Florida, Oklahoma easy BCS picks

That logjam at the top of the rankings wasn’t so hard to figure out.

Nobody dominated the last two months of college football like Oklahoma and Florida. Every poll and pretty much everyone outside of Texas agreed on that.

No surprise, then, that the Gators and Sooners were the easy picks despite having one loss each. This pair of power programs with Heisman-worthy quarterbacks and 12-1 records will meet Jan. 8 in Miami for the BCS national championship.

Oklahoma was ranked first and Florida second in the final BCS standings released Sunday. They were flip-flopped in the Associated Press poll, which is not used in determining the BCS, but was used by BCS chairman John Swofford as another way of validating the matchup.

“One of the interesting aspects of where we are, looking at the standings, is that Florida and Oklahoma are one or two in the Harris poll, coaches’ poll and even the AP poll, which is not used in the BCS standings,” Swofford said. “You have a consistency there with the human polls on those same two teams.”

Including Texas, Southern California, Texas Tech, Penn State and Alabama, there were seven teams with one loss in the BCS’ final top 10. Two more — Utah and Boise State — finished undefeated.

But only two had résumés like Florida and Oklahoma.

Led by Tim Tebow, the Gators rebounded from their only loss to dominate the next nine games, scoring more than 49 points a game in wins that culminated with a 31-20 victory over Alabama on Saturday for the SEC title.

Sam Bradford was the same kind of force for Oklahoma. The Sooners lost 45-35 to Texas in October, but still ended up with an NCAA-record 702 points this season. They ended the season by becoming the first team since 1919 to score 60-plus in five straight games.

“We beat five ranked teams and three ranked teams as the last three games of the year,” Sooners coach Bob Stoops said. “That decided it.”

This will mark the first-ever meeting between these two power programs, each seeking their second title of the 2000s.

Two years ago, Meyer took some heat for lobbying to get his team into the title game. This time, he didn’t have to work so hard. It was fairly clear-cut that if Florida defeated a top-ranked Alabama team in the SEC title game that the Gators would be going.

“When I hear coaches sticking up for their team, they’re simply doing their job,” Meyer said. “But after a while, enough is enough. The rules are in place. Until it changes, that’s the way it is.”

The third-ranked Longhorns finished in a three-way tie in the nation’s toughest division — the Big 12 South — but were denied a spot in the title game because of the tiebreaker, which looks to the BCS standings.

Oklahoma won the tiebreaker. Texas protested. Coach Mack Brown said UT’s 45-35 win over OU should be a deciding factor. He left out the fact that Texas lost to Texas Tech and Oklahoma beat the Red Raiders 65-21.

Associated Press likes Florida

Florida was No. 1 and Oklahoma No. 2 in the final regular season Associated Press Top 25 poll.

The Gators finished the season No. 1 in the AP poll two seasons ago, but before that Florida last led the media rankings in October 2001.

Florida, which received 50 first-place votes, becomes the sixth team to be No. 1 this season. Georgia started there. Southern California took over after the first games were played and held the top spot for four weeks.

After USC lost at Oregon State, Oklahoma rose to No. 1 and stayed there for two weeks. The Sooners lost to Texas 45-35 on Oct. 11.

The Longhorns were No. 1 until losing 39-33 on a last-second touchdown at Texas Tech on Oct. 25. That made Alabama No. 1, where the Tide stayed until losing to the Gators and falling to No. 4.

The last season in which there were six No. 1 teams was 1984.