BCS Race Is Boiling Down to the Point of No Return

Horse racing has a “homestretch,” track boasts a “bell lap,” your local tavern has “last call” and college football culminates with the “decimal dash.”

With one week of churning left in the bowl championship series computers, here’s what we know:

* If everything holds up as well as Don King’s hair, this probably will be the 2005 BCS bowl lineup:

Rose: USC (Fresno scored 42?) vs. Texas (after Texas A&M;, you think the Alamo may have had a better defense).

Fiesta: Notre Dame (9-2) vs. Ohio State (9-2). The Fiesta is considering “Come Count Our Losses” as a possible theme for this year’s festivities.

Sugar: West Virginia vs. Southeastern Conference title-game winner (Georgia or Louisiana State).

Orange: Penn State vs. Virginia Tech (Trek to game may become sequel to “Cold Mountain”).

If things don’t hold up, as in USC losing to UCLA this week or Texas losing to Colorado, please refer to your 2003 season flip-chart for possible BCS disaster scenarios.

* Reggie Bush won the Heisman Trophy on Friday morning. He might have been eating breakfast. Anyway, this race is more over than Jessica and Nick.

Any guy that can put up 513 yards against Fresno State, a team that hung in there before losing to Nevada on Saturday ... OK, forget that.

Bush won the Heisman because Texas quarterback Vince Young, who needed to answer Bush’s call, didn’t pick up the phone Friday in a ho-hum effort against Texas A&M;, which has the 109th-ranked defense.

* Kids are kids and that’s why the college game is so much more volatile than the pros.

Emotions rise and fall in this sport like banana republics. Coaches can teach Xs and O’s until they’re Michigan blue in the face, but they’ve never been able to teach a 19-year-old how to be 20.

Can you believe what happened?

Every school that needed a top-notch performance to secure a top bowl spot either lost or almost lost.

Colorado had to beat Nebraska at home to win the Big 12 Conference North Division and came up only 28 points short.

Iowa State, looking to seize on Colorado’s stumble, needed a win over Kansas to win the Big 12 North. Kansas won, handing the Big 12 North title back to Colorado as some sort of a Boulder booby prize.

South Florida needed to defeat Connecticut to set up a showdown with West Virginia on Saturday for the Big East Conference title.

Connecticut won.

A win for Fresno State against Nevada would have locked up the Western Athletic Conference title. Fresno State lost, proving the Bulldogs weren’t kidding when they said they left everything on the field against USC.

* Notre Dame had to punch the concierge-level button on the up-and-down Stanford elevator to secure a BCS berth but trailed until the final minute before winning, 38-31. Sunday, the Irish carriage fell two floors, from fifth to seventh, in the Harris Poll.

* Texas had to dispose of Texas A&M; to keep its Rose Bowl dreams alive and nearly gave away its destination at College Station.

* Louisiana State held off pesky Arkansas, a team that lost to USC by 53 points, to secure the West Division title in the Southeastern Conference.

And you wonder why coaches’ earn the big money in college and the players earn the degrees ...

Weekend Wrap

* Why do they play conference title games again? Oh yeah, the money. There are few other good reasons, especially in a season when the Big 12 will forward 7-4 Colorado to its game Saturday and the burgeoning Atlantic Coast Conference will present four-loss Florida State in its inaugural title game at Jacksonville.

Colorado and Florida State are coming off a weekend in which they lost to Nebraska and Florida by a combined 54 points.

Colorado is unranked and Florida State drops into the ACC title game the week it dropped out of the top 25.

Neither school deserves a chance to steal an automatic BCS berth from more credible schools such as 10-1 Oregon or 9-2 Auburn, one of the hottest teams in the country.

In fact, the BCS would be thoroughly justifiable sending Oregon to the Big 12 title game to play Texas and Auburn to the ACC game to meet Virginia Tech, with the winner earning a major bowl berth.

* Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis gets credit for not letting Saturday night’s game against Stanford to come down to a last-second kick that would have put the pressure of a $16-million bowl bid on his kicker.

“The only thing I didn’t want to do was have it come down to a field goal,” Weis said. “So I just decided no matter what we were going to go for a touchdown.”

Weis had good reasons. D.J. Fitzpatrick, nursing a knee injury, already had missed two field-goal tries and an extra-point attempt against Stanford.

Darius Walker scored the game-winning touchdown on a six-yard run with 55 seconds left. Weis might have tried to maneuver the clock down to the final seconds and let $16 million ride on one boot, but he didn’t.

How meticulous is Weis? Three hours before the game, Weis walked Stanford Stadium by himself, seemingly checking every blade of grass for answers. He paid particular attention to the red paint on the “S” in Stanford in the end zone where, hours later, Walker scored the game-winner.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White calls Weis “a world-class anticipator.”

Said White: “Today he is thinking 90 days from now. Ninety days from now he’ll be thinking 90 days from then.”

On the plane from South Bend, Ind., to Stanford, White said Weis detailed to him every day of planning for Notre Dame football ... through May 2006.