BCS Championship Path Becoming Clearer for Gamblers

Alabama fans saw the favorite fall early.

As happens every year, gambling patrons and sports fans start counting chickens around the end of October, well before they hatch. This year, betting speculation on which team might win the BCS college football championship put defending champion Alabama at the head of the list, with much concern about one of several teams from lesser-known conferences forcing its way into the big game in Glensdale, Arizona.

But assuming teams will continue undefeated just because they reach the midpoint of the season that way has made asses out of many prognosticators. Alabama fell fairly early, losing to South Carolina on its way to three defeats, an unseemly total for a team thought in preseason to not have peaked yet. This holiday weekend, positioning became more solidified, as Boise State blew a big lead and lost in overtime to Nevada.

With Utah’s loss a couple weeks ago to TCU, this leaves the Horned Frogs as the only team outside the automatic qualifying conferences to be a likely BCS Bowl team, and they would need a last-game loss by either Oregon or Auburn to reach the championship. The Ducks and the War Eagles each have a tough but winnable game ahead, and winning would put them in a showdown at the University of Phoenix stadium.

This should provide an explosive offensive game, the kind that promotes in-game wagering at online gambling sites, but it won’t do what many had hoped this year: force a re-evaluation of the BCS system and bring about a playoff.