At the beginning of the term, Ryan and I took our best shots at predicting this year's BCS title-game winner. As we near the end of yet another tumultuous season, both of our "horses" in this year's race to the title game are in good shape.
The University of Alabama stands atop both major national polls and the BCS, and the University of Oklahoma is but a win next Saturday away from bringing about quite a quandary for the pollsters.
In the case of a Sooner victory, voters will be charged with the difficult task of weighing the merits of both the Sooners and the one team they lost to (the University of Texas), whose early season victory over Texas Tech University makes the decision much trickier.
The rise of Texas Tech has created a good deal of buzz in the world of collegiate gridiron, and there's good reason for this. Tech has no doubt been a program on the rise since the new millennium, but its sudden appearance in the title hunt comes as a surprise to many.
Though the program has been a frequent visitor to the top 25 in recent years, the perception of Tech as a one-dimensional program and afterthought in the national championship was widespread. In big games, Tech could generally compete, and in some cases pull off a huge upset, but the pressure to put up massive point totals without much of a defense seemed too much for Tech to handle if it hoped to finish a season unblemished or close to it.
There were reasons to believe Tech was a force to be reckoned with coming into the season, but calling it a title contender would have gotten you laughed at. To the chagrin of those who doubted them, though, Tech is but one win away from assuring themselves of an undefeated regular season.
There are some good reasons to favor the Sooners come Saturday. First, the game is in Norman -- a notably hostile environment for opposing teams.
The Sooners have won an astounding 59 of 61 games at home since Stoops took the program under his wing in 1999. This stretch has been peppered with dominating wins, and the Red Raiders will have a challenge and a half on their hands when they're put to the test this Saturday.
Taking an objective look at the question of who is going to win, though, requires a little more attention to the details of this season that point in Texas Tech's favor.
The Red Raiders have had a more difficult road to hoe thus far and have won more impressively in big games. Against the two ranked teams other than Texas that Tech has squared off against this season, they've won by a combined score of 119-41.
The Sooners have been less dominant against inferiorly ranked teams and fell at the hands of the Texas team that Tech took down just three weeks ago.
Texas Tech also has the momentum advantage. As I discussed earlier, Tech's unlikely and sudden rise to the fore of the national championship discussion has created a lot of buzz, and I think even the Tech players and coaches are surprised at how successful of a year it has been for them.
Add Graham Harrell's front-runner status in the Heisman race, and it's easy to see why Tech is a program with a currently unparalleled amount of momentum behind it.
Tech's emergence is a great microcosm of the changing dynamic of the college game we've seen the past couple of years -- where dominance is ephemeral, and teams unexpectedly climb to the top of the polls -- and its win over OU this Saturday will only serve to further usher in the new era of college football.