nebraska game. On every one of them — every single one (I know, I went back and checked in slow motion) — the game clock ticked off that second, and sometimes another. That's how it always works in this and every other game: There's a bit of a human element (the eye sending the message to the brain, the brain relaying it to the finger on the clock button, the electronic impulses prompting the clock to stop).
And so, when Colt McCoy inexplicably decided to run a play with six seconds remaining instead of calling timeout or, well, showing any sense of urgency, he rolled out and threw the ball away, way out of bounds, as the clock ticked down to 0:00.
Nebraska rushed the field, Bo Pellini's team seemingly in possession of a sensational 12-10 triumph.
But since Texas coach Mack Brown wanted a second placed back on the clock, and because the Big 12 wanted to have a second placed back on the clock, and because all of the six major BCS conferences HAD TO HAVE a second placed back on the clock, and because the referees figured they might never have a chance to work for the league ever again if they do this wrong ... that's how it went.
So, unlike every other similar play in the game, the officials overruled the clock and put 0:01 back up on the scoreboard, and Texas ran the field goal team out there and Hunter Lawrence kicked it through.
So, since the refs felt the need to overrule the clock, the voters can always overrule the game officials. It ain't right: Texas has no business being in the title game.
