Stewart Mandel: Final season of BCS brings questions, not controversy; Overtime

Following Auburn's win and Ohio State's loss, the final BCS matchup was met without controversy.

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A collective sense of relief seemed to wash over the college football world around 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night, when Michigan State tailback Jeremy Langford broke free for a 26-yard touchdown to ice the Spartans upset of previously unbeaten Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game. It wasn't so much that the Buckeyes lost -- though there are certainly plenty of anti-Ohio State zealots out there who took glee in Urban Meyer's misery -- but that the result spared us the headache of enduring one last BCS uproar.

For all the preemptive worrying and lobbying the past month -- first over the fear of there being too many undefeated teams; then over whether a one-loss SEC champion should potentially leapfrog the undefeated Buckeyes -- the final season of the BCS ended in surprisingly clean fashion. The national championship game pits 13-0 Florida State, this season's most dominant team, against 12-1 Auburn, the nation's hottest squad fresh off back-to-back victories over top-five foes.

"I've been saying all fall, hang on everybody, chill out, it's going to work out," BCS executive director Bill Hancock said on Sunday night. "I wasn't concerned going into this weekend. I just felt like we'd have the two best teams going into Sunday evening."

In fact, after years and years of maddening controversies, the soon-to-be-defunct BCS actually ended its run with universally accepted matchups in four of the last five seasons (Alabama-Texas in 2009, Auburn-Oregon in '10, Notre Dame-Alabama in '12 and Florida State-Auburn in '13). "We've gotten it right way more times than we've created controversy," said Hancock.

Of course, the one exception -- the widely panned LSU-Alabama rematch after the 2011 campaign -- was one of the instigators behind the sport's eventual move to a playoff format.

Which brings us to the irony of 2013. Two teams proved plenty in the final season of the BCS. Four teams, on the other hand, would have been an absolute mess.

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Put yourself in the forthcoming selection committee's shoes. Who do you pick? The final polls and BCS standings are in agreement that the top-four teams, in order, are Florida State, Auburn, Alabama and Michigan State. There's no question, that field would make a lot of sense. The Seminoles and Tigers would be no-brainer selections, while the Crimson Tide were the season-long No. 1 until they lost the Iron Bowl in dramatic, unprecedented fashion. The 12-1 Spartans just knocked off an undefeated team to win the Big Ten.

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Stewart Mandel: Final season of BCS brings questions, not controversy; Overtime