Magic Scenario Update 

20 Nov 2011

You might remember that I laid out a path for Virginia Tech to play in the BCS Championship game. I did it jokingly, not really expecting there was a chance that the Hokies would end up with a shot.

What a difference a week makes.

Oregon lost. Oklahoma lost. Oklahoma St. lost.

The Hokies vault from the bottom of the BCS to 5th, with at least one team above them guaranteed to lose. It looks like the BCS now shakes out like this:

6) Virginia Tech
5) Stanford
4) Oklahoma State
3) Arkansas
2) Alabama
1) LSU

LSU plays Arkansas this week. At this point, we have to be rooting for an LSU victory, since I’m not sure an LSU loss would move them down the polls enough.

So, let’s put in LSU over Arkansas.

Alabama plays Auburn. We need an Auburn victory.

Oklahoma State plays Oklahoma in two weeks. We need the Sooners to bring it and beat the Cowboys. Oklahoma over Oklahoma State.

Stanford plays Notre Dame this week. A Notre Dame victory would be ideal, since that would hurt both Stanford and Oregon’s chances of jumping up the list. Stanford is then going to play UCLA or Utah in the Pac–12 Championship Game. We’d like Stanford to lose there as well. But we don’t need to be greedy.

Of course, we really need the Hokies to beat Virginia (not a given), and then defeat Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. Neither of those will prove to be easy tasks, but there’s a chance that with both of those wins, the Hokies would vault over Stanford, regardless of the outcome of their games.

I think, if all of this happened, you’d end up with LSU #1 and Virginia Tech #2. I think that’s the best thing we can hope for at this point. To make it more confusing, we could also hope for Georgia over LSU in the SEC Championship Game.

Let’s see where we stand next week. If Alabama beats Auburn, the odds of the Hokies getting up into the top two drops considerably. Of course, if the Hokies play the way they played against UNC, they won’t defeat Virginia, which will render the whole thing moot.