Written by Mike Furlan

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After the annual Michigan win, Furls laid out exactly what the Buckeyes needed to happen in order for them to get into the BCS Championship Game.  Now, just a couple weeks later, the Buckeyes need just one of two things to happen tonight and they should be headed off to New Orleans to play for a national title.  In his latest, Furls updates the odds, and also talks about the possibility of Buckeye-hating voters elevating a two loss team like Georgia or LSU over them. 

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after Ohio State's win over Michigan, I sat down and worked out a rough estimate of what I thought Ohio State's chances were to get into the BCS Championship game.  I made some simplifying assumptions (things like one game's outcome does not affect another), crunched the numbers (including the multiplication of decimals) and found that Ohio State's chances of getting another shot at a title were not actually as bad as the media portrayed.  For those with short memories, they said that it would take a miracle run of improbable events, but to their credit; they did acknowledge that there was a possibility. 

I was stunned to find that the probability of the Buckeyes getting to the title game was somewhere in the ballpark of 40%, and here we sit, two weeks later and nearly all of the preliminary chips have fallen Ohio State's way.  Now the Buckeyes just need one of the two following events to occur: 

-Oklahoma beats Missouri

-Pittsburgh beats West Virginia 

The outcome of the Pittsburgh-West Virginia game is a forgone conclusion.  I am pretty sure that West Virginia will win by about a trillion points and Vegas agrees; the Mountaineers are nearly a thirty point favorite in the game.  So now it comes down to Oklahoma setting up an Ohio State vs. West Virginia match up.  Personally, I think Oklahoma wins that game seven times out of ten on a neutral field, so I give Ohio State about a 70% chance of seeing the outcome they need to redeem themselves in a title game.   

There is a wild card.  As the likelihood of a second consecutive Ohio State BCS Championship Game increased, so has the media outrage focused squarely on Jim Tressel's boys.  Now the question remains, can the media and voters conspire to keep Ohio State out?  Can they muster the support to jump a team over the Buckeyes?  Sound absurd?  The precedent for creating match ups through voting was set last year, as the media flexed their respective muscles to propel the Florida Gators over the idle Wolverines.  I watched the SEC title game, and I heard the commentary, the final BCS voting was more about avoiding a match up than Florida's win over Arkansas. 

Will it happen?  I doubt it.  Fortunately for the Buckeyes, there are no prospective teams to elevate.  They would really have to reach back far to find a suitable team, probably all the way to #8 USC or #9 Oklahoma.  Any other team jumping the Buckeyes would cause an insane contribution and would detract from college football so severely that the media members could not and would not even try it.  How could they justify jumping a one loss conference champion with a two loss team (Georgia) that finished third in their conference? 

In any case, no matter what happens today, the Buckeyes win.  A Missouri loss sends the Buckeyes into a second consecutive national championship game, a Missouri win sends Ohio State to Pasadena to play in a classic Rose Bowl match up against USC (provided they can sew up their loose ends).  In any case, the Buckeyes are sitting in the catbird seat this week.