LOS ANGELES (MCT) — Two exit-poll thoughts: One Tide is king and one tide is shifting.
Alabama won the national title Thursday night at the Rose Bowl on a star-spangled night with rockets' crimson glare.
The game reflected what college football is, has been and always will be: imperfect, unpredictable and fantastically flawed.
Fate, allegedly aligned with Texas, showed its cruelty by giving Colt McCoy the cold (right) shoulder.
Yet, what happened to McCoy in the opening minutes is the "you never know" factor that keeps us tuning in. Ohio State Coach Woody Hayes used to say the best team always wins, and that everything else is excuses.
Alabama beat Texas, 37-21, so it leaves Pasadena as the crimson conqueror, and it might not have been that way had McCoy played four quarters.
What we hoped for — a game in which both teams got to flex their full muscle — was obviously none of our business.
The Associated Press, in its final media poll, acknowledged the "what if" factor when it voted to keep Texas at No. 2 behind unanimous No. 1 Alabama.
Alabama needs to apologize for nothing. It's no fluke that the Southeastern Conference has won four straight Bowl Championship Series national titles and that Alabama will probably enter next season ranked No. 1.
But which team will be No. 2?
What if we said Boise State?
College football is barreling down parallel, but contradictory, tracks. The better the game gets and the more equitable it becomes, the louder the screams to blow it up and start over.
But does the golden goose need to be goosed?
The congressman from Texas who said the BCS is worse than communism claims the system's not fair because the central government is not sharing enough wealth with the lower class.
There are political action groups on the march, hellbent on bringing to college football the playoff it obviously and so desperately needs. There are legislators in Washington drawing up papers to indict the BCS as illegal.
The system is not working, even though it sort of is.
The BCS is cheating "little guy" schools such as Boise State and Texas Christian even though the men coaching those teams don't necessarily think so.
The "crooked" system just advanced two teams from outside the cartel to the Fiesta Bowl. Before the BCS, Boise State and Texas Christian had no chance of playing in an $18-million-per-team-payout game.
And No. 1 Alabama could not have played No. 2 Texas.
Boise State finished 14-0 this season and No. 4 in Friday's final AP poll. Broncos Coach Chris Petersen called it "a dream season." He said, "I have been feeling like the whole BCS formula and process is getting better. It is working."
Texas Christian Coach Gary Patterson said having two BCS-buster schools in a major bowl had "changed the landscape forever."
Petersen and Patterson had a chance to stand up on soapboxes to advocate a playoff, yet neither did.
"Show me right now how a playoff is going to make it easier for Texas Christian and Boise State," Patterson said.
People who demand a playoff never answer the question: What would it do to the bowl system? Would it help it, hurt it or destroy it?
"Is this the fairest and best way?" Boise State's Petersen asked before this year's Fiesta Bowl. "I don't know."
Petersen speaks on behalf of many caretakers.
The problem isn't so much what we know.
It's what we don't know.