Perspective Piece: BCS Championship Game

Like any mammoth event that's been set in stone for over a month, the BCS title game between Ohio State and Florida has had its constituent matchups dissected to no end. However, if you want to know something truly important about college football's first non-bowl title tilt, it won't come before kickoff.

It's really rather simple: if you're looking for a mind-blowing revelation, a rare glimpse inside the worlds of these two teams, or anything else that will help you predict the winner of this gargantuan gridiron grudge match in Glendale, you're not going to find it here. Confused? You need to understand the unique chemical cocktail that is a collegiate football national title game.

This isn't to say that Florida safety Reggie Nelson won't be a huge key to this contest. This is not a way of diminishing the importance or centrality of Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith. This does not represent a dismissal of the strategies that will be employed in this game by Gator offensive coordinator Dan Mullen. No, it's true that all the matchups you've read about over the past month will acquire a fair share of significance when the Buckeyes and Gators take the field in the newly-christened home of the Fiesta Bowl.

But while X-and-O matchups will be important, the biggest key to this game is something no one can yet know. Indeed: if a ruthlessly honest and analytically accurate preview of this BCS blockbuster is to be written, it must acknowledge the fact that weird events take place in most college football championship games. Psychological sensitivities and frail feelings turn malleable male minds into mental mush before the bright lights on the biggest of big stages.

Look back at the history of championship games in the BCS era (yes, this is still the BCS era, even though this is the first officially named "BCS Championship Game," as opposed to a bowl that formerly hosted the season-ending showdown). Go to Google or whatever research tool you can easily access. Read up on the previous eight years of this game. Look at statistics. Assess the participating teams in a fuller historical context. You'll find that only two of the eight games were played at an appreciably high level. You'd also find that only one game was free of that noticeable quality called "weirdness."

First things first. You might think that Ohio State's last national title game (also played in suburban Phoenix against Miami in 2003) was one of the two great games. Well, it was great for Jim Tressel and the winning Buckeyes, but it wasn't a great game on the merits. Great spectacle and delightful drama? Sure. Tremendous television and electric excitement? Yes. But elevated football straight from Mount Olympus? Not exactly. Miami played tortilla-flat football in the Valley of the Sun, and the most memorable moment from the game was not a great play, but a late penalty flag (not an incorrect flag, but a flag nevertheless) for defensive holding in the end zone. The contest was a sloppy slugfest in which the Buckeyes and Hurricanes did not play at the absolute height of their powers.

There have been only two great BCS title games: the 2000 Sugar Bowl and the 2006 Rose Bowl. You almost surely remember the latter, an instant classic still fresh in the collective national memory, but let's duck in a word about the former. Relative to the abilities of the two teams, the 2000 Sugar Bowl--despite its final 17-point margin (46-29 for Florida State over Virginia Tech)--might have maxed out even more than the Texas-USC epic won by Vince Young in Pasadena.

The 2000 Sugar Bowl wasn't a better overall game, of course--no one would make such a claim. But that Superdome showdown did lack something the 2006 Rose Bowl possessed: real, old-fashioned craziness. You know, brains spinning sideways, emotions overcoming athletes, passion pounding precision into the ground. Yes, while the 2006 Rose Bowl was, on balance, a better game than the 2000 Sugar Bowl, the Longhorns and Trojans resided in the silly season in the first half before producing a jawdropping second half. Recall the brain-dead lateral by Reggie Bush? Remember all the fits and starts of two decorated offenses in the first 30 minutes of play? Notice how Vince Young took a long while to crank up the magic before he turned himself into an all-time college football legend?

The 2000 Sugar Bowl is arguably the one BCS game in which two teams played to the full extent of their capabilities. A young Virginia Tech team made some mistakes, but nothing that would be considered too surprising against the athleticism of Florida State's defense. Yet, the Hokies--behind a freshman quarterback named Michael Vick--stormed back from 21 points down to take a lead into the fourth quarter. Even in defeat, Tech won an enormous amount of respect. This marks the only time in the BCS era that an underdog has lost in the title game and yet won a considerable share of postgame accolades and buzz. The victorious Seminoles, meanwhile, earned a great deal of admiration as well. By staring down their less experienced opponent and prevailing in a dominant fourth quarter, Bobby Bowden's boys left Louisiana knowing they had spilled their guts in attaining a second national title for their coach. The 2000 Sugar Bowl was the only weirdness-free college football title game (at least by reasonable standards) since the BCS was created in the 1998 season.

