Texas College Football Capsules: Texas' best shot at title may be through AP

NEW YORK - The best chance Texas has to be crowned national champion this season likely lies with the members of the media who vote in The Associated Press college football poll.

The Longhorns are the latest team to feel slighted by the Bowl Championship Series, though the twist this time was coach Mack Brown's team has the Big 12 to blame as much as the BCS standings.

Oklahoma, which lost 45-35 to Texas in October, slipped ahead of the Longhorns in the latest BCS standings and earned a spot in the Big 12 title game against Missouri on Saturday.

The Big 12 had to go to its fifth tiebreaker, best BCS ranking, to break a three-way tie in its South Division between Texas, Oklahoma and Texas Tech. All had 11-1 records. Oklahoma beat Texas Tech and Texas Tech beat Texas.

Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe told ESPN.com on Tuesday that the conference will reassess the tiebreaker in the offseason.

"Any tiebreaker system is difficult and will leave teams disappointed," he said. "When the tiebreaker was written I was not in the league but they wanted to put in the team that had the best chance to play in the national championship game."

The tiebreaker not only put the Sooners in position to win the league championship, but a win against Missouri virtually guarantees Oklahoma a spot in the BCS national title game in Miami on Jan. 8 against the winner of the Southeastern Conference championship.

But Texas still has hope.

"There is a lot left out there to play for and crazy things happen all the time in college football so who knows where we'll end up," Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy said late Sunday night.

If Missouri beats Oklahoma, Texas is the presumptive next-in-line to reach the BCS title game. The Tigers (9-3) don't seem to be up to the task of stopping the Sooners, who have scored at least 60 points in their last four games.

Missouri is a 17-point underdog, and its only two losses last season were to Oklahoma.

Depending on the Tigers leaves the Longhorns a long shot to get to Miami.

Texas might be better off turning its attention to the AP poll.

If Alabama were to win the BCS title game, the Tide would be undefeated and undisputed national champs. Florida goes into the SEC title game ranked second in the AP poll, so logic dictates the Gators would jump to No. 1 by beating the Tide and stay there if they win the BCS championship game.

Texas was No. 3 in the last AP Top 25, ahead of Oklahoma by eight points. Unlike USA Today coaches' poll voters, who are required to put the BCS championship game winner No. 1 on their final ballots, the 65 AP voters don't have to put the winner of that game on top of their final ballots.

So if Oklahoma wins out, and Texas wins its bowl game, presumably the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State or maybe Utah, do the 40 AP voters who had Texas ahead of Oklahoma last week - most by one spot- keep the Longhorns ahead of the Sooners when the final poll comes out in the wee hours of the morning on Jan. 9?

The answer, of course, is maybe.

"It's possible I could vote Texas No. 1, but it's far too early to say," Tom Keegan of the Lawrence Journal World in Nebraska said in an e-mail to the AP. "I had Texas No. 2, Oklahoma No. 3 and it was a tough call. They are so close in my mind that whichever team plays better from this point forward likely will be the one I rank higher."

Several other voters had similar answers.

"I would look at it as co-national championship games," Doug Segrest of The Birmingham News said, referring to the BCS title game and the Fiesta Bowl.

At least two voters, Craig James of ABC and Randy Rosetta of the Baton Rouge Advocate in Louisiana, said if Oklahoma and Texas each win their remaining games, they would keep the Longhorns in front of the Sooners because of what happened at the Cotton Bowl on Oct. 11.

"Sure OU will have beaten (Missouri), but so did Texas convincingly," James said in an e-mail. "Then, both schools will have beaten strong competition in their bowl game. So, I can't get past the head-to-head victory by the Longhorns. I don't have to guess or assume anything."

Glenn Guilbeau of the Gannett Louisiana News Service said he felt Texas deserved the nod over Oklahoma in the Big 12 tiebreaker, but he'd be inclined not to hold it against Oklahoma if the Sooners went on to beat Florida or Alabama.

"Two wrongs," he said in an e-mail, "don't make a right."

