It’s just a joke. A complete farce. I’m glad I quit paying attention to it years ago. The idea that Alabama, which has already lost to LSU, should play LSU again for the nonexistent “national title” is simply ridiculous in every way.
What they’re playing for is the SEC title, not the national one, the recent SEC championship game notwithstanding. How many teams outside the SEC have both teams even played? Six! LSU played Oregon, Northwestern State (?), and West Virginia. Alabama played Kent State, Penn State, and North Texas. A real murderer’s row of competitors there. While the SEC is the premier conference in college football, the more salient point here is that neither team has played a single Big 12 team; LSU hasn’t played the Big 10, Alabama hasn’t played the Pac-12.
Who cares if LSU beats Alabama again? We already know they can and probably will. And it’s worse if Alabama upsets LSU, since people will always wonder if Oklahoma State could have beaten them as well. I used to follow college football, but began to lose interest in college football once the focus shifted away from the inter-conference rivalries and towards a mythical “national” championship. I haven’t paid any attention to it in years, and latest debacle confirms my opinion that the NCAA is corrupt and stupid, the BCS is a ridiculous farce, and I’d rather much rather review advanced NFL statistics at Football Outsiders than devote any time to NCAA football.
If I ran the BCS, I would have instituted a simple rule preventing any such travesties. No intra-conference rematches if there is a potential opponent with a similar or better record, regardless of the BCS rating. When one is attempting to determine a national title, there should always be a heavy bias towards matching up teams from difference conferences. Of course, an NFL-style playoff system where the top teams from the six major conferences, plus two wild cards, make the playoffs makes far too much sense for the NCAA to ever adopt it.