Alabama and Texas to meet in BCS title game

After more than three months of playoff-like play and a final weekend of intense drama, the major college football bowl stages are officially set.

Alabama and Texas will play in the Bowl Championship Series title game at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 7 in a classic matchup of traditional powerhouses.

The official announcement was made Sunday afternoon on Fox television, but there were no surprises.

Alabama (13-0) will be making its first postseason appearance at the Rose Bowl since 1946, when the Crimson Tide defeated USC. The next season, the Big Ten Conference and what is now the Pacific 10 Conference set off on a new course when they contractual agreed to play each other every year.

Texas (13-0), which needed a last-second field goal to escape the Big 12 title game with a 13-12 win over Nebraska, returns to the Rose Bowl four years after the Longhorns won the championship here with a dramatic 41-38 victory against USC.

The rest of the major bowls shook out as expected and will feature, for the first time in BCS history, two undefeated schools playing in a game other than the championship game.

Texas Christian and Boise State, undefeated champions of the Mountain West and Western Athletic conferences, respectively, will square off in the Jan. 4 Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz.

The Fiesta had the option of matching TCU with undefeated Cincinnati, but Boise’s proximity and appeal were too much to pass up.

The Fiesta Bowl now has a junior national title game with a team, Boise State, that holds a win over Oregon, this year’s Pac-10 champion.

Cincinnati (12-0) will play Florida (12-1) in the Sugar Bowl, Iowa (10-2) will face Atlantic Coast champion Georgia Tech (11-2) in the Orange Bowl and the traditional Jan.1 Rose Bowl will pit Pac-10 champion Oregon (10-2) against Big Ten champion Ohio State (10-2).