 Leach garners coach of the year honor

 LUBBOCK - Mike Leach can look back on this season and know he led Texas Tech to its best one yet.

The pirate-loving coach and his No. 8 Red Raiders did it by getting their first win over a top-ranked team, garnering their highest national ranking and capturing their first Big 12 South trophy - the latter a shared prize due to a three-way tie.

Now Leach can add another first. The Associated Press on Tuesday named him Big 12 coach of the year. In balloting by a panel of conference media, Leach got 16 votes to four for Texas' Mack Brown.

Since the conference began in 1996 it is the first time Texas Tech's coach has won the honor.

"I don't know what to say," said Leach, who's rarely at a loss for words. "I have good people around me. We had a good year, and I had something to do with it, too, you know."

For the man known to enjoy reading Winston Churchill, the season has seen, well, his finest hour.

Tech has for years been considered a good team, but the Red Raiders' pass-happy offense was mostly written off as a gimmicky outfit that put up gaudy numbers in Leach's spread offense. Every quarterback but one has led the nation in passing in Leach's nine seasons, yet the Red Raiders never won more than nine games.

This season's no different from the wild offense standpoint - Tech averages 417 yards passing a game and Graham Harrell will probably be named a Heisman Trophy finalist. But Tech has also added a powerful running game and an improved defense, leading to a top-10 ranking and a school-record 11 victories.

"It's really flattering because I think we're in the best conference with the best coaches, and it's incredible and tremendous company," said Leach, a rarity among coaches because of his unorthodox approach to the game, his wide-ranging interests outside the game, his law degree and the fact that he never played college football.

He's also a rarity because of his success.

The Red Raiders have gone to bowl games every year under Leach and won five of the last six. They'll go to a ninth this year but instead of a BCS bowl, it's probably a return to the Cotton Bowl, where in 2006 Texas Tech lost 13-10 to Alabama.

Leach's name has surfaced in recent years when other coaching spots have opened up. Last year it was Arkansas and UCLA. This year there were reports Tennessee and Washington might be interested. Leach, who has two years remaining on a five-year contract and is making $1.75 million this season, said he wants "absolutely" to stay at Texas Tech.

"I mean it's an interesting question," he said. "I've been there nine years, which is longer than most marriages or jobs, you know."

Before the season began Leach said this year's team had a chance to be his best, and he was right.

Leach took the Red Raiders (11-1) to their best record since 1973, only the third time in the program's 84 years the team tallied 11 wins. Tech's 10-0 start was the first since 1938.

And some of those victories were big. After back-to-back home wins - 39-33 over then-No. 1 Texas and 56-20 over then-eighth Oklahoma State - the fervor for Leach and the Red Raiders seemed at an all-time high.

Then the Red Raiders suffered a 65-21 meltdown at Oklahoma for their only loss, which ended any national title talk in West Texas. Tech was the country's No. 2 team for three weeks before succumbing to the Sooners.

His former boss while he was the offensive coordinator at OU says Leach certainly deserves the award.

"I think it's a great choice," Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said. "His team's incredibly competitive, and just year in and year out they're always a team that you always have to be very prepared for."

Even though Tech wasn't prepared for OU, it's hard to get too upset about this season that was memorable on and off the field for Leach.

While piling up victories, he's also occasionally spoken to Donald Trump - an acquaintance since the time Leach tried to just drop in on Trump before even meeting him while visiting New York. He's also handed out dating advice on his weekly local show, done the weather forecast for a Lubbock TV station and drawn cheers by buying barbecue for the thousands of students camped out at the stadium before a big game.

Even with all that, Leach says he doesn't see how he's any different from other coaches.

"I'm too close to the fire, really, to gauge it, positively or negatively," he said. "I don't know. Let me think about that."

Not 30 seconds pass before he sums it up.

"No matter who you are or what you do, you bring your own personality to things and so I think that may provide some of the difference," he said.

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AP Sports Writer Jeff Latzke in Norman, Okla., contributed to this report.