NEW YORK (AP) - The penultimate Bowl Championship Series gave college football a national championship matchup low on controversy and loaded with star power.
No. 1 Notre Dame against No. 2 Alabama in Miami on Jan. 7 for the national title. No complaints.
That Fiesta Bowl with No. 5 Oregon against No. 7 Kansas State looks good, too.
After that, well, you can see why so many fans are so eager to get rid of the BCS.
No. 4 Florida goes to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans to face No. 22 Louisville, a Big East team that was unranked as recently as last week.
Then again, at least the Cardinals are ranked. Big Ten champion Wisconsin will be the first five-loss team to play in the Rose Bowl when it faces No. 8 Stanford in Pasadena, Calif.
Then there’s the Orange Bowl in Miami, where No. 13 Florida State will face No. 16 Northern Illinois, the Mid-American Conference champion that took advantage of the lackluster Big Ten and Big East champions to slip into the BCS with a 12-1 record.
“It’s a great story,” Orange CEO Eric Poms said Sunday night, trying to put the best spin possible on a matchup that looks like a potential mismatch. “I think we’ll be just fine.”
Meanwhile, here’s a list of teams that won’t be playing in the BCS
_ No. 3 Ohio State. The Buckeyes’ postseason ban helped put the Badgers in the Rose Bowl.
_ No. 6 Georgia, No. 9 LSU, No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 11 South Carolina couldn’t get in because of the rule that permits no more than two teams from one conference.
_ No. 12 Oklahoma was all but a lock for the Sugar Bowl, before NIU took the backdoor to being a BCS buster.
“We’re 12-1,” Northern Illinois quarterback Jordan Lynch told ESPN. “We faced tons of adversity this year. We won tons of games. … We definitely deserve to be in there.”
Maybe the Huskies can become this year’s Boise State and shock the Seminoles. The fear is the team that lost to Iowa and barely beat Kansas will be more like the Hawaii version of BCS buster _ a 41-10 loss to Georgia in the 2008 Sugar Bowl _ than the Utah-kind. The Utes beat Alabama 31-17 in the ‘09 Sugar Bowl.
If the undercard doesn’t look like much, the main event has the making of a potential blockbuster.
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