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If anyone is interested in how the BCS bowl pairings were made, it went this way.
NCG #1 Ohio State vs. #2 LSU by rule
The Rose bowl gets the first replacement pick and the Sugar Bowl gets the second.
Contractual Champions are:
#7 USC in the Rose, #3 Virginia Tech in the Orange, and #4 Oklahoma in the Fiesta. They are written in.
At this point the following teams are eligible for selection: #5 Georgia, #6 Missouri, #8 Kansas, #9 West Virginia, #10 Hawaii, #11 Arizona State, #12 Florida, #13 Illinois, #14 Boston College. *Note WV and Hawaii must be taken with the final two selections if they are not chosen earlier due to their automatic qualifications by winning their respective conference championships and Hawaii meeting the additional requirement of being in the BCS top 12.
Rose selects at-large qualifier Illinois to match with contractual champion USC. Rose bowl is set. It is possible that they attempted to select Georgia, but the Sugar bowl had the right to block that as Georgia is from the same conference as the contractual champion that the Sugar lost to the NCG. It is also possible that the Rose was determined to get a Big Ten/Pac-10 match up and thus Illinois was their first choice. Either way Illinois was chosen over at least six higher ranked teams. That doesn't seem right to me. Conference affiliation shouldn't deprive a better team from a current year from selection due to some traditional matchup. The best possible teams should get into this.
Sugar selects #5 Georgia. Georgia is the highest ranked team available and is from the SEC which is the conference champ that the Sugar bowl lost. This eliminates #12 Florida from a BCS game due to two SEC schools already being picked.
The bowls now selected teams to fill their remaining slots in this order: Orange, Fiesta, Sugar.
At this point, the following schools qualify for selection: #6 Missouri, #8 Kansas, #9 West Virginia, #10 Hawaii, #11 Arizona State, #14 Boston College.
The Orange decided upon #8 Kansas. That choice meant that the final two slots must go to West Virginia and Hawaii. All other schools including #6 Missouri are out of contention for a BCS game. Even if Hawaii had not been an automatic qualifier #6 Missouri could not play in a BCS bowl at this point as now two Big 12 teams have slots. So all but two teams came off the board with this first selection.
The Fiesta now picked #9 West Virginia over #10 Hawaii. That left #10 Hawaii as the opponent for Georgia in the Sugar bowl.
So the pairings and team choice really came down to two big choices. The first by the Rose bowl and the second by the Orange bowl. In both selections higher ranked teams were passed over. This analysis gives good insight as to why it is that the best matchups don't take place in the BCS games and why many deserving teams don't get to participate.
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