BCS National Championship Game Betting Update – Tide Rolls Downhill After Upset

After week six of the 2010 season, college football betting has finally received a shake-up.

Alabama is no longer unbeaten.

The Crimson Tide was cresting after five games, fresh from a demolition of Florida on Oct. 2. Nick Saban’s club was continuing to display the toughness and impregnability that had defined the 2009 national champions. Something special was going to be needed in order to take down the kings of the SEC.

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Enter the South Carolina Gamecocks.

The boys from the Palmetto State have done precious little in 118 years of football. The only conference championship in school history was the 1969 ACC crown, and Carolina hadn’t even won so much as a division championship since the SEC went to split-division play in 1992. Yet, on one afternoon, the Gamecocks put all the pieces together. They thumped Alabama, 35-21, to stir up the national-title race.

One would do well to recall what was said last week: For the first month of the season, the conventional wisdom was that if Ohio State ran the table, it would be a shoo-in for the BCS National Championship Game on January 10, 2011.

That proposition was questioned with Alabama’s ascendancy, but now that the Crimson Tide has lost, it is truly Ohio State who fully controls its destiny on the road to Glendale, Arizona. Alabama, as the defending national champion, had first dibs on a title-game spot; no writers or pollsters would have denied Bama its place in the big game.

Now, Ohio State – which has made a habit out of appearing in BCS bowls and reached the championship game in 2002, 2006, and 2007 – owns the star power and national reputation needed to secure the first spot in the west-side suburb of Phoenix.

You might think that Oregon has the inside track to the second spot, and in a certain sense, that’s true. However, in light of the fact that LSU and Auburn –who must play each other –are both still undefeated at this point in time, it has to be acknowledged that if the two sets of Tigers meet with unbeaten records, the winner could go to Glendale by running the table.

Naturally, it will be very hard for either LSU or Auburn to beat Alabama, but if either Les Miles or Gene Chizik engineers an upset of Mr. Saban en route to an SEC title and a 13-0 record, it’s true that the Tigers – from Louisiana or the Alabama Plains – will vault ahead of Oregon. The schedule strength of a deep SEC West will be too much for a 12-0 Oregon team from the Pac-10.

Again, LSU or Auburn will have a very difficult time pulling off a 13-0 mark, so if one is to assume that the SEC won’t have an unbeaten champion, an unbeaten Oregon team would indeed be second in line behind an unbeaten Ohio State.

Oklahoma and Nebraska –two unbeatens from the Big 12 –would be next in line, and after those power-conference teams, Boise State would be next, followed by TCU and then Utah.

The full order, then: Ohio State first, LSU/Auburn second, Oregon third, Oklahoma/Nebraska fourth, Boise fifth, TCU/Utah seventh (from the Mountain West).

Teams that got eliminated from the title-game chase this past Saturday:

Michigan, Arizona and Northwestern –three unbeatens who needed to run the table all lost on Saturday.

Check out the latest college football game lines in the sportsbook, click here.