The other BCS title games from the past eight years were littered with painfully inept performances from the losing teams. Florida State barely showed up in 1999 and 2001. Nebraska got annihilated in 2002. Oklahoma fumbled and failed in 2004 and 2005. Add in the previously discussed 2003 Fiesta Bowl, in which Miami didn't put its best foot forward, and you have six title games out of eight in which the losing team played lousy football. But there's so much more to this larger story.

You see, losing teams in these kinds of games don't merely lose; they normally crash and burn. Players don't simply fall short; they become emotionally overwhelmed. This isn't just a hugely-hyped and pressure-packed event; it's a football game played after a five- to seven-week layoff. All the ingredients exist for one team to mentally fold in the face of this spectacle's fierce forces. There's pressure. Then there are high expectations. Add some massive adrenaline surges, sprinkle in enormous possibilities for a plethora of pregame distractions, and factor in a lot of rust. It's a recipe for a big-game disaster, which can be loosely but accurately defined as a woefully insufficient and generally underachieving performance. Six out of eight times, then, disaster has befallen one team in a BCS title game. That's a 75 percent rate if you're keeping score at home.

So, want to know the biggest key of Buckeyes-Gators? It all comes down to these two questions:

1) Which team will make one of those bizarre errors that usually crops up in this kind of contest?

2) Once that weird event occurs, will the embarrassed team pick itself off the mat and steer the emotional calculus back to a neutral or advantageous level?

Here's the reason why Ohio State versus Florida--like any other college football championship game--is best put in perspective when matchup keys or strategic dimensions are placed on the back burner: simply stated, psychology rules in this sport--always does, always will. (Ask Boise State and Oklahoma about this topic after that Fiesta Bowl from New Year's night.) To be a bit more specific, it takes just one really weird mistake--like that Reggie Bush lateral last year, or a muffed punt from Oklahoma's Mark Bradley the year before--to uproot and undo any and all of the X-and-O considerations that were bandied about before kickoff. A month's worth of punditry and commentary no longer matters when a young kid makes a lame-brained mistake under the big lights, a shocking gaffe that sucks the air out of his sideline and breaks the will of his teammates. Therefore, the most accurate thing one can say about this game is that it will be won by the team that handles adverse moments with greater grace and poise. That's what usually decides collegiate championship games more than anything else. (In the NFL and the Super Bowl, by contrast, talent typically wins out.)

The bottom line about Buckeyes-Gators is that it will likely involve a big mistake at some point; the two teams are too rusty to avoid a major mishap for too long. If, by chance, no major mistake emerges and becomes seared into the long-term remembrances of this contest, an Ohio State romp will almost surely unfold. But as well as the Bucks have performed this season under the leadership of Smith, their Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, college football's history suggests that these games are filled with mistakes, even for the winners. Ohio State would be Buck-ing a trend if the Scarlet and Gray can avoid a major mistake for 60 whole minutes of action. And if adversity hits Jim Tressel's team in Glendale, one has to admit that the Gators--unlike Michigan--have the defense and, even more specifically, the secondary that could potentially frustrate OSU's passing attack. One mistake could negate a whole host of advantages that the Buckeyes possess on paper.

The big key to this game is something you'll be able to identify when you watch the first half; it won't emerge before kickoff. When a kid does something weird, or when the pressure falls heavily on one team within the flow of the contest, you'll encounter the decisive hour when a team will either respond to the weight of the occasion, or crumble under it. BCS title games aren't usually masterpieces, which means that they're more often lost by the loser than won by the winner. At some point in the first half, one ballclub will falter, and the other one will acquire a pronounced emotional edge. One will sweat, the other will swagger. One will sag, the other will soar.

In BCS title games, mindset always trumps masculinity. The mentally tough team that overcomes adversity and minimizes mistakes will walk away with a national championship. Put this game within a regular-season grind, and big plays would become ever more necessary for both teams. But in a single game played 36 (Florida) to 50 (Ohio State) days after the end of the regular season, the key becomes psychological more than anything else. Focus will foil ferocity. Serenity will surmount the speed of specimens. These are the time-tested truths of BCS championship games.

Want to know the big secret to Ohio State v. Florida? Watch the game to find out.